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   Vol.64/No.20            May 22, 2000 
 
 
U.S. rulers maneuver to pressure China
Politicians debate trade bill, argue over course to undermine workers state
 
BY PATRICK O'NEILL  
How U.S. imperialism can pursue its long-term goal of overturning the Chinese revolution and recapturing a potentially vast market is the subject of sharp disputes in the U.S. ruling class.

With what weapons and how rapidly to arm Taiwan; the character of trade relations between the United States and China; and in what way to proceed with an antimissile system aimed at giving Washington a nuclear first-strike capability are questions being debated among wings of capitalist rulers in the United States and their representatives in government.

The China trade bill will come up for a vote in the U.S. Congress at the end of May. Approval in the Senate is seen as assured. The vote will likely be much closer in the House of Representatives. The measure is based on a trade deal concluded last year between representatives of Washington and Beijing. Opponents of the bill object to its removal of the yearly Congressional review of the terms of Chinese–U.S. trade.

An arms deal concluded between Washington and Taipei in mid-April has also become an object of controversy among U.S. politicians.

Party lines have become blurred as representatives of both the Democratic and Republican parties have lined up on opposite sides of these debates. All of them exhibit an attitude of hostility to the Chinese revolution, which overturned capitalist property relations and semifeudal conditions in the countryside, and put an end to imperialist subjugation of the country, including direct occupations by foreign troops.

Since the revolution in 1949, China has successfully sought to unify the country, including the return of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom and of Macao from Portugal. Taiwan is the remaining piece torn from the country with the blessing of imperialism. It is becoming an increasingly weighty flash-point in U.S.-China relations.

Taiwan is best understood as a beachhead for imperialist interests, and has been used that way since the exploiters' defeat in the Chinese revolution. Until 1971, Washington and the other imperialist powers refused to recognize the Beijing government. Taipei occupied China's seat in the United Nations, for example.  
 
Shift in Washington's policy
Washington's policy shifted, however, in the early 1970s to that of "détente," which flowed partly from the U.S. rulers' attempts to isolate and strangle the Vietnamese revolution. The U.S. government turned toward seeking diplomatic deals with the Stalinist bureaucracy, which misled the revolution from the beginning, limiting the social progress of working people with methods marked by extreme brutality and arbitrariness. Beijing willingly cooperated.

The unholy alliance of imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy has become more brittle, however, as the imperialists seek to find openings to drive back the revolution. The military pressure and encirclement that Washington is preparing today start not with an elaborate blueprint, but with pragmatic responses to its failure to date to reinstitute capitalism through trade and "reforms."

Washington has formally agreed to what is known as the "one China" policy, meaning the unification of China and Taiwan by "peaceful" means. But the capitalist class in Taiwan has continued to get stronger, both economically with an expanding economy, and militarily, with decades of preferential treatment by Washington. However, without the power of imperialism standing behind it, an "independent" Taiwan would be a note in a history book. The Clinton administration's backing of the Taiwanese regime and its aggressive pursuit of Chinese markets are designed to step up pressure on the workers state.

U.S. president William Clinton has been arguing hard for the trade legislation. Under the trade agreement signed in November of last year, Beijing agreed to reduce tariffs on imported goods from 22.1 percent to 17 percent, and down to 15 percent in the case of U.S. farm goods. Tariffs on imported automobiles would be slashed from 100 percent to 25 percent over six years.

"Last fall...the United States signed the agreement to bring China into the WTO [World Trade Organization] on terms that will open its market to American products and investments," said Clinton in a March 8 speech at the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University. "Economically this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets--with a fifth of the world's population, potentially the biggest markets in the world--to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways. All we do is to agree to maintain the present access which China enjoys....

"We'll get valuable new safeguards against any surges of imports from China," the U.S. president crowed. "We're already preparing for the largest enforcement effort ever given for a trade agreement."

Clinton warned of competition from Japan and the most powerful Western European imperialist powers, saying that a vote against the bill "will cost America jobs as our competitors in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere capture Chinese markets that we otherwise would have served." Beijing has been engaged in negotiations with various European governments over the conditions of their support for China's entry into the WTO.  
 
Consistent with rulers' approach
Clinton stressed the continuity of his administration's policy with the approach of the U.S. rulers over the last three decades. The trade deal "is about more than our economic interests; it is clearly in our larger national interest," he said, speaking for the capitalist ruling class. "It represents the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive change in China since the 1970s, when President Nixon first went there, and later in the decade when President Carter normalized relations."

