The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 20
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Yes or No: Normalizing China TradeARGUMENT FOR ENGAGEMENT THE FUTURE OF U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS: DO PROGRESSIVES
HAVE A VISION? HISTORIC AND STRATEGIC CONTEXTS OF CHINA DEBATE
II. Letters
I. Yes or No: Normalizing China Trade
ARGUMENT FOR ENGAGEMENT Thank you to FPIF for holding this debate. It is very refreshing for me to be able to discuss these issues frankly within the progressive community. Let me say from the outset that I am not an advocate for big business, and I have no personal interest or stake in the success of business in China. My only interests for the 12 years I have been studying China's economy and society have been in understanding the reality of labor relations in this rapidly changing society, in understanding the forces driving these changes, and in finding a policy that is the best for the greatest number of Chinese citizens. That policy is engagement. This society still has a great distance to go in the realm of human rights, and I'm not an apologist for this regime. But there is no evidence that isolation will help the citizens of China, and there is a great deal of evidence that engagement has brought about change in the realm of human rights. For the United States to separate itself from the rest of the world on the treatment of China will be disastrous for the people of China. The opponents of PNTR, who take the position that little has changed in China, that it is still the same despotic and corrupt place it was 20 years ago, fundamentally misunderstand the situation in China today. First, while change has been gradual in China, over the course of 2 decades of reform, we have seen radical changes that make China a fundamentally different society than what it was before the reforms began. Statutes like the National Compensation Law, which allows Chinese citizens to sue the government for past wrongs, and the Prison Reform Law, which according to most extensive research on the topic, has fundamentally altered the treatment of prisoners, have radically reshaped the reality of human rights in China. In the area of legal institutions and labor, the Labor Law and the Labor Arbitration Commissions are radical steps toward a rational, rights-based workplace and society. These changes amount to nothing less than radical social change in China. Reform in China has been a gradual process, and in our desire to see something dramatic like the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have imperiously ignored and arrogantly dismissed the radical changes that have evolved over the course of two decades of reform in China. Second, it is on the factory floor where the emergence of a rights based workplace is the most apparent, and it is here that we can see the direct impact of foreign--in particular, Western--investment. Those who blithely state that Foreign Direct Investment has resulted in no increased protections for human rights in China simply have no idea of what is going on over there. And let me state as an aside here, virtually no one is working from systematic empirical research on the topic; my study of Chinese factories is one of the few that has actually tried to capture this effect. In my own research I have visited hundreds of factories, spent hundreds of hours interviewing hundreds of managers and workers, and systematically studied the impact of foreign investment on the transformation of labor relations in Chinese factories. I have watched these factories transform over the course of the 1990s. The emergence of rights-based labor practices is easily apparent to anyone who cares to look, but it is the Chinese firms that are engaged in relationships with Western investors who are leading the way in these changes. The findings of my research speak to the real issues before us--which few in this debate have any hard evidence about--the impact of foreign investment in the transformation of Chinese society. Findings of My Research My research on Chinese factories shows that those which have formal relationships with foreign (particularly Western) firms are significantly more likely to have institutionalized formal organizational rules, they are almost 20 times more likely to have formal grievance filing procedures, they are more likely to have worker representative committee meetings, and formal hiring procedures. They pay significantly higher wages (about 50% higher), they are more likely to adopt China's new Company Law, which binds them to the norms of the international community, and they are more likely to respect international legal institutions such as the Chinese International Economic Arbitration and Trade Commission. I have had many conversations with managers in which they openly acknowledge that the changes they have set in place have little to do with their own ideas of efficient business practices and much more to do with pressure brought on them by their foreign partners. I would also note here that Western firms bring different pressures to bear on their Chinese counterparts than Taiwanese or Korean firms. This is an important distinction, because it speaks to the U.S. role in the process of change there. The Causal Argument Foreign investment--and therefore engagement--influences this process of change in fundamental ways. While it is rarely the case that corporations are the leading advocates of civil liberties and labor reform, the Chinese case is different for a couple of reasons. Because many foreign investors in China are more interested in long-term investments (to capture market share) than they are in cheap labor, they generally seek Chinese partners that are predictable, stable, and knowledgeable about Western-style business practices and negotiations. Chinese factories, for their part, want desperately to land these partnerships, and they position