China Trade — Without Guilt - It is logical, moral, and right

National Review, May 14, 2001 by Richard Lowry

But China's progress from a regime of mass murder thirty years ago to one of nasty repression barely registers for the more vehement critics of NTR. Indeed, the same way that it is perpetually Selma for Jesse Jackson, it is always Munich for some neoconservatives. Is the question whether to confront in Kosovo an ineffectual Balkan dictator who has already lost two or three wars? Munich! Whether to establish permanent trade relations with China? Munich, again! This is more a verbal tic than an argument. China is not the Soviet Union, let alone Nazi Germany. China doesn't have an alternative ideology with global appeal. It isn't fighting the United States on every possible front worldwide, and couldn't do so even if it wanted to. It is essentially a Third World country, with a per capita income that badly trails Taiwan's.

Of course, China's trade with the world will change this, and provide the regime more funds for the purchase of new weapons systems. What critics of China trade fail to acknowledge is that it is not in the power of the United States to stop this long-term trend. The American export market is extremely important, but China-like 19th-century America-is benefiting from a burgeoning domestic market as well. America can't wave a wand and stop Chinese growth in its tracks. China is going to join the WTO no matter what. And Europe, Japan, and other Asian countries wouldn't go along with an American effort to cut off trade with China. For instance, roughly 40,000 Taiwanese companies have $40 billion invested in China. What critics of China trade are proposing is, essentially, that America become more Taiwanese than Taiwan.

Even if it were in Washington's power to block all trade with China, it wouldn't be wise policy. The Americas offer two-imperfect of course- case studies in the effects of trade policy. Tiny Cuba, just 90 miles away, has been isolated by the United States for four decades, but Castro remains stubbornly in place. Meanwhile, Mexico has advanced toward a full-blown liberal democracy, with an assist from the liberalizing effects of NAFTA. If economic sanctions were effective, Iraq, North Korea, Vietnam, and Burma, among others, would be teeming pluralistic societies by now. It's not true that sanctions never work- South Africa is arguably a case where they did-but economic growth and liberalization have a much better record of prompting political reform.

During the debate last year over granting PNTR to China, trade critics complained that the United States would lose the "leverage" it gained from the annual review under the old MFN process. It is true that every year around the time of the MFN vote, China would release dissidents from prison, in a clumsy and obvious PR gesture. But this didn't represent any serious loosening of the regime's grip. And this American "leverage" was dependent on trading with China in the first place- otherwise, there would be nothing to threaten to cut off. In any case, the U.S. should realize the limits of its ability to fine-tune internal Chinese politics as if it were adjusting the FM dial. Cutting off normal trade relations with China won't cause the regime to sink to its knees, while trade and economic growth will help create the conditions for liberalization in China, though not guarantee it.