5.24.00
Feeding Bill's Legacy

5.16.00
This Ain't the Free Market

4.28.00
Stop Knocking Dads

5/24/00 9: 05 a.m.
Feeding Bill's Legacy
Republicans voting for PNTR not only throw Clinton a bone...

By Gary Bauer, Former Republican presidential candidate and Chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

t is a mystery worthy of Poirot why so many of my fellow Republicans are so determined to hand Bill Clinton and Al Gore a major foreign-policy victory less than six months before the November election. The vote is scheduled in the House of Representatives for today.

Bill Clinton has made it perfectly plain that he is counting on passage of permanent most-favored-nation trade status for China — now euphemistically termed "normal trade relations" — as a major piece of his presidential legacy. And make no mistake: The majority of votes come from Republicans, not Mr. Clinton's fellow Democrats. Why we would want to help this president cobble together a "legacy" belies explanation.

Or perhaps it doesn't. Nowhere is the juncture between campaign-finance reform and the making of legislation seen more clearly than on the China trade issue. I am convinced that were it not for the enormous amounts of soft money flowing into my party's coffers, many of my fellow Republicans would avoid doing anything like helping construct the Clinton legacy.

It is not, after all, as though there were deep and widespread support for permanent MFN among the Republican faithful. Public support for bestowing this favorable trade status on a brutal communist regime — which was never extended to the old Soviet Union — continues to slip. Among Republicans, those who oppose permanent MFN hold a slight edge in the recent polls. Among the hardcore GOP base, the party faithful who actually vote and do the heavy lifting at the grassroots level, the opposition to rewarding China's bad behavior is doubtless even greater.

Why would the Republican leadership in Congress push for this ill-considered measure against the wishes of the party's political base? Money is the only explanation. The China lobby has showered millions of dollars in soft-money contributions on both parties. Some Republican members of Congress are willing to admit in private that they cannot take the chance of cutting themselves off from this lucrative source of campaign cash — or risk the money going to an opponent — by opposing Clinton's China trade deal.

This is how the soft-money system corrupts and distorts our political process and why I supported fair campaign finance reform during my presidential campaign.

There are good reasons for the public's skepticism toward the China deal. Despite a decade and more of liberalized trade with China, the human rights situation is worsening by the State Department's own admission. Beijing's increasingly bellicosity toward democratic Taiwan, its continued complicity in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among such rogue states as North Korea and Iran, its breakneck arms buildup — all these factors have made Americans sensibly suspicious of China's intentions.

Corporate America, of course, dismisses such legitimate concerns. The only thing many American CEOs see when they look at China is a huge market of 1.4 billion people to whom they can sell their products. The corporate China lobby has been joined by nearly the entire foreign-policy establishment of Washington in thumping the tub for permanent MFN. The Clinton administration almost daily rolls out former presidents and ex-secretaries of state to warble the praises of the China trade.

It's probably a safe bet that when the foreign policy elite line up behind a policy, that policy is almost certainly flawed. Throughout the Cold War, the foreign policy establishment urged engagement with the Soviet Union rather than confrontation. This culminated in the disastrous policy of détente during Jimmy Carter's presidency (tell us again why any American should place the slightest credence on Mr. Carter's advice on how to deal with communists?)

Today the same elites are singing the same tune: Trade will bring change to China, engagement will foster respect for human rights and the rule of law. The Internet, for example, is often pointed out as an example of how increased trade will loosen the communists' totalitarian grip on the free flow of information, to their ultimate doom.

The facts do not support such smugly self-confident expectations. Less than 1 percent of all Chinese have access to the Internet. That which is available is tightly controlled by the government. Internet access is regulated by companies owned or controlled by the government. Outside service providers are dependent on access to state-owned networks. To maintain access to the network, these providers must remain in the good graces of the government.

In order to do business, these companies agree to limits, restrictions and the censorship of content over the Internet in China that they would never accept in this country. The government, meanwhile, continues to improve its sophisticated system of monitoring, blocking and censoring the Internet. China's government already blocks access to the websites of National Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the BBC, Voice of America and other foreign information sources.

The notion that increased trade will change China would be greeted with guffaws among my fellow Republicans were it not for the corporate money being showered on the party. We have forgotten what Ronald Reagan taught us about how to deal with Communists. That amnesia has led my party to become, regretfully, a co-conspirator in the building of the Clinton legacy.

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