TEXT: REP. GEPHARDT 5/27 REMARKS TO DETROIT ECONOMIC CLUB
(U.S. should not renew China's MFN status)

Washington -- The United States should not renew China's most-favored-nation (MFN) trading status this year, according to House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (Democrat of Missouri).

"China and every other country must know that unlimited access to the U.S. market comes with certain responsibilities," Gephardt said in a May 27 speech before the Detroit Economic Club. "This market access is a privilege, not a right."

Gephardt criticized China's human rights record and said that the United States "must invoke our economic power to press for change, as we did in South Africa."

"Our goal must be to promote open societies in a freer world of fairer trade," he said. "Bilaterally we need to keep the pressure on those countries that violate the freedom of their citizens."

"We must use MFN as a tool to effect change," he continued. "MFN is a privilege that has to be earned. Steady, consistent progress by China will enable them to regain this privilege."

Following is the text of Gephardt's remarks:

(begin text)

HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER RICHARD A. GEPHARDT

ADDRESS TO THE DETROIT ECONOMIC CLUB:

"FAIRER TRADE, FREER PEOPLE"

I am grateful for your generous invitation to speak once again at the Detroit Economic Club. Nine years ago, I spoke to you of the need for a policy that would open the borders of foreign nations to the free flow of trade on an equal and reciprocal basis. Today, I return to this place and to the topic of freedom -- but this time not just freedom in a material sense; rather I speak of the most fundamental freedoms that are the foundation, the spirit, and the purpose of our national being.

Unlike most societies any time in history and anywhere on earth, the United Sues did not simply evolve out of a shared culture or language or geography. America is a nation conceived in principle and that principle is human liberty. And from the beginning, we have always recognized that freedom is not just an American right; it is a God-given right to every citizen of the world. America began with a simple sentence that is still the most revolutionary statement ever put on paper, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

The founders of our nation never intended these words to apply only to a few million people living in thirteen colonies on the eastern shore of America. Just a few weeks before his death, 50 years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote of that document, "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst their chains."

At our best, we have had a foreign policy that returned again and again to its fundamental center: the cause of freedom for ourselves, and around the globe. In this century alone, when we faced the Kaiser's despotism, when we faced Hitler's fascism, and when we faced communist leaders from Stalin to Brezhnev, we did so not because we sought to impose our will, but because we knew that the world needed American leadership to preserve human rights.

The world has changed profoundly in the nine years since I spoke here in 1988. The Iron Curtain has been lifted, the Berlin Wall has been torn down, the Soviet empire swept away. In Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel walked from prison to the presidency in a matter of months. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was escorted to his inauguration by his former jailers. From South America to Central Europe to East Asia, more and more countries have entered the ever growing family of democratic nations.

And few, if any, saw this coming. Perhaps the reason why goes back to one of the themes I emphasized here in 1988: the way in which universally accepted dogmas, spouted by the so-called "experts," can serve as blinders that prevent us from registering what is really happening all around us. At that time I was discussing trade, but the same is true for democracy and human rights. For so long, we were told that there is a totalitarianism more powerful and permanent than any authoritarian regime, incapable of peaceful change in any truly important way. We were also told that there are simply some countries and some people less suited for freedom, by virtue of history, culture, or temperament. Now these same refrains, proven wrong from Russia to South Africa, are being repeated anew by some of the same "experts". Being wrong -- so stunningly wrong -- has not even slowed them down. They tell us, and perhaps rationalize to themselves -- that East Asian nations like China have values that do not include individual rights -- even while Taiwan and South Korea have burgeoning democracies right next door.

Thomas Jefferson and the founders had it right, more than two hundred years ago. Freedom is part of the very fabric of what it means to be human -- and that is true in every corner of the globe.

In that spirit, I insist here -- and I will insist in the great debates ahead -- that human rights must be at the very core of our foreign and international economic policies. Not only is it a matter of basic values, but of national interest.

In the mid-1980s, I visited the Soviet Union. I had the chance to meet with a young man -- a Soviet Jew -- who had spoken out against the government. For this he had been sent away to a prison labor camp. Now this brilliant former mathematician was shoveling coal at a state-owned plant 10 hours a day. He had been separated from his family and he had the terrifying feeling that he would have to live out the rest of his days never seeing his loved ones again.

But despite all that, he took the grave risk of meeting with me. The KGB, of course, knew that I was with him. And he knew that -- but it didn't matter. He told me America stood for freedom and that he had to express his hope that we would never give up that fight.