The U.S. president implied that the trade agreement and the legislation will assist the capitalists in their goal of ending the social and economic relations that flowed from the revolution and the expropriation of the capitalists. "By joining the WTO," he said, "China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products; it is agreeing to import one of democracy's most cherished values: economic freedom....

"Will it be the next great capitalist tiger, with the biggest market in the world, or the world's last great communist dragon and a threat to stability in Asia?" he asked.

A number of prominent businesspeople have backed the bill, including the chief executive officers of nearly 200 computer and electronics firms such as Microsoft, Lucent Technologies, and Xerox. Clinton claims the backing of the governors of 40 of the 50 U.S. states. The Business Roundtable, a major business group, has budgeted a $4 million advertising campaign to win votes for the bill. The industrial and agribusiness giants Caterpillar and Archer Daniels Midland, as well as Gen. Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have declared their support.

These capitalist interests are tempted by the siren song of China's potentially vast market, and by the fact that the Chinese economy continues to grow at the rate of around 7 percent a year. The underpinnings of the growth are basic industrialization and modernization--above all, a massive movement of labor from the countryside to the towns and cities.

On April 19 the House Democratic leader, Richard Gephardt, announced that he will oppose the bill. Gephardt's decision, while consistent with his record, symbolized the divisions the issue is prompting among Congressional politicians. The bill has found more backing among Republican members of the House of Representatives than among the Democrats. According to the New York Times, the fate of the bill rests with 40 undecided Democratic Party representatives.

In explaining his stand, Gephardt poses as a friend of "human rights and religious liberties" in China, in the words of the Times, and says he opposes permanent normal trade relations between the two countries. In the yearly review of these relations that Congress presently conducts, many politicians seize on the violations of democratic rights by the Stalinist regime based in Beijing as a pretext to attack the workers state.

Gephardt at one stage proposed a body to oversee trade with China "with the authority to mandate sanctions if China failed to live up to its trade obligations or to international labor standards," the New York Times reported. The proposal was rejected by the Clinton administration.

A compromise proposal by another Democratic Party Politician for a commission to "review human rights, labor policies and development of the rule of law in China" is reportedly helping to swing votes the way of the trade bill, according to the same Times article. The successful passage of a bill opening up trade by U.S. corporations with African and Caribbean countCaribbean countries is being touted as a favorable sign for the China bill.

The trade agreement between Washington and Beijing drew criticism last year from corporations in the textile industry, who fear competition from the products of China's mills and factories. The officials of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees make common cause with the capitalists on this issue.

Other top officials in the AFL-CIO have also taken a strident stand against the bill. This is consistent with their economic nationalist policies, and with their long-standing opposition to the Chinese revolution. To defend that position among union fighters today, they claim to be concerned about the low wages and sweatshop conditions many workers in China face.

At a demonstration in Washington, D.C., during the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in mid-April, officials of the Teamsters Union gave rightist politician Patrick Buchanan a platform to attack the proposed bill.  
 
Arms deal includes advanced missiles
On April 17, in the midst of this debate, the Clinton administration agreed to sell the Taiwanese armed forces a long-range radar system and upgraded versions of three missiles. Taipei routinely buys U.S.-manufactured arms, but in the context of increased tensions between Taipei and Beijing, the arms deal has aroused controversy. Washington had considered selling Taiwan its most advanced ship-based antimissile system, the Aegis destroyers, but decided against that this time around.

"The package on the whole is quite robust, with first-class air-to-air missiles and anti-ship missiles," said Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe, described in the Washington Post as "the Pentagon's point man on the nettlesome arms request from Taiwan."

China has few long-range ballistic missiles, and those in its possession are extremely inaccurate. It is reportedly deploying more short-range missiles along its coast, as well as building up its fleet of warplanes.

The arms deal fitted with the conclusions of a new Pentagon report, which claims Taiwan is facing threats of an attack from China. According to the April 1 International Herald Tribune, "The report points out 'a host of problems' with the military's ability to defend against airplanes, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles, said a Clinton administration official familiar with it." Taiwan's naval chief, Admiral Lee Jye, chimed in, saying that "antimissile defense and air defense is our highest priority."

The "Pave Paws" radar system to be sold to Taipei is "geared to the threat which we expect to be up a few years out" in China, said a Pentagon official. The radar system is not a passive, defensive mechanism, however. Its range will reach thousands of miles into mainland China.

"If I were the Chinese, I'd have to assume that the Taiwan radar was connected to the American missile defense network," said one scientist. The system referred to is being developed by Washington to provide U.S. imperialism with a first-strike nuclear capability by erecting a shield against enemy nuclear missiles. The missile-defense system has fared unevenly in initial tests, leading to calls in the New York Times and among other ruling class voices for a delay in implementation until the kinks are ironed out.

