American Chamber of Commerce Members of Shanghai, China
   Release No. 0141.00 
  
  Remarks
            As Prepared for Delivery
                             by
        U.S. Secretary of Agriculture  Dan Glickman
  American Chamber of Commerce Members of Shanghai, China
                       April 27, 2000
  
       "Thank you, Dean.  Thanks so much for the kind introduction.  I
  first of all want to thank you for the kind dinner this evening --
  especially thanks to our Consul General Hank Levine for showing us an
  excellent day today and tomorrow and to his entire team.  I would like
  to introduce some members of the delegation who are with us.  We have
  four distinguished members of Congress and one distinguished Governor. 
  I would like them to stand. 
  
       "The first is Governor Ed Schafer of the state of North Dakota, a
  Republican.  I think he's here somewhere....right there.  Today we went
  to a soybean crushing facility where we were watching the use of manual
  labor in ways that probably not a lot of American companies are using
  today. And Governor Schafer decided that in the spirit of fairness and
  equity he would participate in lifting a bag...at least one very heavy
  bag of soybeans.  We disagreed as to how much it actually weighed but it
  was more than I could pick up. 
  
       "Next we have Congressman Norm Dicks of Washington Sate, a
  Democrat.  He likes to parenthetically add things like Boeing,
  Microsoft, Weyerhaeuser, and Starbucks.  He is a longtime friend of
  mine.  We came to Congress the same year together.  He is a senior
  member of the House Appropriations Committee, and is a very effective
  member of Congress.  Next we have a Republican from the State of Oregon,
  and that is Congressman Greg Walden - he's right over here.  And, he
  sits on the House Agriculture Committee and is an effective member, a
  very smart member as well. 
  
       "I would next like to introduce Greg Meeks.  Now, he is from
  the....significant agricultural district in New York city, the Queens
  area, JFK airport.  Greg has been a joy to have on this trip and he is a
  Democrat from the State of New York.
  
       "And finally we have Congressman Ruben Hinojosa, from the State of
  Texas, a Democrat.  He is from the valley as we like to say, down in the
  southern part of the state.  I've been there several times myself.  
  Ruben  in his own right was a very successful businessman before he came
  to Congress, and has brought a lot of insight into some of the issues
  that we are talking about today as well. 
  
       "I was in Shanghai in January 1981 as a member of the United
  States Congress on one of the --  not the first congressional delegation
     but one of the first that came here.  There were a few in the late
  70's and you talk about change...it is extraordinary!  You walk outside
  here and it's hard to believe that a place could change as much as this
  place has.   And, so for that reason I think it's very significant that
  we're here during this time. 
  
       "This is a presidential mission.  It's not like a kind of
  traditional Congressional delegation.   It's a Presidential mission
  where President Clinton had asked members of Congress to join me in a
  one-week visit to China to look at what's happening  here with respect
  to our bilateral trade and other relationships and to come home
  hopefully to provide a positive perspective on the PNTR vote.  But if
  nothing else, to come and try to glean additional information about it. 
  We had two members that came with a pre-existing positive position for
  PNTR, and two members who were undecided.  And I suspect that will be
  the case until members go home and then they can have the chance to
  perhaps reflect on it some more.
  
       "But it's an important period of time and they're all influential
  members of Congress and so what they see here will have a lot of impact
  not only on how they vote but also on how they communicate what they
  have seen to their colleagues.  Second of all, as most people in this
  room know, but I think it's worthwhile pointing out to people who have
  some difficulty understanding the American system of government, and it
  is not always the easiest thing in the world to know, that just because
  the President wants something to happen doesn't mean that Congress
  always goes along with that.
  
       "Our founding fathers decided that they wanted a system of
  government in which the President was not the king, so they made the
  branches of government equal.   In fact, they made them slightly
  weighted toward the Congressional branch because article one of the
  Constitution is the Congress.   It's not the executive.  Article two is
  the executive.  Article one is the Congress.  I served in Congress for
  eighteen years.  I have a healthy respect for the fact that there was a
  method in this designation of making sure that the President would not
  have the ultimate power to make key unilateral decisions.  It's
  confusing however when you go around the world and you are talking to
  parliamentary systems.  And they do not understand - 'well how can this
  be?  Clinton wants this to happen - how can it not just automatically
  happen?'  And you explain to people that that's the way our system is. 
  The President proposes, but Congress disposes.  And that's the way it is
  on this particular item as well.
  