As the meeting ended he looked around to see who was watching, then he shook my hand and pressed a piece of paper into my palm. I waited to look at the note until we were back in our car, heading to the hotel. In barely legible English he had written the words: "please Congressman, don't forget us."

We didn't forget the dissidents of the Communist empire or their struggle. And we must not forget those who continue the struggle for freedom today. Almost every day I pass by the words of the editor William Allen White inscribed on the wall of a corridor in the United States Capitol. He wrote, " Whoever is fighting for liberty is defending America."

Today one of the defenders of America is a Chinese electrician named Wei Jingsheng. In 1978, Wei displayed a poster on a brick wall in Xidan. On it he wrote, "The result of all struggle involving the people's resistance to oppression and exploitation are determined by their success or failure in obtaining democracy!" A few months later, after writing another essay, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He, languished there until September of 1993 when he was released six months early, just as China was mounting an all-out campaign to host the 2000 Olympics.

In 1995, a year in which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Wei was formally charged with attempting to overthrow the government. In his defense statement he spoke in the universal language of the Declaration of Independence and said human rights, like freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, and appeal to the government were, "inalienable rights belonging to the people, the masters of the country." After a six-hour trial, he was sentenced to prison for fourteen more years. Today he is being kept in an unheated cell with bright lights glaring 24 hours a day.

He is behind bars, but like Solzhenitsyn and Mandela, his spirit is unbroken. In a letter written from his prison cell to Chinese leaders, Wei said that human rights "are common objective standards which apply to all governments and all individuals... Like objective existence and objective laws, they are objective truths. That was why Rousseau called them 'natural rights.'"

Basic human rights are universal aspirations, not a cultural preference. The totalitarians who rule China -- and we should not be afraid to call them that, as Ronald Reagan was not afraid to speak of the Evil Empire -- openly express their contempt for the ideals of freedom. In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly last October, China's President denounced it as a ploy to undermine China's independence.

We must not join that chorus, or offer assent by silence or appeasement. For brave men and women in China, freedom is more than fine words and easy rhetoric; for it, they have sacrificed their personal liberty -- and too often, even their lives. Don't tell them that human rights are a western idea, a European idea, and that no Asians need apply. Don't excuse tyranny by insulting its victims.

The family of free nations has expanded -- and this should make us redouble our commitment to the world-wide victory of democracy. That is the great issue today in different places that span a continent, and places separated by half a world. In Indonesia, free speech is treated as a crime; political parties shutdown; and labor leaders are thrown in jail. In East Timor brutal repression terrorizes an entire people. In Burma, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi still lives under house arrest while the Burmese people suffer wholesale repression -- living in a nation that has become one vast prison. In Southern Mexico, in Chiapas, killing and beating are still tools for silencing those who attempt to bring change. From Cuba to Iran and in nations around the world, oppression is a way of life for millions -- and a way of death each year for hundreds of our fellow human beings.

Hearing the stories of those who struggle for human rights, we instinctively know that America must be on their side, or this really isn't America any more. But promoting human rights is also in the vital national security and economic interests of the United States. In the end, adherence to our ideals is the most pragmatic policy.

Human rights is, at its heart, about the rule of law. A government that can arbitrarily violate the liberty of its people cannot be trusted to abide by the rules of contract or the rights of companies.

But the economic issue is not that narrow. The repression of political rights is inevitably combined with the denial of economic rights. And the ripple effects of that denial soon reach deep into the American market. Almost every other country in the world now has virtually unfettered access to the our market. Our goal is a world of middle-class consumers eager to buy our products -- not a world where low-priced imports flood our market, depressing wages in industries and sectors that have to compete with those imports. We can't compete against workers who have no rights to demand a higher wage in return for their hard work and increased productivity. We can't compete with slave labor.

It's clear that passive efforts to promote greater human rights won't work. Voluntary codes of conduct and other efforts, while often well-intentioned, have had little or no impact. For years the business community has argued that its participation in the economy -- simply being there -- would yield results. So far, no real progress has been made. We now hear the same arguments for constructive engagement with China that we heard about South Africa. But nothing fundamental changed in South Africa until sanctions came.

Our goal must be to promote open societies in a freer world of fairer trade.

Finally, human rights is a vital national security interest. Just last week, we read that China is developing an ICBM that could threaten the Pacific Basin and the continental United States. As we saw with the Soviets, the answer is not to shrink from the defense of our values, but to redouble it. The missiles of a democratic Russia are not targeted against the U.S. And the best way to prevent the targeting of China's new missiles against this country is to advance democracy in that one.

There is much we must do. The agenda is large, but so is the call for freedom.

To promote human rights, we need to move around the world on both multilateral and bilateral tracks. For, while the United States is the preeminent force for freedom, we do not have to be the world's lone ranger. As with everything else, there is strength in numbers. We must seek to unite the free nations of the world to speak with one voice.

We must aggressively work to make the U.N. Human Rights Commission more than simply a cul-de-sac for an annual discussion. We must have continuous attention and action that shows our real interest not just a pro-forma debate that occurs as part of some annual ritual. The efforts of the Commission must be given real standing at the U.N. itself.

We must seek greater advocacy and adherence for human rights in multilateral institutions. David Obey, Barney Frank, and other Democrats in Congress fought successfully to have the "voice and vote" of the U.S. used to push for worker rights in multilateral lending institutions. This Administration has done little to live up to the law. We must not only enforce that legislation, we must go further and expand the process to other international institutions as well.

We must demand that efforts to expand coverage of the World Trade Organization include human rights, for they are inextricably intertwined with any true strategy of global prosperity. As Bill Greeder has written: "The terms of trade are usually thought of as commercial agreements, but they are also an implicit statement of moral values."

We must urge that the G-7 become an active force for a freer world. Members of Congress from both parties recently advocated just such an approach. When the leaders of the world's great democracies meet, democracy itself should be on the agenda.

There are many other venues and forums that must become springboards for action. Achieving multilateral success will take time. Progress won't be achieved overnight -- but it must be achieved.

At the same time, our agenda must also include the aggressive use of our own economic power -- the leverage of our market -- to promote change.

Bilaterally we need to keep the pressure on those countries that violate the freedom of their citizens. Constructive engagement too readily becomes convenient engagement. Instead, we must invoke our economic power to press for change, as we did in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, on his release from prison, stood before a Joint Session of Congress and thanked us for our determination. Unfortunately, words must be backed up by deeds -- with a policy that is both realistic and honorable, rooted in our principles and applied with consistency and resolve.

If we are to have any credibility among those who believe in America's promise, we must put our money where our mouth is. This Administration has finally placed sanctions on Burma as punishment for its odious human rights record, yet it refuses to make the same strong statement when it comes to similar circumstances in Beijing.

The people of the world yearn for a consistent American human rights policy. It is potentially our greatest strength. Those who suffer need to know they are not alone; those who repress need to know that America will not reward their misdeeds.

The leverage of our market can and must be a hinge of human freedom.

We must remember that the denial of most-favored-nation trading privileges -- and the leverage provided by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment -- was part of the "long twilight struggle" that transformed Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Last year, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Helms-Burton law that goes beyond our earlier sanctions against Cuba and extends penalties against other nations that trade with the Castro regime. The law demonstrates the depth of our commitment to the end of the last dictatorship in this Hemisphere.

Other laws must no longer gather dust on a shelf, or be rendered null and void by a diplomacy of indifference to human rights.

Our trade laws permit us to stop goods made with slave labor from crossing our border. Despite strong evidence, our Customs Service claims it can't identify the products. Instead, they keep asking foreign governments -- often the very perpetrators of the offense -- to help find more evidence. Not surprisingly, this charade seems to turn up nothing. If the law doesn't give the Customs Service the powers it needs, we should act.

We must use our trade leverage to promote human rights as part of trade deals we sign in the future -- I've argued for this as put of any new free trade arrangements.

We must use the Generalized System of Preferences, the Caribbean Basin initiative and other trade laws to advance freedom, and not to validate the status quo or strengthen the forces of opposition.

As I have already said, China is the one place in the world where all of these issues come together with great force. There, economics, human rights, the environment, and foreign policy meet and expose a bankrupt policy for all the world to see.

The United States has no business playing "business as usual" with a Chinese tyranny that persecutes Christian, Muslim leaders and leaders from many other faiths, precludes tens of millions from practicing their religion, sells the most lethal weapons to the most dangerous of nations, profits off slave labor, and engages in the utter evil of forced abortion.

Last month, I met with the Dalai Lama, now nearing his 40th year of forced exile from Tibet. Forty years later, dissidents continue to die in detention across that captive nation. Torture, arbitrary arrest, and the closing of monasteries are all common occurrences. The Chinese have attempted to install their own puppet in the Tibetan's second highest religious office. They kidnapped the six-year-old boy selected by ancient ritual as the next Panchen Lama. That boy is now seven -- if he is still alive.

Today's China is not content to keep its reign of terror inside its own borders. It blows its storm of calamity into the world's other outlaw nations. China has supplied Iran with cruise missiles that are a direct threat to U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. In addition, China is helping build a chemical plant in Iran -- a facility that makes no economic or technical sense other than for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Finally, last week the Administration decided to sanction two Chinese companies for their help in promoting Iran's efforts to build chemical weapons. The indictment is long, and getting longer.

The next chapter opens in July, with the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. As Great Britain's lease on the territory ends, there are increasing danger signals that the citizens of Hong Kong will lose their lease on liberty. The freely elected Legislative Council will be replaced by a body chosen by and answerable to Beijing. Hong Kong has been duly warned to expect an end to the right to protest and speak out. Indeed, China has repealed Hong Kong's Bill of Rights.

China's fearful leaders -- and even the most powerful dictators are always fearful -- worry that ideas coming from a free Hong Kong could be contagious, undermining the entire edifice of their tyranny. In China today 6 to 8 million people toil away in slave labor camps -- many producing products that are then sold to Americans who never suspect what they are buying. In fact, walk down the aisles of your local toy store with your child and you will find "Spunky the Dog" and "Princess the Cat," toys produced by business groups run by the People's Liberation Army -- the force that runs the Chinese gulag -- the same forces that gunned down young men and women in Tiananmen Square.

Last week I met with Harry Wu -- a real champion of human rights in China. He told me that China's prison camps have become vast profit centers. There's now actually a new term -- prison economy. Harry asked: "If America knew that a gulag or concentration camp existed today, you would speak out. Why is America silent now?"

All of this is bad enough, and I cite it because tyranny, too, is indivisible: Those who would drench Tiananmen Square with blood do not blanch at shredding a commercial or international obligation. But that said, the question is bigger -- it's not just what kind of business we can do in China, but what kind of people we really are. President Lincoln stated the question in his Second Inaugural Address, when he denounced "wealth piled by the bond-man's unrequited toil ... by blood drawn with the lash."

It is wrong, deeply wrong, to excuse or rationalize the uncertain gains that come from tolerating the systematic denials of political and economic rights.

And what have we gained by trafficking with a tyranny that debases the dignity of one-fifth of the human race. What is gained by a policy that sees all the evils and looks the other way? What is gained by constructive engagement with slave labor? Our trade policy with China has failed. It has failed not only on moral grounds, but economically as well. There is nothing "free" about our trade with China -- in fact it comes to us at great cost and little benefit. Last year, we had an almost $40 billion trade deficit with China. This year it's projected to exceed $50 billion. Between 1989 and 1994, our trade deficit with China increased tenfold, partly because of their strategy of pricing their exposes artificially low. They send more than a third of their exports to our shores while less than 2% of our products go there. Today a small nation like Belgium is buying more U.S. goods than China.

China has said to many of our companies that if they want to sell there, they must produce there. Then they have ordained that in order to build factories there we must transfer our technological know-how to them. Business is being blackmailed into giving China the means and the trade secrets that will make them an economic powerhouse. And in return they will continue to pirate our music, software and videos.

There is no such thing as something for nothing. It is not enough to issue mild condemnations of Chinese actions. Actions speak louder than words -- and our Administration's actions, as well as its words, have been far too weak when it comes to China. It is time for a new policy of firm engagement that finally advances our national interests and ideals.

A new policy of firm engagement can and must begin next month when the U.S. Congress will review Most-Favored-Nation trading status for China. This market access is a privilege, not a right. I believe that the communist government in Beijing has forfeited that privilege. It is time we revoke China's Most-Favored-Nation status.

China and every other country must know that unlimited access to the U.S. market comes with certain responsibilities.

Last year was the first year I supported the outright revocation of China's MFN status as our primary policy tool, because it became clear to me that our policies were achieving the opposite of their claimed effect. The State Department's own Human Rights Report released earlier this year paints a picture even more bleak than last year. Listen to this, remembering that the Administration did all it could to temper this verdict:

"All public dissent against the party and government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention, or house arrest. No dissidents were known to be active at year's end. Even those released from prison were kept under tight surveillance and often prevented from taking employment or otherwise resuming a normal life."

And as the President's National Security Advisor asked last week: "Has China's human rights situation in the last few years improved?" His own response: "I would say no."

We cannot appease China's leaders into honoring human rights. But we do have the power and potential incentives to seek and achieve change. As I have pointed out, more than one-third of China's exports come to America. They cannot afford to jeopardize this market. But they simply do not think we have the courage to act. In 1994, I traveled to Beijing and met with China's leaders. I was told "We know America likes to threaten the removal of trade preferences -- but when push comes to shove, we know you'll never do it."

China has said that we can't link human rights and trade preferences -- but that's exactly what they do. The Chinese reward countries who are willing to put profits ahead of people. Those who are willing to turn their backs on basic freedoms receive rich rewards.

America has the strength and the moral obligation to call this bluff -- on human rights and on other issues, such as the environment. As we seek to address global warming and discuss other environmental issues, China must be part of the solution. The benefits of U.S. action on the environment may be quickly nullified by China's and other developing nations' inaction. If these countries do not become full partners, environmental progress won't be achieved. We must also press forward to reduce the competitive disadvantages our companies who produce here at home face by lax enforcement efforts against their competitors elsewhere around the globe.

In the postwar period it would have been unthinkable for us to fuel Soviet efforts to expand communism's reach, its arms buildup and its repression by granting preferential trading terms. Why should we grant such terms to the Chinese government when that will contribute to their tyranny and reinforce their contempt for America's resolve?

There are some who have an honest difference of opinion on this subject. They care about human rights, but believe that if we can only bring economic growth to China, human rights will follow as a matter of course. But free market Stalinism offers the benefits to relatively few, and real freedom to none. The main beneficiaries today are the corrupt bureaucrats and brutal generals who run the show. The economic disparity generates unrest and instability. China's leaders in turn cite the instability as a reason to crack down on their people. Their own future is at risk if they don't. Our current relationship in effect sanctions their repression.

Trickle-down did not work in economics and it will not work in human rights. Economic growth for the elite will not lead to basic human rights for billions. The freedom that is needed for true entrepreneurship cannot flourish in the stifling atmosphere of repression. The rule of law that is required to secure faith in business dealings will not come from a government ruled by despots. It is no accident that tiny democratic Taiwan has a per capita GNP 20 times that of mainland China. The separation between human freedom and economic freedom is a fiction, pure and simple. If we really want a China that is a market for American business, we must press consistently for a China that is more open and more respectful of individual rights.

If we don't act, no one will. France's decision to drop its support for a resolution criticizing China coincided with a $2 billion purchase of Airbus aircraft. Allies from Korea to Mexico have sidestepped the issue or even voted against us in the United Nations. Poorer nations have been bought off through millions of dollars of Chinese foreign aid. The nations of the world, rich and poor alike, continue to yield to Chinese pressure because the cause of freedom has no leadership. The time has come for the United States to re-embrace its heritage and re-assert that leadership.

We must use MFN as a tool to effect change. MFN is a privilege that has to be earned. Steady, consistent progress by China will enable them to regain this privilege.

I do not expect all of you to agree with me. I know that many in the business community will disagree. But I ask you to look beyond short-term to long-term economics -- and then I ask you to look beyond even that, I ask you to look at your own family, your own neighbors -- your own children -- and ask yourselves what if they were held in slave labor; or what if they were imprisoned, perhaps-for life, for criticizing their government; what if they were forbidden to worship their God?

Six days afar the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Poland's Lech Walesa spoke to a joint session of Congress. He began his address by saying, "We the People..." and said "I do not need to remind anyone here where these words come from. And I do not need to explain that I, an electrician from Gdansk, am also entitled to invoke them."

I know that today, somewhere half way around the world, another electrician named Wei Jingsheng is in a jail cell precisely because he dared speak of freedom. But, like Thomas Jefferson, I also believe, with every fiber of my conviction, that one day he and his nation will be free. And I hope that, like Lech Walesa, Wei Jingsheng will be able to say that America worked for his freedom. Tyrants cannot rule forever, and when the Chinese are freed from oppression they will ask: "Where was the United States during our time of darkness? Did America stand with us or did she look the other way?" I hope that we will be able to answer that we stood for freedom and we helped to end the long night of darkness.

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