Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Editorials
Saturday, October 14, 2000China tries to
wriggle out of
commitmentsThe issue: China seems to be backing away from trade concessions it made to win permanent normal trade status.
PRESIDENT Clinton has signed into law legislation granting China permanent normal trade status, but that act is not the end of this long-running saga. Before the law goes into effect, the president must certify to Congress that China joins the World Trade Organization on the terms negotiated by the United States.
That certification may prove to be troublesome. Beijing is reported to be trying to dilute the trade concessions it granted in order to win the preferred U.S. trade status. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky flew to China to warn its leaders that their tactics could jeopardize that status. "China now has to demonstrate commercially meaningful implementation of this agreement," she said. "The speed of this is largely up to China."
Barshefsky met with Premier Zhu Rongji immediately after arriving in Beijing and said he gave her "emphatic" assurances that China will fulfill its commitments. The question remained whether China would live up to those assurances.
The New York Times reported that China is now proposing that in gaining admission to the WTO it be treated like other poor nations in changing its industrial policies. This would give China more time to eliminate subsidies and trade barriers. But China had already accepted U.S. insistence that it would not be given preferential terms because of its size and trading power.
China has also announced new rules to limit foreign investment in the Internet and telecommunications industries, restricting liberalization measures that it had already pledged to institute. Those measures could result in disruption of major industries as China adjusts to a more competitive environment under terms of its WTO admission.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a supporter of the trade bill, commented,"The reality seems to be sinking in in China of what it is they agreed to. This will be a test of their leadership, to go the next step and persuade the powers that be there to implement this."
Beijing's foot-dragging has led opponents of permanent normal trade status to claim confirmation of their warnings that the administration had not secured the benefits to the United States it contended would follow passage of permanent status.
The main benefit of the agreement from the American point of view was to ease Chinese restrictions on U.S. exports and investments, thereby providing jobs for American workers and outlets for American capital, and reducing the huge trade balance in China's favor.
If Beijing persists in stalling, the deal should be called off. The administration is right to remind China of its pledges.
Kim earned
Nobel Prize
THE award of the Nobel Peace Prize went this year to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, and it was certainly earned. Kim survived decades of persecution, including imprisonment, exile and assassination attempts, as a dissident under Korea's military governments before winning election as president in December 1997.
Since taking office he has been trying to make peace with Communist North Korea, a goal few thought achievable, and protecting human rights in South Korea. His patient overtures eventually succeeded in persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to agree to a historic face-to-face meeting last June.
Since then North Korea has taken modest steps toward reducing tensions along the Demilitarized Zone. A senior North Korean military leader has been visiting Washington and conferred with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who announced that she will visit Pyongyang in the near future. In addition, President Clinton is considering a visit to North Korea.
All this is quite amazing to veteran observers of the long years of hostility between the two Koreas, and Kim Dae-jung deserves much of the credit. As the Star-Bulletin's East Asia columnist, Edward Neilan, wrote, "Never in 50 years have there been so many signs that peace is about to break out and that unification is just over the horizon."
Of course, the collapse of the North Korean economy, famine, the loss of aid from the former Soviet Union, and the death of longtime dictator Kim Il-sung were major factors in the change in policy in North Korea, but Kim Dae-jung seized the opportunity when South Korean leaders before him did not. No other leader today in Asia, perhaps in the world, compares with Kim Dae-jung as a champion of peace.
Meanwhile the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature made another statement with political connotations for Asia.
The prize went to Gao Xingjian, a Chinese novelist and playwright whose works are banned in his homeland. He had been a leading cultural figure in China but left the country and settled in France in 1987 after one of his plays was banned. He joined the dissident movement after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Gao is the first Chinese to win the literature prize in its 100-year history, but only Chinese outside of China are permitted to read him. That indicates the distance the Beijing regime has yet to go to attain respectability in the world community.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
