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TONY CAMPBELL
Recently U.S. CongressmanTom Campbell visited Burma and many of you may wish
to know who he is and what he stands for. To the best of my knowledge, he's
going to be tough on Burma unlike Tony Hall of Ohio. The following texts
show what he stands for on some important relevant issues.On November 19,
1999, he announced his candidacy for the US Senate from California.
Sincerely,
Julien Moe
China -- Most Favored Nation Status
*******************************************
Most-favored-nations status is the same status we give to practically
every country on earth. The only
exceptions I know are Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba. Failure
to give most-favored-nations
status to China would result in their goods coming into our country with
extremely high tariffs. China
would, likely, respond by imposing extremely high tariffs on our goods
exported to their market. The result
would be a loss of the China market to U.S. exporters. That would mean a
tremendous loss of jobs,
especially in high tech, and in our area particularly, because we export
so many electronic goods to
China. Also hurt would be those U.S. industries that rely on parts made
in China.
Those advocating denying China most-favored-nations status generally do
so out of a desire to improve
China's human rights policy. If we are to have any such effect, however,
we must be sure other countries
won't simply fill in what we no longer export. In my view, they surely
will. That is what happened from
1949 to 1973, when the U.S. did not trade with China at all. Hence, we
would have imposed very little
cost on China, but would have lost China's market to exporters from
Europe, Japan, and Australia.
During the time when we didn't trade with China, that country experienced
some of its worst human rights
abuses (the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution). It seems,
therefore, that isolating China
from the U.S. did nothing to improve China's human rights record. There
is no reason to believe it would
be any different now. On the contrary, there is good reason to believe
that economic freedom (which
China is increasingly enjoying) tends to weaken autocratic governments.
Individuals who realize that
wealth comes from their own labor, rather than from the state, become
less willing to tolerate dogmatic
politics of the state. This needn't happen, of course; but the record of
countries with economic freedom
but authoritarian governments is that the latter often soften. (Chile is
the best example, Singapore is
coming along.)
Lastly, there is the case of Hong Kong to consider. China has pledged to
maintain that city's economic
freedoms, and a greater degree of political freedom than is allowed
anywhere else in China. Hong Kong is
now part of China. I suspect those calling for terminating
most-favored-nations status with China would
not exclude Hong Kong. China might very well respond by ignoring its
pledge on political freedom, viewing
the U.S as having gone back on its pledge to Hong Kong. At this most
difficult time for Hong Kong, I
would not wish the U.S. to do anything that would jeopardize its
continued freedoms.
The result of terminating most-favored-nations status, therefore, based
on what actually happened before,
and what is likely to happen in the near future, is that we would hurt
Silicon Valley, California, and the
U.S. economy--with no appreciable effect on human rights in China,
except, perhaps, to make them
worse as the Chinese react. It is a time for calm voices and measured
action. I hope we, and China, both
have the wisdom to take that course.
Freedom
*************
Margaret Thatcher wrote: "Let me give you my vision: a man's right to
work as he will, to spend what he
earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master.
These are the essence of a free
country and on that freedom all other freedoms depend." In 1762, Jean
Jacques Rousseau advised, "Fly
from the pious believers. Nothing is more dangerous than their company,
they must either dominate or
destroy."
Both quotations deal with freedom. Both apply to our country today.
Individual freedom and economic
freedom. In politics today, both freedoms are at risk. I've seen a
thousand schemes for taking wealth
away from individuals, all in the interest of achieving some greater
social good, but almost all with the
effect of killing off private initiative, as Margaret Thatcher warns.
I've also heard a thousand sermons of
how private behavior, what we read, what we think, should be governed by
a code set down by others to
achieve a greater good. Sermons in churches are fine, but when this kind
of sermon comes from
government, it's just as corrosive as Rousseau warned us. One who would
convince by force of
government rather that by reason or by religion voluntarily taken up,
seeks to deny freedom. They must
either dominate or destroy.