       "Now it turns out that the President feels very strongly, as I do,
  that engagement with China and China's accession to the WTO and approval
  of permanent normal trade relations is important not only for the
  economic future of the United States and United States' business but it
  is far more significant than that.   This is not just an economic issue. 
  This is truly an issue of what America's role in the world is going to
  be in the post-cold war era.   And, the President believes that if we
  engage China, engage them economically, we will have the opportunity to
  engage China politically.  We will have the opportunity to engage China
  on human rights, on religious rights, on labor rights, on all the other
  issues in which we have legitimate concerns and problems with things
  that are happening here.
  
  
                              
       "But if we disengage with China, we allow ourselves to have two
  things that are a real problem for us.  One is that agreements that have
  been negotiated with China are ones that are in the extraordinary best
  economic interest of the United States, particularly in agriculture, but
  with respect to the other items as well.  And if we decide that we don't
  want to be a party to the agreements that we've negotiated, we open the
  door for the rest of the world to take advantage of those same
  agreements, which means particularly our friends in the European Union,
  who are competing with us on every economic issue that is out there in
  the world, will have a significant upper hand.
  
       "And, you know, my own belief is I want to see America maintain
  its economic pre-eminence.  And I don't want to see us unilaterally give
  that up to anybody.  And, I think that could happen.  And so that's one
  thing.  The economic things we've negotiated, I think, will be in our
  best interests, will be in the best interest of American workers and
  American businesses, and will allow China to grow economically as we've
  seen here in Shanghai.   We've met with workers who work with Microsoft,
  and Intel, and Lucent, and Hewlett-Packard, in Beijing, and we've seen
  the rising standard of living, and rising incomes and that's going to
  benefit the United States economically as well as China.
  
       "The other thing that I think it's important to see in this
  arrangement is America has always had concerns, particularly since the
  second World War about how other countries treat their people, how other
  countries allow freedom of expression, religious expression, how they
  treat their children, how they treat their minorities wherever they
  exist.  A lot of other countries don't care about this.  We do.  That's
  part of our culture and our heritage.  Some people say we're busybodies. 
   Stay out of our business U.S.  But the fact is it's part of our natural
  soul, our natural culture. 
  
       "So we do care and sometimes it causes a lot of people to think
  we're arrogant.  But we do have some influence in trying to get people
  to change their behaviors and treat their people with dignity and
  respect.  Now I don't want to be so arrogant to say that we have a
  monopoly on virtue in the world, but I can tell you this.  That if we
  disengage with China on this issue, we lose our leverage to try to move
  them along in the modern world in terms of their political systems, in
  terms of the other things that we have been so concerned about.  And
  that also reduces the power of the United States to have influence in
  Asia, that reduces the power of the United States to have influence
  between China and Taiwan in terms of those relations.  That has the
  potential of reducing the ability of the United States to influence what
  happens in the entire Asian region.  And that is also then something
  that weakens America's ability to have influence on the things we care
  about, which are the things that I just mentioned before.
  
       "These are things that I think the President feels about very
  strongly.  At the same time, I would have to tell you that these issues
  are extremely controversial at home, that the vote is extremely close. 
  My judgment is that the  President's position will prevail.   But it
  will require an extensive amount of hard work and education and proper
  articulation of the issues during the next four weeks.  It also requires
  us to sit down and sometimes recognize we can't oversell what we're
  doing here either.  There are no miracles in this world.  We do the best
  that we can.  We think that the world will be better if we go down this
  road, but we can't promise people that we'll have heaven on earth if we
  pass this thing either.  That won't happen either because that's going
  to be determined by market principles and by what you all do and other
  kinds of things here.
                              
       "But this is I think an extremely important issue for the future
  of both the United States in terms of our ability to influence the world
  as well as China and its ability to grow and create economic wealth and
  then the intended political freedoms that will hopefully come from that
  as well.  And which we have seen.  There is much more openness here than
  I had ever thought of before I came.  And I was for PNTR before I came. 
  So this is a real eye opener to see this.  We go on to Hong Kong
  tomorrow.  We're here tomorrow when we'll meet with the Mayor.  We'll be
  meeting with people involved with the Taiwan issue.  We're going to the
  Shanghai Stock Exchange.  Then we go on to Hong Kong where we'll meet
  with human rights leaders and meet with the Hong Kong leadership as
  well.  It will give us a good perspective.
  
