U.S. Government Reaffirms Engagement with China

The Clinton administration has expressed its hope to see "a strong, stable, prosperous and open China" and reaffirmed its engagement policy in a move to boost the hottest campaign ever seen over the last decades for normalizing trade status with Beijing.

"Our objective is a strong, stable, prosperous and open China,"which sits "at the heart of U.S. policy," said Stanley O. Roth, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, in a speech at a conference on U.S.-China relations in Washington D.C. sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center on Tuesday.

"A strong China is a unified nation, confident of its ability to defend its borders and its interests. It works with its neighbors and partners to foster stability in the Asian Pacific region and beyond," he said.

Roth said that a strong China also works in concert with others to counter transnational problems such as narcotics trafficking and environmental degradation, and it not only makes itself secure and prosperous but also "increases the security and prosperity of its neighbors."

He said that China, as an enormous country with the world's largest population, a vast stretch of land and many neighbors, "can be a tremendous source of stability or chaos which could determine the future of the Pacific and thereby the peace and prosperity of our own country."

"A strong China has a dynamic economy, which offers its citizens an improving standard of living, attracts imports and investments, and exports competitively," he said. Roth noted that over the past year, the number of Internet connections in China has more than quadrupled from 2 million to 9 million, and that number is expected to reach over 20 million this year. "All of this bespeaks tremendous export and investment opportunities for American technology companies," he said. He said that the United States stands for an open China which "welcomes diversity and change, encouraging the best ideas from both its own people and the international community,"and which is ready to draw new technology and to celebrate and learn from the diverse strands of its rich history and culture.

Roth reiterated the importance of the engagement policy, which he defines as "working with China at every level and at every available opportunity to manage, if not resolve, specific differences and identify and expand issues on which we take a common approach."

The highest level of engagement is the series of periodic summits between the President and the Chinese leadership, which "can break deadlocks and achieve progress at critical junctures," he said.

Roth also listed the cabinet-level and "working-level" meetings between the two countries on a variety of topics, such as nonproliferation, environment, reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the WTO talks, as evidence of successful engagement which he described as "results oriented."

"Sometimes, a meeting will conclude with a dramatic event that provides results. More often, the results are not immediately apparent, but dialogue can and does effect change,"he said.

Roth said America's strategy is "to integrate China into regional and global institutions, helping it become a country that plays by the accepted international rules, cooperating and competing peacefully within those rules."

He called on the Congress to support China's entry into the WTO and grant the country Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) in the coming vote scheduled for the week of May 22.

The trade deal on China's WTO accession reached by the two governments last November will "significantly" advance opportunities for American companies to export goods and services to China, he said.

"China's WTO accession overwhelmingly benefits the United States," but "we will not enjoy these benefits unless the Congress grants permanent NTR to China upon its accession to the WTO," he said.

"If it does not, these advantages, so skillfully negotiated by Ambassador Barshefsky and her team, will go only to our competitors in other nations.

They will be able to sell their services to China, while we will not. They will be able to use WTO mechanisms to resolve disputes with China, while we will not. Clearly, that makes no sense," he added.

Meanwhile, President Bill Clinton staged a large gathering of former presidents, including Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford, and secretaries of state under presidents Richard M. Nixon and George Bush, in the White House on Tuesday to promote backup for normalizing trade status with Beijing, capping this administration's over-two-month-long campaign for China PNTR.

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