Transcript: Rep. Brown Says PNTR Supporters Seek Workers, Not Trade
(Brown says American workers displaced by Chinese)In a reprise of the role he played in the debate over the House bill granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status earlier this year, Representative Sherrod Brown argued July 18 that American firms seek PNTR for China not because they are interested in increasing exports to China, but rather because they perceive China as a place where they would have a low-paid docile workforce.
"Corporate America wants to do business with countries with docile workforces that earn below-poverty wages and are not allowed to organize to bargain collectively," he told fellow lawmakers during a debate over a resolution that would have denied President Clinton the authority to extend Normal Trade Relations status to China for another year. The resolution was voted down with 147 yes votes and 281 no votes.
Following are excerpts from Representative Brown's remarks from the July 18 Congressional Record:
(begin excerpts)
DISAPPROVING EXTENSION OF NONDISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT
(NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS TREATMENT)
TO PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
(House of Representatives)
July 18, 2000Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, here in Congress, we stand together in a commitment toward the spread of democratic ideals and the improvement of human rights. But as we have helped encourage the growth of democracy, many American corporations promote practices that work against all that Congress fosters throughout the world.
During the weeks approaching the vote for permanent NTR for the People's Republic of China, corporate CEOs flocked to the Hill to lobby for increased trade with China.
They talked about access to 1.2 billion consumers in China. What they did not say was that their real interest is in 1.2 billion Chinese workers, workers whom they pay wages on the level of slave labor.
These CEOs will tell us that increasing trade with China will allow human rights to improve. They will tell us that democracy will flourish with increased free trade. But as the CEOs speak, their companies systematically violate the most fundamental of human and worker rights.
Companies such as Huffy and Nike and WalMart are contracting Chinese sweatshops to export to the United States, often with the assistance of repressive and corporate Chinese local government authorities.
Mr. Speaker, 1,800 Huffy bicycle workers in the U.S. lost their jobs as Huffy in Ohio shut down its last three remaining plants in the U.S. In July of 1988, Huffy fired 800 workers from its Celina, Ohio, plant where workers earned $17 an hour.
Huffy now out-sources all of its production to developing nations, such as China, where laborers are forced to work up to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week and earn an average wage of 33 cents an hour. This is less than 2 percent of what bicycle workers made in Ohio.
The Qin Shi Handbag in China makes Kathie Lee Gifford-line handbags for WalMart. There are about a thousand workers at the factory where they put in 14-hour shifts, 7 days a week, often 30 days a month. The average wage at the factory is 3 cents an hour.
Many workers live in a factory dormitory where they are housed 16 to a room. Their ID documents have been confiscated, and they are allowed to leave the factory for an hour and a half a day. For half of all factory workers, rent for the dormitory exceeds their wages.
The workers earn, in fact, nothing at all. In fact, they owe the company money. These people are indentured servants for WalMart or, most of us would say, slave labor.
Developing democratic nations such as India are losing out to more totalitarian nations such as China, where people are not free and the workers do as they are told. Developing democratic nations such as Taiwan lose out to authoritarian developing nations, such as Indonesia, because the workforce is stable and docile and does as their told.
In the post-Cold War decade, the share of developing countries' exports to the United States for democratic nations fell from 53 percent in 1989 to 35 percent last year.
Corporate America wants to do business with countries with docile workforces that earn below-poverty wages and are not allowed to organize to bargain collectively.
In manufacturing goods, developing democracies' share of developing country exports fell 20 percentage points. Corporations are relocating their manufacturing base from democratic developing nations to authoritarian regimes where the workers do not talk back for fear of being punished.
Western corporations want to invest in countries that have below-poverty wages; that have poor environmental standards; that have no worker benefits; that have no opportunities to bargain collectively. As developing nations make progress toward democracy, as they increase worker rights and create regulations to protect the environment, what we do in the developed democratic world, the American business community punishes those democratic developing countries by pulling their trade and their investment in favor of totalitarian countries.
They like China a lot more than they like democratic India. Corporate America likes Indonesia much more than they like Taiwan.
Decisions about the Chinese economy are made by three groups: the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army, and wealthy Western investors. All of them control a significant amount of the business that exports to the U.S. and Western investors.
Mr. Speaker, which one of these three, the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party, Western investors, which one of these three wants to empower workers? Does the Chinese Communist Party want the Chinese people to enjoy increased human rights? I do not think so. Does the People's Liberation Army want to close the slave labor camps? I do not think so. Do Western investors want Chinese workers to bargain collectively to get a little bigger piece of the pie? I do not think so.
None of these groups, Mr. Speaker, none of these groups, the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party, and Western investors, none of these groups have any interests in changing the current situation in China. If they did, they would choose democratic India and democratic Taiwan.
None of these groups have any interest in changing the current situation in China. All three, Western investors, the Communist Party of China, the People's Liberation Army, all three profit too much from the status quo to want to see human rights and labor rights improve in China.
Congress should not tolerate the working conditions that exist in Chinese factories. Congress should care about how American corporations are behaving outside of our borders.
(end excerpts)
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
Return to The United States and China.Return to IIP Home Page.