The Pentagon's approval of the arms package only enraged Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, who attacks the Clinton government from the right. "I am extremely disappointed to learn that the Pentagon has apparently succumbed to pressure from the State Department and the White House to sacrifice Taiwan's security in order to appease the dictator's in Beijing," he said. "If the Pentagon will not stand up for Taiwan, then it is clear Congress will have to take action."

Helms pledged to seek passage of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, which aims to greatly strengthen military ties between Washington and Taipei. However, the chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Dennis Blair, is on record as saying that the act doesn't allow him to do "anything more than is possible now, and it throws an unwelcome spotlight on the relationship," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Helms and other critics of the deal oppose the Clinton administration's decision to hold off the sale of four Aegis warships to Taiwan. These ships cost over a billion dollars each, and are equipped with up-to-the-minute missile tracking and radar systems.

Joining the critics of the package, the Wall Street Journal's editors claimed that "China is developing a blue-water navy that will be able to blockade Taiwan's ports" and missiles that "could be used to wipe out the islands airfields unless missile defense is upgraded." The Journal called for a commitment to sell Taiwan the "latest Patriot missile...when introduced," and for "providing the tools of antisubmarine warfare."  
 
Scrap treaty, says Helms
Broadening their attack, Helms and the Senate Republican leader Trent Lott declared April 21 their opposition to Clinton's advocacy of a "limited" antimissile defense system and his attempts to force Moscow to renegotiate the terms of the antiballistic missile treaty. Antimissile defense systems are forbidden under the treaty. Moscow has refused to modify it to date, stating its straightforward disbelief of Washington's official rationale that the systems will be used to defend against attack from "rogue nations."

"The senators...favor a full, robust defense system against missiles, and many of them prefer to scrap the treaty altogether," reported the April 22 New York Times. The Republican nominee in this year's presidential elections, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, said "he would deploy an antiballistic missile system 'at the earliest possible date,'" continued the article.

In their analysis of Taiwan's military shortcomings, the Pentagon's experts claim "it is necessary to maintain the cross-strait military balance, ensuring that neither [China nor Taiwan] is able to impose its will on the other," states a Washington Post article.

The Clinton administration strikes a similar pose, calling for "dialogue" between Taipei and Beijing. But the diplomatic language masks the intent of Washington's policy: to shore up Taiwan's military prowess, and to prepare to bring its own naval, air, and nuclear power into play if tension turns to confrontation. Washington is not moving along the reckless lines proposed by Helms and others, however. The U.S. rulers have learned to respect the determination of Beijing to reunify the country, having seen Macao and Hong Kong reincorporated in just the last several years.

Relations with China were a key issue in Taiwan's recent presidential elections. The current president and candidate of the Nationalist Party (KMT), which has dominated politics in the island since its defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949, was left trailing in third place. Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party came in first with 39 percent of the vote. Since winning the election, Chen has retreated from his party's calls for independence from China.

Supporters of the KMT rioted outside party headquarters and called for the expulsion of the incumbent party leader, Lee Teng-hui. The events helped to put a spotlight on class divisions in Taiwan, which has long been touted as an economic "tiger" in Asia. The fight for national self-determination of the indigenous majority, who have endured KMT rule for decades, has started to surface in politics there. Nationalist troops imposed their authority in the postwar years through the most brutal methods. A New York Times article recalled the "Feb. 28 incident of 1947 [before the triumph of the revolution], when Nationalist troops massacred countless thousands of protesting Taiwanese."

The bureaucrats in Beijing have no alternative to present to the Chinese masses other than appeals for more imperialist investment, with all the social horrors it entails. In his March 8 speech at John Hopkins University, Clinton described some of the huge obstacles that remain in the way of imperialism today--and hinted at the far more formidable obstacle of the Chinese working class.

Over the last 20 years, China has made great progress in building a new economy," he claimed, but" only about a third of the economy is private enterprise. Nearly 60 percent of the investment, and 80 percent of all business lending, still goes towards state-owned" enterprises, he said.

The leaders of China" face a dilemma," said Clinton. "They realize that if they open China's markets to global competition, they risk unleashing forces beyond their control: temporary unemployment, social unrest, and greater demands for freedom."

The U.S. rulers fear those forces as much as the bureaucracy in Beijing. As they probe for economic openings and rearm their client regime in Taipei, they will unwittingly find themselves--in the midst of national and class contradictions that are bound to deepen in the coming years--confronting the workers and peasants of China who have already made a mighty anticapitalist revolution.  
 
 
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