Dynamic, Principled Policies Needed
As we move toward next week’s transfer of authority in Hong Kong, the argument about U.S. policy toward China is growing louder. But this is just the beginning of a discussion that must go on for a long time, because it involves basic national values and perhaps the most important bilateral relationship for the next century.
I am no China expert, but I have learned where to turn when this foreign policy question becomes an important domestic political issue. Almost 20 years ago, The Washington Post sent me on a trip to China and Tibet, led by George Bush (then an out-of-work politician) and including, among others, James Baker, later to be Bush’s secretary of state, and the late Lowell Thomas, raconteur and world traveler.
On that trip I met James Lilley, who had served on Bush’s staff in the liaison office in Beijing and who would later become U.S. ambassador to South Korea and to China and head of our diplomatic mission in Taiwan. When I need help in sorting out the swirling arguments about China policy, Jim Lilley is the man I go to see. (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is wise enough to look beyond his Republican credentials and include him on her informal China advisory board.)
The first thing he told me is that the specific issue that came before Congress this week - whether to renew normal trade relations (known as most favored nation status or MFN) with China for another year - is a no-brainer.
“Ask yourself two questions,” Lilley said. “Do you want to trade with China? And if you trade, do you want to be competitive with other nations? If the answer to both is yes, then you renew MFN.”
There is also the political reality, he pointed out. President Clinton has recommended renewal; it would take a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate to overrule him. No one ever thought that was remotely in sight.
But that is the start of the discussion, not the end. As Lilley said, and other smart folks I have been reading confirm, the U.S.-China relationship is a complex web of military, economic, geopolitical and, yes, moral questions that will test our will and wisdom for decades to come.
Lilley’s attitude toward China is a blend of deep respect and equally deep caution. He does not dismiss the thesis of one recent book that China will seek to dominate Asia in the next century and that means inevitable conflict with the United States - but not necessarily war, unless both sides blunder. But he notes that internal economic disparities, massive shifts of population and other disruptions of rapid industrialization may make China hard to govern - or even to feed.
The United States will have to engage China at every point - blocking its aggressive nationalism with a show of force (as we did in the Taiwan Strait last year), punishing its violations of international standards (as we do, intermittently and ineffectively, on arms sales to outlaw regimes) and engaging its cooperation where it is available (as in helping reduce the risks of warfare or chaos on the Korean Peninsula).
Lilley agrees that the United States should strongly assert its belief in human rights in all its dealings with China. This is the value critics of current U.S. policy, ranging from Dick Gephardt to Gary Bauer, say is being subordinated by our hunger to expand exports to the huge China market.
But those who favor extending MFN, from the Progressive Policy Institute to the Heritage Foundation, do not dispute China’s sorry record in imprisoning dissenters, harassing religious practices and enforcing - often by forced abortions - a brutal one-child policy. The State Department’s annual human rights report pulls no punches on China.
Lilley argues that our first priority is to discourage China from exporting this repressive policy. The June 30 handover of Hong Kong from British control is the test case. That is why Albright is seeking ways to demonstrate U.S. displeasure with the Chinese-appointed Hong Kong legislature and its edicts against peaceful demonstrations or press criticism of China.
Beyond that, he says, we should seize every opportunity to support pro-democracy forces emerging in local elections within China and expand exchange programs and cultural ties that expose young Chinese to American democracy.
Legislators such as Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., and Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., are pushing bills that embody these and other proposals for targeted sanctions and rewards. We cannot ignore China or end our trade with it. But we do not have to be supine or silent about Chinese actions we deplore. This will be a long struggle.