       "Let me close out by just saying this.  Members of Congress are
  approaching this issue with great seriousness and I believe with great
  integrity.  There are differences of positions on these issues, but the
  job is to basically sell it on what is best for America and that's how
  people will ultimately vote on what they think is best for America.  And
  we just have a lot of hard work to do during the next four or five weeks
  to get that information out.   So saying that I think I will stop now. 
  I thank you for your attention.  I think it would be worthwhile to get
  some questions to the Members of Congress who are here so they can have
  a chance to talk about their views on this subject.  Thank you all very
  much. 
  
  Question and Answer Discussion Period and Closing Remarks of Secretary
  Glickman
  
       "If I may perhaps have a final word.
  
       "First of all, I think it's pretty extraordinary.  You just heard
  one of the best discussions and debates that I've heard on these issues
  tonight.  You basically heard a debate in the U.S. House of
  Representatives tonight before your every eyes.   And the person who
  toasted the Congress I think, it was a very effective way to begin this
  thing and I think it shows you that these are serious issues, people
  will have different perspectives  on them.
  
       "They're based on integrity, they're based on strong positions
  and, you know, hopefully, through the American political process, people
  will be able to find consensus on them and do the right thing for their
  country as well as for their own constituents.  But I think it's
  profound that you heard eloquent speeches from very smart people that
  have strong positions on these issues.
  
       "I would say a couple of things.  Under the laws of this country,
  I am not permitted to lobby you.  These guys can lobby you; I can't.  I
  can educate you, you know, and you define the differences.  But I can't
  tell you what to do or how to do it.  The only thing I can tell you is
  this.  There are a couple of points made tonight that are very
  important.
  
       "One of them is that these things have consequences.  This is not
  a free vote.  This vote has consequences for America.  And if you
  believe that this has those kind of consequences for you and your
  companies or your interests, then you have an obligation to use your
  Constitutional prerogatives to let your folks know how you feel about
  it, because others are doing that and you need to do that. 
  
  You may be for it or you may be against it, but you have an obligation
  to communicate.
  
       "I want to kind of close with this argument that in my judgment,
  based on my understanding of America's role in the world and the post-
  Cold War Era, there are great challenges for our country continue to be
  leaders, because if we don't lead, others will fill in the gaps.  Our
  retreat from leadership, and I personally would view a vote against this
  as a retreat from leadership, will allow people and places to fill in
  that don't have those same values systems, and I think that's harmful to
  not only other worlds' economic systems, but ours as well.
  
       "The other thing I've quickly learned from my years in Congress is
  just because I believe something is right doesn't mean that the other
  person doesn't have something constructive to add.  You've heard some
  constructive things here tonight about some of the concerns that some of
  these folks have.  Now I happen to agree with Congressman Walden and
  Congressman Dicks very strongly, but I also listened to what the other
  folks have said and I think they had some valuable things to say.  I
  think the business community does not aggressively fight these issues at
  all.  Many times I think that we know what's right, this is the right
  thing for our company and people should just automatically go along with
  it, because that makes sense to us.  But the fact of the matter is,
  that's not the way the American political system works at all.  It's
  people who roll up their sleeves and work in the trenches that are the
  ones that can usually get what they want done.
  
       "The third thing that I would say is that while no agreement is
  perfect, I also recall the slogan that "perfect is the enemy of the
  good."  The fact is that this is a good agreement.  It may be that in
  the era of perfection it could have been made better.  But I personally
  believe that the bilateral agreement that Charlene Barshefsky and the
  USTR negotiator, along with the Commerce Department and our USDA people,
  is a stunning, amazing ability for the U.S. to be able to get from China
  something we dream of getting from other countries in the world. 
  Imagine the reduction of tariffs and openings that we're getting from
  China that we can't get from our friends in Europe or in other parts of
  the world.  It's just amazing.
  
       "But for whatever reason.  This vital information is not out there
  very well.  It's kind of like it happened and these things will just
  kind of pass on their own.  It doesn't happen that way.  In America
  decisions are made based upon what elected representatives think is in
  the best interests of their country and you have an obligation to
  participate in that process in whatever way you think it's important. 
  Again, I can't tell you how to do it, but I think you did tonight hear
  something which is rare in our system, is to get a little taste of what
  the great American political system is and hear it outside the halls of
  Congress.  And it's something that you should remember for a very long
  time indeed."