BY LEE MICHAEL KATZ, UPI International Editor
WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) -- Beijing's public crackdown on a spiritual group may serve to bolster the arguments of union leaders and others who cite human rights abuse as a factor in the upcoming legislative battle over normalizing trade relations with China.
On Tuesday, China detained more than100 members of the Falun Gong spiritual group in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the same day the White House moved to rally public support for the trade vote. In recent weeks, China has arrested and beaten, according to some human rights monitors, hundreds of members of the spiritual group considered by China as an "evil cult."
Both in terms of imagery and timing, China's move to crack down on the Falun Gong spiritual movement comes at a politically sensitive time in the United States. "The Chinese certainly have a knack of bad timing," admitted an official of a business group supporting permanent normal trade relations with China.
The White House is lined up against powerful labor unions in an all-out lobbying battle this spring over permanently granting normal trade relations to China.
While White House officials were touting the advantages of the China trade bill in a public event on Tuesday, State Department spokesman James Rubin condemned the Falun Gong crackdown as "a matter that profoundly disturbs us. Such detentions are in direct contravention of internationally recognized standards of human rights."
Asked whether he such a move harmed China's chances of winning normal trade relations in the United States, Rubin said. "I suppose that China has the ability to understand the consequences of its actions, and I don't know precisely what their calculus was. But whatever their calculus was, we oppose it."
The Chinese action complicates battle that has high stakes for the Clinton administration.
The legislative fight involves far more than ending the annual debate over whether normal trade status must be approved by Congress every year. It also serves as a referendum over a deal between Washington and Beijing on terms for China to join the World Trade Organization.
The Clinton administration is pressing for congressional approval in a battle that is expected to center on a close House vote set for the week of May 22. Proponents say that it will open up the markets of the Communist nation in a revolutionary way that is key to U.S. economic interests.
"I believe this is the only vote that Congress will take this year that is likely to appear in the history books in a prominent way in the next...50 years," Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Tuesday.
Summers spoke as the White House moved to whip up public support for the trade vote by releasing a letter from 149 economists. The group includes 13 Nobel Laureates.
But their "Open Letter To The American People" on the economic gains of normalizing China trade may not match the visual effect of Chinese crackdown in the battle for American public opinion.
Much like the pictures of armed federal agents seizing 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez seem to have influenced the public debate over the Cuban boy, the pictures of Beijing's repression may influence public opinion on the trade vote in Congress.
On Tuesday, Chinese plainclothes agents were pictured dragging away Falun Gong demonstrators in the heart of Beijing. The film of Western tourists taking pictures of the scene was confiscated. Tuesday's actions and other crackdowns earlier this month have occurred during demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The square is already famous in the West as the place where Chinese tanks rolled against pro-democracy demonstrators a decade ago.
"I just don't think they get it," said Bill Klinefelter, legislative and political director of the United Steelworkers of America. The steelworkers, who are concerned about the export of cheap Chinese steel, have been taking a major public stance to spotlight human rights abuse in China.
"This whole thing just puts a spotlight on China for the American people," Klinefelter said. "You see what a dastardly society they are because of how they treat their people."
The argument for and against the trade status, known as PNTR, is primarily an economic one. It makes for strange political bedfellows in an alliance that crosses traditional party and organizational lines.
Clinton is facing opposition by many of his fellow Democrats, including House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., and by organized labor that normally supports Democratic causes. Meanwhile, Republican congressional leaders and business organizations are siding with their traditional ideological opposite Clinton on the issue.
Basically, the White House, Republican leaders and business groups want the legislation to open up China's limited markets to American goods. These supporters argue that opening up previously closed markets will have a huge economic benefit for U.S. exports that have been shut out of the Chinese markets.
Robert Solow, professor emeritus at MIT, termed it "a simple proposition" at the White House on Tuesday. "You could not generate a hard exam question of the material here."
And by opening up everything from U.S. automobiles to telecommunications products to the Chinese market, supporters say the influence of capitalism will eventually bring pressure to open up China to democratic influence. "We need to engage them in a positive and constructive" manner, said Bill Morley, chief trade lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "rather than any sort of finger pointing."
Unions are worried about the loss of what they say could be 800,000 U.S. jobs to low-priced labor in China.
But unions have seized on human rights as a key issue in promoting their argument on the need to keep annual trade status approval as a lever against China.
The steelworkers recently sponsored a mobile billboard driving around near the White House that portrayed a protestor being led away by Chinese police. "The unions are pushing this as a human rights issue and a worker rights issue," Klinefelter said.
The controversy comes in the same month when China blocked a vote on a U.S.-sponsored resolution to criticize Beijing's human rights record on Falun Gong and other issues at the U.N. Human Rights commission in Geneva. "I certainly think it hurts the administration," Klinefelter said. "It just illustrates very clearly what the rest of the world thinks of them," Chinese officials are "going to do what they want."
To China, the matter is indeed "an internallaw and order issue," said Zhang Yuanyuan, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington. He called the Falun Gong group "a scourge" that has been officially banned by China.
Zhang even noted that America faced criticism of "law and order matters" with its action to take Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives at gunpoint.
There is talk of having some sort of compromise human rights review commission as part of the PNTR legislation that seems to be likely to pass in the Senate, but face what all sides say is a close House vote. But Zhang said China seeks "clear-cut legislation with no linkage with any other irrelevant issue."
"The PTNR is a trade issue," Zhang said. "It must not be linked or made conditional to things that have nothing to do with trade."
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.:
