House Expected to OK Full Trade With China

In an atmosphere of markedly reduced enmity, the House of Representatives is expected today to perform what has become an annual rite of the 1990s: rebuffing efforts by congressional critics to sever normal trade relations with China.

Burgeoning U.S.-China trade, which now supports about 200,000 American jobs, coupled with President Clinton’s recent trip to China, has left supporters and opponents virtually certain that today’s vote will bring a continuation of normal trading privileges--a status known by the misnomer of most favored nation, or MFN.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Torrance) characterized normal trade relations with China as “an indispensable piece of California’s sustained prosperity and that of the country.”

“We’ve got better tools than our trade relationship to handle our . . . problems with China,” Harman said. “We don’t want to hold [it] hostage to other issues.”

Government and private sector statistics indicate that 20% to 25% of all U.S. jobs linked to trade with China are based in California.

Critics who want to revoke China’s most-favored-nation status insist that Beijing doesn’t play fair in trade with the United States. They also argue that differences on fundamental issues crucial to American values, such as religious freedom and other personal rights, make it wrong to continue normal trade ties.

At a separate news conference, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) characterized China as a nation that proliferates weapons of mass destruction, maintains unfair trade barriers and habitually violates the human rights of its people. She pronounced as a failure the Clinton administration’s policy of using trade links with Beijing as a catalyst for change.

“Clearly, it has not been successful in making the trade fairer, the people freer and the world safer,” she said.

Pelosi was accompanied by prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, who was released from prison and exiled to the United States in November. She distributed letters from Wei and another dissident, Harry Wu, to all members of the House, urging votes against renewing China’s MFN status. Wei called suspension of MFN “the most concrete and the most effective means available to addressing Chinese human rights and political reforms.”

But with the fundamental issues, and the arguments attached to them, effectively unchanged in recent years, the debate has taken on a ritualistic dimension in which emotions have diminished on both sides.

The outcome of the annual MFN vote has not been seriously in doubt since 1994, when the administration threatened to make trade relations contingent on progress on China’s human rights record. The administration ultimately backed away from the proposal.

Those pressing for curtailed trade to prevent the transfer of sensitive technology have focused most of their energy on passage of separate legislation banning the sale of satellites to China. “The anger has dampened,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento). “I believe the vote will be similar to last year.”

In last year’s MFN showdown, the House defeated by a 259-173 margin a resolution to suspend normal trade ties with Beijing. Since then, accusations that the Chinese government tried to influence U.S. elections through illegal campaign contributions, a growing U.S. trade deficit with China and worries about the transfer of sensitive technology have all failed to alter the underlying support in Congress for normal ties with Beijing.

“All of these things that made for huge battles in the past are now seen in the context of terribly important political and economic relationships,” said Daniel O’Flaherty, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a privately funded organization of about 600 American companies.

This year’s debate over China also comes amid a growing sense of disenchantment in Congress about the wisdom of economic sanctions, which in many cases seem to have harmed the interests of the United States more than the targeted countries.

Earlier this month, the Senate staged a two-step retreat from the draconian sanctions slapped on both India and Pakistan in the wake of their nuclear tests in the spring, first exempting U.S. grain sales from a trading ban, then granting Clinton authority to waive any of the remaining sanctions for up to one year if he sees fit.