themselves as suitable investment partners by adopting a number of the practices that Western partners will recognize as stable, reform-minded business practices. Among the basic reforms they adopt to show their fitness for "linking up" with the international community (a very popular concept among managers in China today) are labor reforms. Thus, the signaling of commitments to stable Western-style business practices through commitments to labor reform leads to fundamental changes in the labor relations in the Chinese workplace. Foreign investors and Chinese firms are not interested in human rights per se, but the negotiations in the marketplace lead to transformed workplaces, which affect millions of Chinese citizens on a daily basis. Aside from South Africa, Have Sanctions Ever Worked? I would like to note that there is so much evidence that the sanction and isolation position does not work that I find it difficult to believe that we still actually debate this question. What do the 38-year-old embargo of Cuba and the 10-year-old embargo of Iraq tell us about the usefulness of isolation in toppling despotic regimes? Has isolation done anything to transform North Korea? If anything is clear, it is that the citizens of these countries suffer while the resolve of their leaders is strengthened. The only case in which a successful international coalition has brought a country to its knees for social change is South Africa, and this case is so different from that of China that the comparison does not even merit discussion (there will quite simply never be an international coalition united to isolate China the way there was in South Africa). Human Rights' Advocates Aligning Themselves with Despots I would like to note that those who advocate isolation (in the name of human rights) should look closely at whom they are aligning themselves with in China: Li Peng and his cronies are the true despots of Chinese society--they are the ones who called in the tanks in 1989, they are the ones who would like to roll the clocks back on the economic, legal, and political reforms in China--and they would welcome the isolation position, because they know that the WTO and PNTR will further erode their dictatorial power in China. Think about that--the only people in the Chinese government who agree with the China bashers in Congress about U.S.-China policy are the despots themselves. Zhu Rongji, for his part, is completely focused on reform and the opening up of China, and he knows that the further integration of China into the international community will bring this about. If we want to align ourselves with the despots of this society, we can vote against PNTR; but if we want to align ourselves with the true social reformers of this country--those who actually care about labor rights, a rational legal system and transparency in procedures, and radical reform on the factory floor like Zhu Rongji--we will vote for permanent normal trade relations with China. As a final note, I would like to directly address the argument that we should reject PNTR because it's the product of a U.S.-hegemony-based world system. Let me say here that I am very sympathetic to the critique of the U.S.'s 800-pound gorilla approach to international politics in general and from a concrete historical perspective. The U.S. has a long history of self-servingly supporting despotic, capitalist regimes, just like it has a long history of providing carte blanche for big business in its endeavors. And it has far too much of a history in exporting its own ideas of capitalism to the world. Indeed I'm sympathetic with the criticisms of the WTO, and on one level, I found the wave that pulsed through Seattle to be very exciting. I think it's a travesty that labor has been left out of the process to the extent it has; I think it's a disaster that the model economic system we hold up is a neo-liberal version of capitalism, rather than a social democratic alternative. As a liberal democrat myself, I find the entire trend depressing. However, the problem with the position of voting against China as a vote against the U.S. and WTO is this: those who would use the anti-China vote as a referendum against the WTO are doing nothing less than holding 1.3 billion of the world's poorest citizens hostage. If we make this decision, we should be very clear about what we are doing. We can use this vote as a referendum against WTO, but we cannot then turn around and hide behind a principled argument about individual civil liberties, labor reform, and human rights. We can't have this argument both ways. Either we think individual civil liberties and human rights are the most pressing issues for 1.3 billion of the world's poorest citizens, and we support the best ways to gain progress in these realms--and this position is clearly engagement. Or we state up front that we don't care about the welfare and civil liberties of more than a billion Chinese and we take a position against PNTR and thus against the WTO. That's the choice we face. For me, I have chosen to take the position that is best for the Chinese people, even at the risk of alienating my friends and colleagues on the Left--because my research about China shows that this is the right position. I will continue to fight for labor; I will continue to fight against the export of a neo-liberal ideology across the globe; and I will continue to believe that there is a principled social democratic position to take here. But that principled position does not involve voting against China and casting a vote for the true despots of Chinese society, the hard-liners led by Li Peng. Holding an entire country hostage to further our own interests in the struggles of the Left is simply not the way. (Doug Guthrie <Guthrie@mail.soc.nyu.edu> is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University, and acting director of the East Asia Program of the Social Science Research Council.)
