China wins House vote

Insight on the News, July 21, 1997 by Tiffany Danitz, Timothy W. Maier, Michael Rust

The debate about MFN this year has raised powerful issues and has created significant coalitions that have brought U.S. relations with Red China to the forefront of American foreign-policy concerns.

On June 24 the House of Representatives, on a 259-173 vote, supported President Clinton's decision to renew "most favored nation," or MFN, trade status for the People's Republic of China. The vote came after a gut-wrenching debate that highlighted the fissures in both parties about policy toward the last Communist world power. Rep. Gerald Solomon, the, conservative New York Republican who had been at the forefront of opposition, stood and applauded House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt for the Missouri Democrat's passionate speech attacking the Beijing regime's human-rights record, arguably the worst in world history.

The speaker of the House, who by tradition rarely votes, made a point of voting for MFN, as did 146 Republicans and 112 Democrats. Other House Republican leaders, including Majority Leader Dick Armey and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, both of Texas, and Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner of Ohio supported renewing trade benefits to Beijing. John Kasich, the Ohio Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee -- and who, like Gephardt, reportedly is considering a White House bid -- voted against the extension, as did International Relations Committee Chairman Ben Gilman of New York.

One of the most important foreign-policy debates of the century had just begun -- one some believe could foreshadow a new Cold War -- and yet, as soon as the vote was recorded, it was all but ignored by the mainstream media, which allowed it to be driven off the front pages and out of the leads on nightly TV news by retrospectives on extraterrestrial events alleged to have occurred in Roswell, N.M., half a century ago.

The background to the MFN debate is complex, and the feelings it aroused intense. Analysts said billions of dollars in U.S. investment and close to $14 billion in exports would have been endangered if MFN -- which entitles a nation to access to credit guarantees and lower U.S. tariffs -- had been denied. (Only seven countries now are denied MFN status including Libya and Communist pariahs Cuba and North Korea.) However, the U.S. trade deficit with China has ballooned to $40 billion and this, along with concern about China's brutal human-rights record and growing military power, has led many to look askance at the Communist regime. China has been the only major nation to increase military expenditures in recent years.

The same month that saw renewal of MFN saw a New York Times report that the Asian giant may be using an array of supercomputers purchased from the United States to build nuclear missiles capable of striking American cities. At the same time, continuing state-mandated brutality aimed at Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and political dissidents has raised U.S. concerns about the proper attitude to adopt toward Beijing, as have revelations of Red Chinese efforts to influence the US. political process -- revelations involving espionage and believed by investigators to have reached into the White House.

Rep. Solomon tells Insight that the FBI has obtained electronic intercepts proving that former Commerce Department official John Huang and at least six others "committed economic espionage" by passing classified information to Huang's former employer, the Indonesia-based Lippo Group, and to Beijing -- possibly involving General Electric's nuclear trade secrets. He cites the Clinton team's "stonewalling" of the investigation during the MFN debate, first saying Huang attended 37 classified briefings and then changing that number to 109 and now to 146. "People are not dumb in the Clinton administration," Solomon says. "Let me tell you the Clinton administration is highly intelligent. But these people do not put their country first. They put politics before country."

As chairman of the House Rules Committee, Solomon has obtained subpoena power for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee -- before which 100 witnesses are expected to testify about espionage in these matters. The building storm reminds some experienced observers of the era just before the Cold War when Alger Hiss and other friends of the Soviet Union were called to answer questions before congressional committees as public outrage increased.

In early May, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed 67 percent of American respondents wanted improved human rights in China, while only 27 percent thought good trade relations should trump concern about human rights. And there is evidence that even MFN supporters within the administration have noticed the way public opinion is shifting. Three days after Clinton's May 19 announcement that he would renew MFN, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the Senate that sanctions would be imposed against two Chinese companies and a Hong Kong firm for supplying Iran with chemicals used to make poison gas.