The Washington Post / By John Pomfret / Washington Post Foreign Service
BEIJING, May 10 -- As one of China's most prominent dissidents--enduring tapped phones, police surveillance and restrictions on everyday freedoms--Bao Tong could be expected to urge a hard line against the government in Beijing.
But Bao has this message for the U.S. Congress: Pass permanent normal trade relations with China. Do not use it as a lever to try to improve China's human rights situation. Hasten China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Pull China as much as possible into international regimes that over time, Bao believes, will force it to adhere to standards that it has long finessed by arguing that China is exceptional.
And Bao is not alone. A broad array of dissidents, environmentalists and labor activists in China appear united in their support of congressional passage of the permanent normal trade relations act.
"It is obvious this is a good thing for China," Bao said in an interview.
As part of a landmark trade agreement ushering China into the WTO, the White House has urged Congress to do away with annual reviews and grant Beijing permanent normal trade status. Such status would guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets as products from nearly every other nation. But in the United States, the "Seattle coalition" of unions, human rights groups, environmentalists and church groups have combined their lobbying firepower to oppose the move.
From here in China, their intellectual counterparts are looking on in dismay.
"I appreciate the efforts of friends and colleagues to help our human rights situation," Bao said, "but it doesn't make sense to use trade as a lever. It just doesn't work."
"All of the fights--for a better environment, labor rights and human rights--these fights we will fight in China tomorrow," said Dai Qing, perhaps China's most prominent environmentalist and independent political thinker, who also served time because she opposed the 1989 crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square. "But first we must break the monopoly of the state. To do that, we need a freer market and the competition mandated by the WTO."
To China's liberals, the arguments made in the United States about China appear simple and not really to the point. Some Chinese liberals interviewed said they believe American labor unions are using concerns about workers' rights as a smoke screen to hide a protectionist agenda. Others said that in the boisterous battle in the United States, China's complexity has been lost. Still more expressed consternation that Chinese exiles such as Wei Jingsheng, who spent almost two decades in Chinese jails for supporting democracy, have come out against the trade status.
Wei, along with exiled dissidents Harry Wu and Wang Xizhe, have emerged as some of the most effective opponents of the trade status in recent weeks, lobbying undecided members of Congress to vote against the legislation. They argue that the increased presence of U.S. companies in China will not create conditions for higher standards for labor and human rights.
Chinese dissidents and liberals in China say a fundamental issue divides them and some exiles abroad.
"Some of these people want things in China to get as bad as possible, and denying [the trade status] and WTO accession would accomplish that goal," said Bao. "This is not a tactic that I approve of." They note that other prominent dissidents in the United States, such as Wang Dan, who has a better understanding of international economics, support the normal trade status.
The liberals who have remained in China agree that U.S. businesses and trade groups are exaggerating when they claim that free trade and Western capital naturally lead to a freer society. But, they say, opponents of China's accession to the WTO and the granting of permanent normal trade relations are equally muddleheaded when they claim that denying China access to American capital will force China to improve working conditions and human rights.
"American consumers are a main catalyst for better worker rights in China," said Zhou Litai, one of China's most prominent labor lawyers who represents dozens of maimed workers in the booming southern metropolis of Shenzhen. "They are the ones who pressure Nike and Reebok to improve working conditions at Hong Kong- and Taiwan-run factories here. If Nike and Reebok go--and they could very well if [the trade status] is rejected--this pressure evaporates. This is obvious."
To them, the either-or argument in Washington over whether China's human rights situation has improved or deteriorated sounds bizarre. Yes, they say, Chinese people have more rights now than they have had since Communism came to China in 1949. But the power of the police is still supreme and capricious. The party leadership views itself as extremely brittle so it lashes out--often violently--at any perceived threat.
Last Saturday, for instance, Bao went out with his wife and daughter for a meal. Instead of a nice dinner, they got a new demonstration of what life is like for a dissident figure in China.
When they arrived at the restaurant, Bao recalled, 10 men in plainclothes surrounded them and ordered Bao into an unmarked car. Bao, who was jailed for seven years for opposing the Tiananmen crackdown, refused to get in. So, he said, they picked him up by the head, waist and feet and shoved him into the vehicle. As his 68-year-old wife attempted to intercede, they pushed her to the ground.
"Who gave you the right to do this to me?" Bao said he asked the men, who forced him to return home but did not jail him. "The government," answered one man. "The party," replied another.
"I think that what Americans don't understand about China is that there is still a battle here between opening to the West and closing to the West. This fight is not over. The other battles are extremely important, but we have got to fight today's battle today," Dai said.
Like Bao, Dai is a nonperson in China. A writer of vigorous prose in Chinese, she has been banned from publishing here and from participating in any organizations and is not allowed to have a job. When she sought to lend her name to a tree-planting project, the organizers were informed that her name must be struck from the list. She is sometimes followed, and, like Bao, her phone is tapped.
Despite her troubles, and, Dai argued, because of her troubles, she feels permanent normal trade relations and China's WTO entry make obvious sense.
"One of the main economic and political problems in China today is our monopoly system, a monopoly on power and business monopolies. Both elements are mutually reinforcing. The WTO's rules would naturally encourage competition and that's bad for both monopolies," Dai said. "We have a time lag with the West right now. We've got to confront our most pressing problems first."
Obviously, Dai noted, WTO's effects in China will not be immediate. Western economists say, for example, that China will set up non-tariff barriers to American products, fudge on its legal obligations and dance around its market access pledges.
"The idea is to begin the process," she said. "This is a work in progress."
Dai, Bao and others also speak with concern about the potential downside of the trade status's rejection, bolstering what national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger has called China's "dark forces." There is a growing strain of resentful nationalism in China today, something that President Jiang Zemin taps into from time to time. The balance between this strain, which is alternatively encouraged and reined in by the party, and people who want China to stay open to the West is fragile.
"Look," said Zhou, the labor lawyer in Shenzhen, "our situation here is different than in the United States. Here, Taiwanese businessmen will spend $1,000 on their girlfriends but won't give their workers a buck. To me, WTO and [the trade status] at least mean that U.S. and other Western companies will continue to engage in China. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, for Chinese workers."
Staff writer Matthew Vita contributed to this report from Washington.
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