THE FUTURE OF U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS:
DO PROGRESSIVES HAVE A VISION? There is something odd about the ever hotter debate in the U.S. over the normalization of trade relations with China: it is not really about China. Rather, it is about a host of other issues that currently, and to a large extent rightly, inflame popular passions. For progressives, the target is really the WTO--its lack of democratic accountability, its greedy usurpation of national authority, its refusal to recognize environmental protection and human rights norms as co-equal pillars of global economic governance (and to derogate authority to nations and other international organizations to uphold them). At heart, the argument of the "Seattle coalition" against normal trade relations with China is really about the WTO, viz, "let's not strengthen an organization we oppose." Although it is far from coherent, progressives have a broad common vision of change in the global economy. The vision flows from the notion that economies and the rules that govern them should rest on ethical principles: social justice, empowerment of the poorest and most marginal, ecological sustainability, democracy, public accountability. Whether the target is the WTO, multinational corporations, or governments, a wide and growing circle of progressive groups--including the Nautilus Institute--hammers the same theme: ethics must shape economics. This is well and good. There is more to globalization than the WTO, however, and more to international relations than economics, even in an era of corporate-led globalization. Underlying progressive American opposition to Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China is the notion that states, including the U.S., are simply handmaidens of big business. In this view, there is no national--or global--interest beyond resisting corporate domination. Big business has the state in its pocket, they argue, so opposing one and the other is the same. This is an overly simplistic view. Though the nature of sovereignty might be changing, nation-states still matter and the structure of international relations matters a lot. Have progressives forgotten that states, especially big states like the U.S. and China, are still the primary loci of decisions about war and peace--and still hold vast arsenals of nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons? That international cooperation, especially between the U.S. and China, is absolutely fundamental to solving many of the big, life-threatening ecological and social problems of the day--like climate change and poverty? That there are deep cultural and historical differences among societies, especially East and West, which make it difficult to even articulate common ethics, let alone take steps to actually implement them? Have progressives simply written off the possibility that they might have allies within China--allies who feel deeply alienated by the China-bashing rhetoric that too many progressives have sidled up to, if not embraced? Today, in the absence of normal trade or other diplomatic relations, the primary idiom of U.S. diplomacy--despite noises about "constructive engagement"--is shaped by the right wing national security establishment. Ten years after the end of the Cold War, defense advocates have reestablished the initiative--the "peace dividend" has vanished in a rising tide of rhetoric about an emerging "China threat" and a need for massive expenditures on missile defenses. At the center of this juggernaut is a willingness to demonize and ostracize China all too consonant with many progressives concerned over China's domestic social and political evolution. The sad truth is that there is no progressive vision of U.S.-China relations. Indeed, much of the current rhetoric, both progressive and right wing, has little sense of the medium- to long-term future at all. The progressive stance on China is thus informed by short-term tactics, rather than strategy. What strategic thinking there is rests on the notion that U.S. insistence on unilaterally keeping China on a limb, even if China joins the WTO, will deal the WTO a fatal blow. Such thinking is uni-dimensional. First of all, the Europeans will likely embrace normal trade relations with China, making the U.S. the odd man out and beefing up corporate pressure to normalize. Moreover, even if the WTO does collapse, the United States and China still have to deal with each other and do so in a dynamic and complex world. Defining and deepening a progressive basis for that relationship could hold the key to the future. At the center of a progressive vision of U.S.-China relations must be a blend of ethics and common interest. On the ethical side, progressives should be insisting that it is fundamentally unfair and immoral for the United States to be the gatekeeper to the world trading system, whether the WTO formally or simply as a regular trading partner of the U.S. The ethical issues rankle especially in relation to China, which has a fifth of the world's people. Progressives should also be insisting that the United States take seriously its leadership on human rights and environment. U.S. selectivity in protesting human rights violations has dogged U.S. credibility and effectiveness for a couple of decades. In case after case, in its relations with particular countries and in its diplomacy in international organizations, U.S. diplomats have ignored, tempered, or even countered commitments to human rights and the environment when U.S. commercial or strategic interests are at stake. Taking consistent global leadership on human rights and the environment would require the U.S. to embrace a robust commitment to multilateralism--based on a clear understanding of why multilateralism and international cooperation, rather than the current style of unilateralism, is in the U.S. national