America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

Once again, those would-be statesmen on Capitol Hill are trying to micromanage American foreign policy and legislate morality in another country -- something Congress does often and badly. Over the next several weeks, the Senate will almost certainly pass a bill that would punish China for its internal tyranny and irresponsible international behavior by restricting its trade with the U.S.

The leaders of the People's Republic richly deserve sanctions. The people themselves, however, don't. Ever since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Congress has been looking for ways to beat up on Deng Xiaoping, 87, and his hard-line protege, Premier Li Peng. In addition to repressing its citizens and persecuting its opponents, the Chinese regime has been selling lethal high technology to a number of potential troublemakers, particularly in the Middle East. As a result, Sino-American relations are the worst they have been in 20 years.

George Bush has contributed to the problem by coddling the Deng-Li gerontocracy, thereby provoking Congress to try to replace the Administration's Mr. Nice Guy policy with its own tougher one. It has been 17 years since Bush was U.S. envoy to China, yet he still seems to suffer from the clientitis that sometimes afflicts ambassadors who represent the views of their host governments too well. Three weeks after Tiananmen, the President dispatched National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to kowtow in secret to Deng, then sent them back several months later to toast him in public.

Largely in reaction to that craven and gratuitous behavior, Congress has generated a flurry of bills that would attach political conditions to China's most-favored-nation status. In fact, MFN is a misnomer: it implies special treatment but really means normal, equal treatment. All but a handful of the 187 countries on earth have MFN, including such pariahs and miscreants as Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and Burma.

Over the years, Congress has tried to use the denial of MFN -- or what might more accurately be called the conferment of LFN (least-favored-nation) -- status as a stick to make countries behave. It has never worked. Instead the use of trade as a political weapon has almost always backfired. The classic example is also the original one: in the mid-1970s, congressional conservatives passed the famous Jackson-Vanik amendment, which withheld MFN from the U.S.S.R. until the Kremlin agreed to let more Soviet Jews emigrate. Just to show who was boss, Leonid Brezhnev decreased the number of exit visas by two-thirds.

The effort to link MFN to a foreign government's respect for human rights is especially misguided in the case of China. Since sanctions are intended to keep Chinese-made products out of the American market, they will harm, first and foremost, those Chinese who are involved in export businesses. That means manufacturers, merchants and wheeler-dealers who benefited from the Good Deng's free-market economic reforms. These entrepreneurs are, in the main, liberals or at least apolitical. Granted, they are not as brave or noble as the pro-democracy activists who faced down the Bad Deng's tanks in Tiananmen, but they are essentially on the same side. Their commercial success is part of the larger process of coaxing China away from communism, and they are a key part of the generation that will take over from the old men any day.

In order to meet this obvious flaw in the logic of sanctions, Representative Don Pease, an Ohio Democrat, has come up with a twist that may be clever enough to overcome both experts' opposition and President Bush's certain veto. The Pease bill, which passed the House last week, would impose sanctions only on state-owned enterprises; it supposedly exempts the private sector.

Actually, the measure is too clever by half. It relies on a distinction that is hard to define and impossible to enforce. Take mohair. The textile mills that make the sweaters are largely state owned, but the suppliers are independents. Another example: silkworm cocoons are raised by private farmers and small cooperatives, while the threads are woven into silk scarves at state factories and sold by state trading organizations. In effect, the Pease bill penalizes everyone in the chain.

So curtailing MFN would hurt elements in China the outside world should be trying to help. It could also be disastrous for Hong Kong, which relies heavily on thriving commerce in the People's Republic, and unwelcome in Taiwan, which is quietly investing on the mainland.

Neither Hong Kong, Taiwan nor the booming Shenzhen Special Economic Zone inside China itself has any representatives in the U.S. Congress, or any votes in the Electoral College. That is why the Senate will pass some version of the Pease bill, and it is why Bill Clinton and the Democrats endorsed a pro- sanctions plank in their party platform at their convention in New York City two weeks ago. It is easier for a member of Congress to tell his constituents -- or a candidate challenging Bush to tell the voters -- "I'm against the butchers of Beijing!" than to explain how free trade with China strengthens the reformers and moderates for the power struggle to come.

The whole episode is a vivid reminder of the uneasy, often unhelpful interaction between U.S. politics and foreign policy, especially in an election year. Politicians are quick to embrace simple positions on complex issues that make them feel good and look good -- but in fact make a bad situation worse.