China Trade—Without Guilt

IT’S quite an accomplishment to do the bidding of U.S. corporations and accept Marxist premises at the very same time. But this is the nifty trick pulled off by advocates of free trade with China, at least according to their critics. Congress will vote again this summer on granting “normal trade relations” to China. Passage of NTR seems all but certain. But, especially in light of China’s recent eleven-day experiment in taking U.S. servicemen hostage, the trade vote will be the object of kitchen-sink criticism from left and right, alleging that corporations bought the vote with soft-money donations, that it is an expression of a crude economic determinism, even that it represents an act of “appeasement” worthy of Neville Chamberlain at his Hitler-coddling worst.

China trade risks becoming the least reputable measure to win wide congressional support since the bankruptcy bill (which passed the Senate in March by a 85—15 vote, but is still portrayed as a practically medieval effort to bleed the poor). This is a shame. Trade with China has self-interested, and not particularly subtle or savory, backers in the business community. But this says nothing about the merits of the free-trade measures in question. Economic engagement with China serves to foster pockets of liberty in China, and possibly to undermine its regime at its roots. What critics—a collection of union protectionists and human-rights advocates on the left and economic nationalists and neoconservative defense hawks on the right— offer in its stead is a policy of economic isolation that has failed elsewhere, and would be applied to China mostly as a matter of moral dudgeon: irritable gesture masquerading as strategy.

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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IT’S quite an accomplishment to do the bidding of U.S. corporations and accept Marxist premises at the very same time. But this is the nifty trick pulled off by advocates of free trade with China, at least according to their critics. Congress will vote again this summer on granting “normal trade relations” to China. Passage of NTR seems all but certain. But, especially in light of China’s recent eleven-day experiment in taking U.S. servicemen hostage, the trade vote will be the object of kitchen-sink criticism from left and right, alleging that corporations bought the vote with soft-money donations, that it is an expression of a crude economic determinism, even that it represents an act of “appeasement” worthy of Neville Chamberlain at his Hitler-coddling worst.

China trade risks becoming the least reputable measure to win wide congressional support since the bankruptcy bill (which passed the Senate in March by a 85—15 vote, but is still portrayed as a practically medieval effort to bleed the poor). This is a shame. Trade with China has self-interested, and not particularly subtle or savory, backers in the business community. But this says nothing about the merits of the free-trade measures in question. Economic engagement with China serves to foster pockets of liberty in China, and possibly to undermine its regime at its roots. What critics—a collection of union protectionists and human-rights advocates on the left and economic nationalists and neoconservative defense hawks on the right— offer in its stead is a policy of economic isolation that has failed elsewhere, and would be applied to China mostly as a matter of moral dudgeon: irritable gesture masquerading as strategy.