interest. A unilateralist approach to foreign policy relegates the U.S. to the role of the playground bully. Bullies get what they want in the short term, but typically get their due in the end by angry gangs. Better to be a good leader. Leadership in multilateralism requires the U.S. to build coalitions, listen to and respect people from other countries, especially developing countries, as well as U.S. NGOs and labor groups. It means skillfully striving to establish global consensus on environmental and human rights norms, rather than grabbing the flag and running towards home, hoping that everyone will follow, or worse, boxing people around the ears. Most important, a commitment to a robust and progressive multilateralism entails defining the goals of global governance as central to U.S. foreign policy. These goals revolve around promoting global peace, environmental sustainability, human rights, and economic development Finally, a variety of contrasting and confusing arguments have been made about whether normalizing--or not normalizing--trade relations will enhance prospects for human rights within China. One need not accept any of these arguments in order to argue that the relationship between China and the U.S. is important in its own right--and will become ever more so in the future. Normalizing trade relations would allow the U.S. to see China not as an alien "other"--the essence of a Cold War view--but as a member of the world community. And it is such a member, whether or not Americans understand or approve of it. With the U.S.-China relationship on a normal footing, a deepening of diplomacy on other fronts, including arms control, human rights and the environment, becomes possible. Rather than use a magnifying glass to reduce field of vision to the tactical issues of the moment, progressives should be getting into focus a more comprehensive and strategic view of building a global progressive movement. Treating China like a pariah state, like a disobedient child, even as it modernizes and develops relations with other nations, works against both world peace and a progressive global movement. (Lyuba Zarsky <LZarsky@nautilus.org> is Director of Programs and Research at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development.)
HISTORIC AND STRATEGIC CONTEXTS
OF CHINA DEBATE Many opponents of extending permanent NTR to China are unaware of the historical and cultural contexts. The Opium Wars of the mid 19th century (1839-42 and 1856-60) were fought by Britain (with U.S. support) for the unlimited right to sell opium to Chinese and thereby to offset serious balance of payments problems for the British purchase of tea and silk. Since then, successive Chinese governments have sought to restore Chinese unity and China's role as a leading world power which, ironically, they deliberately relinquished in the 15th century when they decided to turn inward instead of outward. The opium and tea trade profited a number of "old Yankee trading families" and helped to finance the industrial revolution in the northeastern United States. It also marked the beginning of the collapse of the Manchurian Qing dynasty and of the domination of the Middle Kingdom by European powers, Japan, and the United States. The defeat, control, and subsequent containment, of China have also been marked by racism, from John Quincy Adams' arguments that the Opium war was "a battle between progress and Asian barbarity" to the scapegoating of Wen Ho Lee and other Chinese-American and Chinese scientists. The Chinese have a very strong sense of their place in history, and ending the era of national humiliation has been the nation's task for more than a century. President Clinton's argument that membership in the WTO and the extension of permanent NTR will change and Americanize China in "revolutionary" ways communicates a disturbing imperial arrogance to many in China. Cultures and political cultures change over extended periods of time. Even though it is officially only "the Palace Museum," the continuing centrality of Beijing's impressive "Forbidden City" in China's political culture communicates national expectations about the power and authority of the centralized state. This is terra incognita for most in the United States. So are the Taiping Rebellion (1845-64,) which resulted in large measure from U.S. missionary activity, and the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1900) which sought to oust foreign influence. These civil wars, like the "Anti-Japanese War" and the famine that accompanied Mao's "Great Leap Forward"--claimed tens of millions Chinese lives and continue to shape current thinking. Containment and Engagement Within this historical framework, the political battle being fought to deny permanent NTR to China can be understood as part of the context of the larger U.S. campaign to "contain" and transform China. The Clinton Administration has vacillated between China policies of "containment" and "containment with engagement." The constant has been "containment." But, for many Chinese, even "engagement" is seen as condescending or threatening, since it seeks to make Chinese more like "us." The Clinton Administration and Congress have identified China as the United States' new enemy and the new "evil empire." This includes the Administration's East Asia Strategy, its military doctrine, the "redefined" and expanded military alliance with Japan, new agreements and renewed military "training exercises" with the Philippine military, charges of Chinese (but not Taiwanese) money financing U.S. election campaigns, and the prosecution of Wen Ho Lee. From a Chinese perspective, this Post Cold War "containment" campaign is reminiscent of the imperialism of the Opium trade, the Japanese and western competition for a slice of the Chinese "melon," U.S. support for the dictator Chiang Kai-Shek, and repeated U.S. nuclear threats against China--most recently in 1996. At the heart of the U.S. military campaign to "contain" China is the effort to extract a "grand bargain" from China by threatening and moving to deploy "Theater Missile Defenses" (TMD) in Japan, at sea, and possibly in Taiwan. TMD could theoretically "neutralize" all of China's missile forces, functionally restoring the power relations that prevailed after the Opium War. In fact, the Chinese air force and navy are less advanced than Taiwan's. Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Joe Nye is clear that if Chinese military "modernization" continues at its current rate, in twenty years it will have the capabilities of a mid-level U.S. NATO ally of forty years ago. Even without TMD deployments, the U.S. exercises overwhelming power in relation to China, as was the case when Washington prepared or threatened to initiate nuclear war against China in 1950, 1953, 1958, 1969, 1973 and 1996. While the right-wing in Congress and their allies raise the specter of the China threat, it is the U.S. which has approximately 7,500 strategic nuclear warheads ready to be instantly targeted against China. China, which built its nuclear arsenal largely to counter U.S. and Russian threats, may have as many as twenty ICBM's capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. The "conventional" imbalance is even greater. Taiwan The "Taiwan question" is one of the few conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region which could lead to a regional war with global consequences. Withholding permanent NTR for China will not solve, but will increase tensions across the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese, including President-Elect Chen Shui-bian and President Lee Teng-hui have called for extension of Most Favored Nation status for China previously, and they now call for the extension of permanent Normal Trade Relations to China. The difficulties of peaceful resolution of the Taiwan crisis are compounded by the fundamentally different ways the West and China view Taiwan. Many in Taiwan and the West believe that during the past 100 years, and especially with its economic modernization and introduction of electoral democracy, the Taiwanese people have evolved into a separate nation with the same rights to self-determination as any other nation. The dominant Chinese perspective is that for one hundred years Taiwan has been forcefully and illegally separated from the mainland, first by Japanese colonialism and later by the U.S. 7th Fleet. Restoration of Taiwan to China, even under the "one country two systems" formula developed for Hong Kong, is understood to be essential to ending the era of humiliation and to restoring China's rightful place in the world. Chinese military threats against Taiwan have been clumsy and in many ways self-defeating. They have served the purpose of warning Taiwanese politicians and voters and the United States that China is prepared to take desperate action should the Taiwanese government take irrevocable steps toward assuring or proclaiming its national independence. China does not have the military means to invade Taiwan, but with its short range missiles it has the capacity to wreak considerable damage. Given the substantial benefit Chinese development derives from the very large Taiwanese investment in China, along with the lucrative Taiwanese tourist trade, a major Chinese attack against Taiwan would be self-destructive and threatens to make an "unthinkable" nuclear confrontation with the United States inevitable. A better approach is to focus on diplomatic dialog and to permit time, the increasing economic integration of China and Taiwan, and the increasing bonds of people across the Strait to resolve the crisis. (Joseph Gerson <jgerson@afsc.org> is an Asia expert with AFSC. He is the author of the FPIF policy brief, "Asia/Pacific Peace and Security Issues," which is posted at: http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n10asi.html)
II. LettersI have reviewed FPIF paper by John Gershman, and would like to set the record straight on a couple of points, prior to your debate tomorrow. Gershman accuses me of criticizing "China for not being sufficiently laissez fare" and claims that I call for "the elimination of the very policies that have been central to the relatively successful development strategies of several Asian countries." Frankly, these conclusions are simply made up. I did not say that China should follow the U.S. model, nor did I call for the elimination of the developmental state, as you will see if you review the original text of my paper [posted at http://www.epnnet.org/] Of course your authors are responsible for the quality and content of their research, in the final analysis. But I would like to set the record straight. I do call for the adoption of enforceable labor rights and environmental standards, and suggest that the U.S. should insist that China support the inclusion such measures in the WTO, in exchange for being allowed into that organization. I also call for measures to ensure that the U.S. trade position with China improves as a result of the agreement. In my view, China is welcome to maintain its developmental state, but we therefore need to use non-price mechanisms to prevent it from destabilizing the economy of the U.S. and the rest of the world along with it. I also think that much more is needed to push the kind of grand bargain suggested in the FPIF paper by Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, and Bama Athreya on China/WTO ["Don't Strengthen the WTO by Admitting China," posted at http://www.fpif.org/papers/chinawto/index.html]. I look forward to having more time for work on alternatives after the China/WTO debate is finished. - Rob Scott <rscott@epinet.org> Economic Policy Institute
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