By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 3 2000 (IPS)

The administration of President Bill Clinton Wednesday launched what is expected to be a high-powered, business- backed lobbying campaign to gain Congressional approval for China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) this year.

Anticipating the arguments of some critics, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, insisted Wednesday that granting Beijing permanent normal trade relations (NTR) status as part of a new Sino-US trade pact concluded last November will serve US national-security and human rights interests

It would also advance the interests of big US corporations, which are expected to spend as much as 20 million dollars to lobby Congress on the issue.

Failure to approve permanent NTR “would leave the Chinese people with less access to information, less contact with the democratic world, and more resistance from their government to outside influence and ideas,” Berger told a small audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here.

“No one could possibly benefit from that except for the most rigid, anti-democratic elements in China itself,” he added. “Let’s not give them a victory by locking China out of the WTO.”

The looming fight over China’s permanent NTR – which is necessary in order for the US to benefit from China’s accession to the WTO – is shaping up as the biggest foreign-policy controversy that will come before Congress this year, which culminates in November’s presidential election.

Although both major parties suffer internal divisions on China policy, the issue is especially sensitive for Clinton’s own Democrats whose political base includes organised labour and environmental groups, which strongly oppose both the WTO and closer trade ties with Beijing.

So sensitive is the issue that the Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives, Richard Gephardt, has suggested that the vote be put off until next year if it doesn’t take place by May or June, an opinion seconded by Clinton’s own Commerce Secretary, William Daley. “The longer we wait, the politics get harder,” he said last week.

Berger’s speech, the administration’s first major address on permanent NTR, came less than week after Washington appeared to have successfully healed most of the wounds in US-Chinese relations inflicted last May when a US fighter-bomber involved in NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia hit the Beijing’s embassy Belgrade, killing two Chinese staffers.

The bombing, which Washington has insisted was an accident caused by faulty intelligence, set off mass demonstrations across China and prompted Beijing to suspend military and other exchanges with the United States until an acceptable explanation and damages were provided.

In December, the administration agreed to pay 28 million dollars in compensation. Also military exchanges were formally resumed last week with the visit here of the deputy chief of staff of the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA), Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai.

But this does not mean that Sino-US relations have been stabilised by any means. On Monday, Beijing protested Washington’s announcement last week that it will sponsor a resolution critical of China’s human rights performance at the UN Commission on Human Rights meeting in Geneva next month.

Even more threatening was the 341-70 vote by the House of Representatives for a bill that would significantly upgrade military ties with Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. It was the first major legislation on which the House has acted this year.

While the Senate has yet to consider the bill, the administration is strongly opposed to it, both because it would move Washington closer toward a military alliance with the island and because China may consider the upgrade as a provocation requiring a muscular response.

“This bill would mandate a number of new security and military arrangements with Taiwan that could create dangerous, false and inaccurate expectations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the White House said in a statement Tuesday night.

Taiwan is itself holding presidential elections in March, and all three major candidates support moving the island toward at least de facto independence from China.

“This kind of vote makes things really dicey,” according to one administration official. “If the Chinese respond with new missile tests (near Taiwan) or some other show of forceö, then the permanent NTR bill ôwill go down the tubes, and then God knows how we pick up the pieces.”

Both the US business community and the Clinton Administration have argued that the November trade agreement on which permanent NTR is based opens China’s potentially huge consumer market – as well as its cheap supply of labour – to US companies and investors to an extent that would not have been considered possible even two years ago.

At this point, most Capitol Hill watchers believe Clinton can prevail, but all bets are off if a new crisis over Taiwan breaks out. “I think how China conducts itself in the interim is going to be very important,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a key Republican whose support on the permanent NTR bill the administration cannot afford to lose.

The proposed Taiwan bill actually was stripped of some of its most provocative provisions, including commitments to provide specific advanced weapons systems – including a missile-defence system, a satellite-based early-warning system, attack submarines, and top-of-the-line guided-missile destroyers – during hearings in the House last year.

But Taiwan still wants some of these systems to defend itself against Chinese medium-range missiles which Beijing has deployed along the Strait in increasing numbers, according to intelligence reports. The bill’s final passage would increase pressure on the administration to provide them.

“A failure to meet Taiwan’s legitimate military needs will make China’s military domination of the Taiwan Straits a reality,” said Rep. Ben Gilman, the Republican chairman of the House International Relations Committee Tuesday’s.

Like many Republicans, Gilman supports the permanent NTR bill, even as he also favours selling sophisticated arms to Taiwan.

If Clinton prevails on the permanent NTR bill, it will the first big trade legislation he has gotten through Congress in more than five years.

Even as the United States enjoys a record run of economic growth, distrust of free trade has also grown, mostly among Democrats who are backed by unions.

China is one of only two of the 134 WTO members which Washington do not enjoy permanent NTR status.

For the past 20 years, Congress has insisted on approving China’s NTR, or what used to be called most-favoured nations, or MFN, status for only a year at a time, in part to use the threat of denying it to press Beijing to improve its human-rights performance.

Such a denial would cut deeply into China’s huge trade surplus which is estimated at more than 50 billion dollars for last year.

While permanent NTR status is not a condition of WTO membership, China could decide, under WTO rules, to deny the United States the benefits it received under the trade deal negotiated in November – the worst possible outcome for the deal’s corporate backers.

“Denying China PNTR simply would deprive American companies and workers of the full benefits of China’s concessions – the favourable market access and dispute settlement that our European, Japanese, and other 1. competitors will have,” Berger said Wednesday.

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