USA Today / By Walter Shapiro
A Republican colleague stopped by John Kasich's table in the House dining room during lunch Wednesday to ask, "What are you doing about this China thing?" That is the question of the hour on Capitol Hill. A bitterly divided House is less than two weeks from a momentous vote on whether to grant China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR).
Kasich, the House Budget Committee chairman and an early dropout from the GOP presidential race, is a free-trader who supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and backed the administration in its unsuccessful 1997 effort to win "fast track" authority to negotiate trade deals. But the 48-year-old Kasich, who is not running for re-election this year after nine terms in the House, told his fellow Republican that he's undecided on how to vote on China.
A few minutes later, during our lunch, Kasich summarized his internal debate. "I'm very troubled by the Chinese economy, its political system and how it treats political and religious dissidents," he said. The Ohio legislator said he was influenced by a recent article by conservative intellectual Michael Novak, who argued, as Kasich put it, "We need to teach China a lesson."
But Kasich, who has not been lobbied to support PNTR by either the administration or Majority Whip Tom DeLay, also sees the value of continued trade relations with China. Referring to his conversations with Jewish leaders, who had supported the use of trade as a weapon to induce the Soviet Union to release dissidents, Kasich said, "They now argue that we can't ignore a quarter of the world's population."
Kasich is a rarity -- someone who, by virtue of his impending retirement, is relatively free from political pressures in casting his vote. But he's not immune to internal pressures. "Someday," he mused, "my two little girls, Emma and Reese, will ask me, 'How did you make this decision?' "
At a time when it is assumed the administration will need 140 to 150 House GOP votes to pass PNTR, the indecision of a prominent free-trade Republican like Kasich has to be a worrisome sign. But Kasich shares with the administration the conviction that this vote is an epic referendum on relations with China. As Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it Thursday in congressional testimony, "This is the only vote that Congress will take this year that is likely to appear in a prominent way in history books 25 or 50 years from now."
Every year since 1979, when Jimmy Carter removed the last vestiges of the diplomatic isolation of China, Congress has endured a high-decibel debate on whether to grant China normal trade status for a year. And for all the anguished speeches, for all the empty posturing on human rights, Congress has always voted for it. This year's vote, which is required by the World Trade Organization, is on whether to end this annual charade by permanently normalizing trade relations with China.
Why is this issue, which is expected to pass the Senate with ease, causing such anguish in the House? It is tempting to paint the AFL-CIO as the villain, since labor has been instrumental in convincing most of the House Democrats, including party leader Dick Gephardt, to oppose PNTR. But the issue is more complex than simply House Democrats giving way to protectionist sentiments.
As Kasich illustrates, many legislators are concerned with America's moral role in the world. At a time when the Chinese leaders are quashing religious dissent and threatening Taiwan, it is troubling to formally bless their conduct by granting PNTR. Even Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative, conceded in an interview, "The Chinese government does not endear itself to people in this country."
But while bashing China may feel good, it is hard to see how it will do good. The sad truth, which many in the House refuse to admit, is that America, for all our globe-girdling might, lacks the leverage to change China's internal behavior. If Congress votes down PNTR, China will still enter the World Trade Organization. The only difference is that, under WTO rules, America will not be entitled to the trade advantages China must grant other nations.
Barshefsky makes the economic argument in cogent terms. "If we reject PNTR, we will be ceding the China market to our competitors," she says. "Argentina grows wheat; Brazil grows soybeans. There's nothing on the tech side that we make that Japan and Europe don't. We will be ceding that market."
If only the administration would stop there. But President Clinton, who portrayed Mexico as a democracy on par with Britain in pressing Congress to approve NAFTA, keeps engaging in rhetorical overkill. As Clinton declared Tuesday, "The people who are running China are not foolish people. They are highly intelligent. ... They understand that they are unleashing forces of change which cannot be totally controlled in (their) system."
You don't have to be an opponent of PNTR like Bob Borosage, the co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, to see the inherent exaggeration in Clinton's claim that China is willingly moving toward democracy. Borosage archly restates the president's argument: "The Chinese leaders are not stupid. They've made a decision to buy a lot of American goods and sweep themselves from power." Yeah, sure.
But Clinton's seeming naivete about the forces of change in China will be exceeded by the arrogance of the House if it votes to order the tides of globalization to retreat by rejecting PNTR. Sometimes in politics, as in life, the only sensible course is to go with the flow.:
