The San Francisco Chronicle / Editorial
U.S. Shouldn't Yield To Unreasonable Demands of China
BY Nancy Pelosi
PRESIDENT CLINTON has sent Congress a request to grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations status, based on an agreement between our two countries for China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, China can become a member of the WTO without Congress surrendering its right to review U.S.-China trade relations annually.
We all agree that it would be better to have China inside the WTO, complying with the rules, rather than the status quo of China on the outside violating its agreements with the United States. To date, however, the Chinese government has consistently failed to honor its signed bi-lateral agreements on trade and its international covenants on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and on human rights in China and Tibet. The Chinese government has no credibility and begs the question: why should the United States grant permanent trade status (formerly known as Most Favored Nation status) on the basis of broken promises rather than proven performance?
As concerned as many in Congress are over China's human rights and weapons proliferation violations, there is enough reason to oppose permanent normal trade relations at this time on the basis of trade alone. The Chinese government has broken agreements on opening its markets to the United States, on stopping the piracy of our intellectual property and on ending the export of slave labor-produced goods. The U.S. trade deficit with China has grown from $6 billion in 1989 to $70 billion in 1999. This staggering figure does not even include the estimated losses due to piracy of U.S. intellectual property, which between 1995 and 1998 totaled $10 billion, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance.
The Clinton administration cites as progress agreements with the Chinese government to stop the theft of U.S. intellectual property, but the record of compliance with these agreements, like that of other U.S.-China bilateral trade agreements, including agriculture, tells a different story. The administration's own "1999 Trade Policy Agenda" documents the tortured history of China's many agreements on intellectual property rights, starting with a 1992 memorandum of understanding to stop piracy, then an investigation and a 1995 enforcement agreement. Lack of Chinese compliance with that agreement led my colleagues and me to introduce legislation to force the administration's hand on this subject. The U.S. Trade Representative then issued sanctions against China. In June 1996, the United States and China signed yet another accord. According to the "1999 Trade Policy Agenda," China is still not enforcing copyrights and trademarks: "Of particular concern is the significant level of unauthorized use of software by both private enterprises and government ministries."
The issue of the technology transfer that China demands in exchange for access to China's market is of the gravest concern to those of us who have long been advocates for our high-tech community. U.S. technology and other intellectual property are the product of our free and open society. Our intellectual property is our competitive advantage, however, we continue to reward the Chinese regime for pirating it. It appears that some in the business community want to trade with China in the worst possible way and that is precisely what they are doing. Ironically, some in the high tech community, which excites the world with the "new, new thing" are subscribing to the old, old thinking of yielding to China's unreasonable demands.
It is incumbent upon us, in the public and private sectors, to work for free and open trade with China that is real. The U.S.-China bilateral WTO agreement, however, is seriously deficient in implementation, compliance and enforcement.:
