WASHINGTON-U.S.-Sino trade relations, which only a month-and-a-half ago hit an all-time high with dramatic telecom market-opening concessions by China, have fallen into disarray.
President Clinton, already on the defensive because of NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, is getting pulled in all directions by lawmakers and telecom firms over whether he should embrace China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
A bipartisan group of 30 senators, led by Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and John Chafee (R-R.I.), wrote Clinton urging him to not get sidetracked and to approve China’s entry in the WTO.
“Despite the events of the past week in Belgrade and China, it is critical that we focus on what is important to America’s national interest. Incorporating China into the global trade community through WTO membership; encouraging China to follow internationally accepted trade rules; opening Chinese markets to our manufactured goods … and services; and helping to anchor the economic reform process under way in China, all serve our national interest,” the lawmakers stated in a May 14 letter.
Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), assistant Republican leader, and Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), were among the signatories.
But others, like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and liberal Democrats tied to organized labor and human-rights groups, are not ready to cozy up to a Communist China that enjoyed a $57 billion trade surplus with the United States last year and that continues to suppress dissent with an iron fist.
Even before the May 9 NATO bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists, U.S.-Sino relations were growing strained as a result of accusations of satellite technology transfers, nuclear espionage and illegal campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and Clinton’s rejection of Chinese WTO membership during Premier Zhu Rongji’s visit here last month.
At that meeting, Zhu apparently agreed to substantial telecom concessions that would pry open wireless service and equipment markets in the Asian nation of 1.2 billion people.
But in the aftermath of Clinton’s decision not to embrace Chinese WTO entry and the NATO bombing afterward, China now disputes the administration’s account of what trade barriers China actually agreed to remove.
Indeed, there are conflicting stories over whether Wu Jichuan, Chinese head of the Ministry of Information Industries, will resign because of his anger with Zhu over the telecom trade package.
It is also unclear whether the Clinton administration has figured out how to position itself.
Robert Cassidy, assistant U.S. trade representative, was to have returned last week to Beijing for talks, but his trip apparently was postponed indefinitely.
“The administration will continue efforts to negotiate a deal for China’s entry into WTO on commercially viable terms,” said Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary. “It’s very much in the interests of U.S. business, U.S. workers and U.S. families to have China enter WTO on favorable terms because China now enjoys access to this market while many U.S. companies and workers don’t enjoy access to Chinese markets.”
Lockhart would not say when the president is going to renew normal (formerly most-favored-nation) trade status for China, which expires early next month.
The annual debate in Congress over Chinese trade coincides with the 10-year anniversary of the June 4, 1989, bloody crackdown on pro-democracy Chinese demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
“It’s so regrettable that the situation in Yugoslavia had to take place. I think there was momentum building for a WTO agreement,” said Eric Nelson, vice president of international relations for the Telecommunications Industry Association.
Nelson said telecom manufacturers in TIA support the telecom trade package offered by China. “There is every reason that an agreement can be reached. It’s in each country’s best interest,” he said.
But he added, “Politics have gotten into the middle of this, and when that happens you don’t know what will happen.”
Clinton apologized by telephone to Chinese President Jiang Zemin for the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. But apparently China will not settle for a telephone apology by the U.S. president.
The administration also approved the export of two Iridium L.L.C. satellites to China for a June 7 launch. But Motorola Inc.-a lead investor in Iridium-and the United States reportedly denied that the gesture was designed to improve soured relations between the two countries.
