Anti-WTO Alliance Targets China

by Abid Aslam

China's WTO membership will dim prospects of democratic reform in the country and at the global trade body, argue groups assembled under the umbrella of the Citizen's Trade Campaign.

This coalition leaped to prominence by spearheading public demonstrations against the WTO ministerial conference in Seattle. It now seems headed for a high-stakes fight over Sino-U.S. trade relations, expected to be a hot issue in the run up to this year's U.S. presidential elections.

"The only thing worse than the WTO as it is now, is the WTO with China as a member," says Lori Wallach, director of Washington-based Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

"The few citizens' groups who hoped the WTO might be reformed are now saying that, if China gets in, there is no hope the organization will become more sensitive to labor, environment or human rights policies," she says.

Wallach is among activists pressing the U.S. Congress to deny China permanent "normal trade relations" (NTR), previously known as 'most favored nation' status -- which China has enjoyed since 1980.

Typically, this has involved an annual review process during which legislators complain about the slow pace of political reform in China, and then give their blessings for another year in hopes of stimulating speedier change.

This is because the WTO eschews voting in favor of achieving consensus among member states -- and China is generally considered hostile to these causes.

"Since the WTO operates by consensus, one country can thwart reforms sought by others," says Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth.

"The attempt to bring China into the WTO is less likely to reform China, as its advocates claim, than it is to further deform the WTO," says John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the leading US trade union federation.

Other prominent U.S. labor leaders oppose NTR for China because of Beijing's repression of workers' unions and because U.S. workers stand to lose their jobs as a result. Even analysts sympathetic to these concerns, however, bristle at this position regarding China.

"Many other developing countries that inflict similar repression on workers are already WTO members, so singling out China for exclusion is obviously discriminatory," says James Nolt of the World Policy Institute.

However, this does not mean that "we must therefore add China to the WTO," says John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies. "Rather, we must continue to pursue a transformed WTO that...would require adherence to internationally recognized human rights for all countries."

Many of the groups now opposing permanent NTR for China also repeatedly sought -- and failed -- to block China's most favored nation status.

These groups now would prefer legislators to renew the annual privileges rather than grant permanent NTR, says Alan Reuther, legislative director at the United Auto Workers union.

The mobilization against permanent NTR should fare better than previous yearly campaigns because for members of Congress to grant permanent trade status, "they would have to write themselves out of the equation permanently," Reuther adds.

Permanent NTR status is considered a precursor to China's joining the WTO but strictly speaking is not required under the organization's rules.

The U.S. administration, which reached a watershed bilateral trade agreement with China on Nov. 16, is hoping for permanent NTR as a means of cementing the deal, which includes major concessions to U.S. manufacturing and finance firms.

Failure to grant NTR would irk the Chinese, administration officials have warned. What's more, WTO membership would give the world's largest potential consumer market enough muscle to strike back legally if it sees itself as having been slighted by U.S .lawmakers.

That prospect will galvanize the U.S. business community, say political analysts.

The U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Coalition are among business groups that have worked assiduously at maintaining good relations with China's political elite and their members now hope to capitalise on market-opening measures as China enters the WTO.

The only other countries denied NTR status by the United States are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Yugoslavia.

China's WTO membership would clear the way for Taiwan to join and thus complete the list of major U.S. trading partners subject to the organization's uniform rules and dispute-settlement procedures.