Word: mfn
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This June, President Clinton and Congress must decide whether to renew China's Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status. While the Clinton administration and members of Congress are rightly concerned about China's poor human rights record, they would be making a grave and counterproductive mistake if they linked renewal of China's MFN to China's human rights performance...
...several reasons, revoking China's MFN would probably fail to improve human rights in China. China is a proud country that has evolved from a remarkable civilization over ten times as old as the United States? With a population of about 1.2 billion, and a geographic area of 3.7 million square miles, China is the most populous and third largest country in the world. Throughout much of their history, the Chinese have proven that they can survive just fine without contact with the rest of the world, including the United States...
...third option would extend MFN with less rigorous trip wires. "Perhaps human rights could be a general condition rather than one that's filled with specific conditions," said Secretary of State Warren Christopher on March 13. Any compromise, he added, could "move the relationship to a new and more significant level." And a more hypocritical one as well...
...best bet would be to decouple the trade and human-rights issues entirely. Taiwan and South Korea prove that political liberalization follows prosperity. As a vibrant economy creates a robust middle class, ordinary citizens increasingly seek to influence government actions, pressure that even authoritarians must eventually accommodate. Revoking MFN would restrain China's economic growth, thus causing democracy's prospects to suffer...
Decoupling the issues, in fact, could increase Clinton's ability to criticize Beijing's internal policies (especially after Deng Xiaoping dies, when spasms of chaos and repression may occur as a struggle for power ensues). Free from fear that bashing Beijing would reignite the MFN debate, the President could openly embrace China's dissidents and encourage U.S. firms to voluntarily tie their China business to improved human-rights practices, as many American companies did when apartheid flourished in South Africa. If conditions so worsened that punitive actions were called for, the U.S. could champion cutbacks in international lending; China...