Last fall the United States signed the agreement to bring China into
the WTO, on terms that will open its market to American products and investment.
When China concludes similar agreements with other countries, it will
join the WTO. But for us to benefit from that we must first grant it permanent
normal trade relations (PNTR) - the same arrangement we have given other
countries in the WTO. I submitted legislation to Congress to do that,
and I again urge Congress to approve it as soon as possible.
Congress will not be voting on whether China will join the WTO. Congress
can only decide whether the United States will share in the economic benefits
of China joining the WTO. A vote against PNTR will cost America jobs,
as our competitors capture Chinese markets that we otherwise would have
served.Supporting China's entry into the WTO, however, is about more than
our economic interests. It is clearly in our larger national interest.
It represents the most significant opportunity that we have had to create
positive change in China since the 1970s, when President Nixon first went
there, and later in the decade when President Carter normalized relations.
In the early 1900s, most Americans saw China either through the eyes
of traders seeking new markets or missionaries seeking new converts. During
World War II, China was our ally; during the Korean War, our adversary.
Later, it was a counterweight to the Soviet Union. And now, in some people's
eyes, it's a caricature: Will it be the next great capitalist tiger with
the biggest market in the world, or the world's last great communist dragon
and a threat to stability in Asia? We cannot control that choice, we can
only influence it. We can work to pull China in the right direction, or
we can turn our backs and almost certainly push it in the wrong direction.
The WTO agreement will move China in the right direction. It will advance
the goals America has worked for in China for the past three decades.
And it will advance our own economic interests.
Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street.
It requires China to open its markets, with one-fifth of the world's population
- potentially the biggest market in the world - to both our products and
services in unprecedented new ways. All we do [for China] is agree to
maintain the present access which China enjoys [to our markets]. Chinese
tariffs will fall by half or more over just five years. For the first
time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China
made by workers here in America, without being forced to relocate manufacturing
to China, sell through the Chinese government, or transfer valuable technology.
We'll be able to export products without exporting jobs. Meanwhile, we'll
get valuable new safeguards against any surges of imports from China.
We're already preparing for the largest enforcement effort ever given
for a trade agreement.
If Congress passes PNTR, we reap these rewards. If Congress rejects
it, our competitors reap these rewards. If we don't sell our products
to China, someone else will step into the breach, and we'll spend the
next 20 years wondering why we handed over the benefits we negotiated
to other people.
We're going to continue our efforts not just to expand trade, but to
expand it in a way that reinforces our fundamental values. Trade must
not be a race to the bottom, whether we're talking about child labor or
basic working conditions or the environment. The more we avoid dealing
with these issues, the more we fuel the fires of protectionism. That's
why we'll continue our efforts to make the WTO itself more open, more
transparent, more participatory - and to elevate the consideration of
labor and environmental issues in trade.
Most critics of the China-WTO agreement do not seriously question its
economic benefits. They're more likely to say things like this: China
is a growing threat to Taiwan and its neighbors; we shouldn't strengthen
it. Or, China violates labor rights and human rights; we shouldn't reward
it. Or, China is a dangerous proliferator; we shouldn't empower it. These
concerns are valid. But the conclusion of those who raise them as an argument
against China-WTO isn't. China is a one-party state that does not tolerate
opposition. It does deny its citizens fundamental rights of free speech
and religious expression. It does define its interests in the world sometimes
in ways that are dramatically at odds from our own. But the question is
not whether we approve or disapprove of China's practices. The question
is, what's the smartest thing to do to improve these practices? The choice
between economic rights and human rights, between economic security and
national security, is a false one. Membership in the WTO will not create
a free society in China overnight, nor guarantee that China will play
by global rules. But over time, it will move China faster and further
in the right direction - and certainly will do that more than rejection
would. To understand how, it's important to understand why China is willing
to do what it has undertaken to perform in this agreement.
Over the last 20 years, China has made great progress in building a
new economy, lifting more than 200 million people out of abject poverty;
linking so many people through its new communications network that it's
adding the equivalent of a new Baby Bell every year. Nationwide, China
has seen the emergence of more than a million nonprofit and social organizations
and a 2,500 percent explosion of print and broadcast media.
But its economy still is not creating jobs fast enough to meet the needs
of the people. Only about one-third of the economy is private enterprise.
Nearly 60 percent of the investment and 80 percent of all business lending
still goes toward state-owned dinosaurs.
Much of China's economy today still operates under the old theory that
if only they had shoveled coal into the furnaces faster, the Titanic would
have stayed afloat. It is ironic that so many Americans are concerned
about the impact on the world of a strong China in the 21st century. But
the danger of a weak China, beset by internal chaos and the old nightmare
of disintegration, is also real, and China's leaders know it.
China's leaders realize that if they open China's market to global competition,
they risk unleashing forces beyond their control - temporary unemployment,
social unrest, and greater demand for freedom. But they also know that
without competition from the outside, China will not be able to attract
the investment necessary to build a modern, successful economy. And the
failure to do that could be even more destabilizing.
With this agreement, China has chosen reform, despite the risks. It
has chosen to overcome a great wall of suspicion and insecurity and to
engage the rest of the world. The question for the United States is, do
we want to support that choice or reject it, becoming bystanders as the
rest of the world rushes in? That would be a mistake of truly historic
proportions.
As we debate about China, it's easy to forget that the Chinese leaders
and their people are also engaged in a debate about us. Many of them believe
that we honestly don't want their country to assume a respected place
in the world. If China joins the WTO, but we turn our backs on them, it
will confirm their fears.
Under this agreement, some of China's most important decisions for the
first time will be subject to the review of an international body, with
rules and binding dispute settlement. Opponents say China will just break
its promises. Anyone who follows WTO matters knows that China is not the
only state that could be accused of not honoring the rules-making process.
We're still better off having a system in which actions will be subject
to rules and judgments passed by 135 nations. And we're far more likely
to find acceptable resolutions to differences of opinion in this context
than if there is none at all.
The change this agreement can bring from outside is quite extraordinary.
But it will be nothing compared to the changes it will spark in China.
By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our
products; it is agreeing to import one of democracy's most cherished values
- economic freedom. The more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully
it will liberate the potential of its people - their initiative, their
imagination, their remarkable spirit of enterprise. When individuals have
the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand
a greater say.
Already, China's best and brightest are starting their own companies,
or seeking jobs with foreign-owned companies. In fits and starts, for
the first time, China may become a society where people get ahead based
on what they know rather than who they know. Chinese firms are realizing
that unless they treat employees with respect, they will lose out in the
competition for top talent. The process will only accelerate if China
joins the WTO.
There's something even more revolutionary at work here. By lowering
the barriers that protect state-owned industries, China is speeding the
process that is removing government from vast areas of people's lives.
In the past, virtually every Chinese citizen woke up in an apartment
or a house owned by the government, went to work in a factory or a farm
run by the government, and read newspapers published by the government.
State-run workplaces also operated the schools where they sent their children,
the clinics where they received health care, the stores where they bought
food. That system was a big source of the Communist Party's power. Now
people are leaving those firms. When China joins the WTO, they will leave
them faster.
The Chinese government no longer will be everyone's employer, landlord,
shopkeeper, and nanny all rolled into one. It will have fewer instruments
with which to control people's lives. That may lead to very profound change.
In the new century, liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem.
In the past year, the number of Internet addresses in China has more than
quadrupled from 2 million to 9 million. This year, the number is expected
to grow to over 20 million. When China joins the WTO, by 2005, it will
eliminate tariffs on information technology products, making the tools
of communication even cheaper, better, and more widely available.
We know how much the Internet has changed America, and we are already
an open society. Imagine how much it could change China.
There's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet
- good luck! That's sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall. I would
argue that their effort just proves how real these changes are and how
much they threaten the status quo. It's not an argument for slowing down
the effort to bring China into the world, it's an argument for accelerating
that effort. In the knowledge economy, economic innovation and political
empowerment will inevitably go hand in hand.
Bringing China into the WTO doesn't guarantee that it will choose political
reform. But accelerating the process of economic change will force China
to confront that choice sooner, and it will make the imperative for the
right choice stronger. If China is willing to take this risk, how can
we turn our backs on the chance to take them up on it? Clearly, this is
not, in and of itself, a human rights problem. But it is likely to have
a profound impact on human rights and political liberty. Change will only
come through a combination of internal pressure and external validation
of China's human rights struggle. We have to maintain our leadership in
the latter even as the WTO contributes to the former.
We sanctioned China under the International Religious Freedom Act last
year. We're again sponsoring a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Commission
condemning China's human rights record this year. We will also continue
to press China to respect global norms on nonproliferation. We will continue
to reject the use of force as a means to resolve the Taiwan question.
There must be a shift from threat to dialogue across the Taiwan Strait.
We must continue to defend our interests and our ideals with candor
and consistency. But we can't do that by isolating China from the very
forces most likely to change it. Doing so would be a gift to the hard-liners
in China's government, who don't want their country to be part of the
world - the same people willing to settle differences with Taiwan by force;
the same people most threatened by our alliance with Japan and Korea;
the same people who want to keep the Chinese military selling dangerous
technologies around the world; the same people whose first instinct in
the face of opposition is to throw people in prison. If we want to strengthen
their hand within China, we should reject the China-WTO agreement.
Voting against PNTR won't free a single prisoner, or create a single
job in America, or reassure a single American ally in Asia. It will simply
empower the most rigid anti-democratic elements in the Chinese government.
It would leave the Chinese people with less contact with the democratic
world and more resistance from their government to outside forces. Our
friends and allies would wonder why, after 30 years of pushing China in
the right direction, we turned our backs, now that they finally appear
to be willing to take us up on it.
The people with the greatest interest in seeing China change agree with
this analysis. The people of Taiwan agree. The people of Hong Kong agree.
Martin Lee, the leader of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, wrote to me that
this agreement "represents the best long-term hope for China to become
a member of good standing in the international community. We fear that
should ratification fail, any hope for the political and legal reform
process would also recede." Most evangelicals who have missions in
China also want China in the WTO. They know it will encourage freedom
of thought and more contact with the outside world. Many of the people
who paid the greatest price under Chinese repression agree, too. Ren Wanding
is one of the fathers of the Chinese human rights movement. In the late
1970s, he was thrown into prison for founding the China Human Rights League.
In the 1980s, he helped lead the demonstration in Tiananmen Square. In
the 1990s, he was thrown in prison yet again. Yet, he says of this deal,
"Before, the sky was black; now it is light. This can be a new beginning."
For these people, fighting for freedom in China is not an academic exercise
or a chance to give a speech that might be on television. It is their
life's work. They have risked their lives to pursue it.
If you believe in a future of greater prosperity for the American people,
you certainly should be for this agreement. If you believe in a future
of peace and security for Asia and the world, you should be for this agreement.
It's a historic opportunity and a profound American responsibility.
