The Seattle Times / Bruce Ramsey / Times Staff Columnist
Americans have little idea how moralistic they are. Consider the arguments over China. One side says that the way to open up China to democracy is to buy its products. The other side says we should force democracy on it by boycotting its products. Both imply that it is America's task to transform this alien culture into something acceptable to Democrats and Republicans. This assumption is hardly ever questioned. Instructing other countries has been America's job since Woodrow Wilson. We grew up with it. We're used to it. But imagine if some foreign country set out to do this to us. Imagine if China, which now flies 335 Boeing airplanes, threatened not to buy any more of them unless America made handguns forbidden, and abortions compulsory.
We'd go nuts. Nobody talks that way to us.
But we make such threats every year when Congress votes on whether China shall be allowed in the U.S. market. Business always wins these tournaments, and every year, it has an even greater stake in continuing to win them. But the gladiators put on a good show, and keep it close enough to make it exciting. Business associations raise the alarm to their dues-paying members and valiantly rescue them. Labor unions rally their dues-paying members for a cause that affects no contracts. The men and women of Congress are wooed.
It is this exotic Occidental ritual that the Clinton administration now proposes to abolish. We stop poking China in the eye once a year, and China opens its door to a long list of our products. Commercially, it is the best deal Bill Clinton has ever done. Opening China's door is worth billions, and poking China in the eye is worth nothing. But morally, we're not so sure. We feel guilty. Maybe, we should be lecturing the Chinese. It's our job.
The Chinese don't think it's our job. Many still have a warm feeling toward the United States that goes back to World War II, but it is strained by our ever-more-presumptuous finger-wagging.
Sidney Rittenberg, who runs the consulting firm Rittenberg Associates Inc., Fox Island, says the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade caused a lot of that warm feeling to melt away. All Chinese believed the bombing was intentional, and who could respect a country that would do that? Rittenberg recalled one young woman, a supporter of democracy, who said, "You should tell Bill Clinton to keep his nose out of our business. We have lots of problems in China, including democracy, but they're our problems and we'll handle them in our own way. Nobody has a right to tell us what to do." He added, "In the `us' she included herself and the people in China who she was against."
He said, "We've been to China three times this year, and we've been running into a lot sharper opinion. People say, `What's the matter? Do you think we're that weak that you can bully us?' "
Rittenberg is one of the few Americans who lived in China during the Mao years. He saw anti-American slogans then, but never "a spontaneous expression of emotion by ordinary Chinese against the United States."
Another witness to the change in Chinese perception is Billy Graham's son Ned Graham, who distributes Bibles there through his Sumner company, East Gates International. In March, Ned Graham testified to Congress about the improvements in religious freedom in the past 10 years. Then he said, "Having traveled to China over 40 times, I am increasingly concerned by the level of suspicion and often negative perceptions of the U.S. government. These perceptions are held, not only by many top leaders, but also by many average Chinese citizens."
I ran across that feeling myself in China 11 months ago. It wasn't just the embassy bombing; our whole war on Serbia struck them as moralistic killing.
Congress will decide in the week of May 22 whether to set up "permanent normal trade relations" with China. It should do so. Whatever leverage we get by treating China like a truant schoolboy is offset by cynicism and resentment. It is the opposite of good diplomacy, which achieves things of substance while avoiding insult.
This does not mean we should have no opinions on China. We will have thoughts on water pollution, greenhouse gas, dam building, birth control, religious tolerance, prison labor, trade unions and relations with Taiwan and Tibet. As always, we will have advice on democracy and individual rights. Whether they accept it is their business. Running China is their job.
Our job is to look out for our own reasonable interests. Permanent trade with China is in our interest. We should approve it - and I expect, after all the shouting and posturing, that we will find morally uplifting reasons to do so.
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