WASHINGTON — With ever-increasing frequency over the last few years, American shoppers who study the labels on low-priced consumer goods have been reading the words: Made in China.
Chinese toys, clothes and shoes have been flooding into the United States. During 1989, the same year in which Chinese troops crushed the pro-democracy movement in Beijing, China's exports of footwear to the United States doubled, and its exports of toys, games and sporting goods shot up 62%.
Watching television at home, Americans reacted with horror at the sight of Chinese tanks deployed in Beijing. When they went out to the store, they bought Chinese-made running shoes and Chinese-made Cabbage Patch dolls.
Now, President Bush and Congress are about to tackle the most significant and far-reaching issue they have faced in setting U.S. policy toward China: whether to try to use America's unmatched buying power as a lever to prod the Chinese regime into easing its repressive human rights policies.
The United States will soon face its annual decision on whether to renew China's most-favored-nation trade preferences, the privileges that allow China to export its goods into the United States under the same low tariffs that are available to most other U.S. trading partners. Bush is expected to notify Congress formally within the next few days of the Administration's plans to continue China's trade benefits.
But Congress could move to cut off the benefits. And last June's massacre in Beijing, and the political crackdown that followed it, have prompted a growing number of lawmakers to ask why the United States should do China any favors on trade.
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) urged Bush to revoke China's trade benefits. Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade, agrees.
Most-favored-nation status "puts the U.S. in the position of bending over backward to accommodate a government which has locked up hundreds, and maybe thousands, of Chinese prisoners of conscience," he says.
The dispute represents a significant racheting-up in the tensions between the two countries.
Last January, when Bush sparred with Congress over U.S. policy toward Chinese students, the issue was largely symbolic. Both sides were willing to let Chinese students remain in this country; the only question was whether to do so by act of Congress or a presidential order.
