Organization: Penn State University
Date: Wednesday, 15 Apr 1992 22:36:35 EDT
From: <ZQH@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa,alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Please think about it. (Was Re: U.S. Role in the world
 <1992Apr14.165036.10124@midway.uchicago.edu>
 <1992Apr15.125422.7029@cl.cam.ac.uk>
 <1992Apr15.151218.4791@midway.uchicago.edu>
 <1992Apr15.194039.1@vxcrna.cern.ch>

It seems to me that, whenever the U.S. foreign policy is discussed,
the issue of MFN status for Mainland China (PROC) will be brought up.

The Asia Development Bank reported last week that the fast-growing
non-state sector of Mainland China economy accounted for 64% (!!!)
of Mainland GNP in 1991.  What does this mean?  It means that the
Communist regime will have less and less control over people's daily
lives as the non-state sector of market-oriented economy gains uphand
over the state-owned sector of planned economy.  Mainland China's
Gorbachev's & Yeltsin's are actually digging the tomb to bury the
Communism through the economic reform ("peaceful evolution")!!!

About the MFN status for Mainland China, who are gaining the benefit
from it?  The China's non-state sector of economy plus U.S. consumers
AND workers!!!

(Definitely not the China's state-owned sector of economy --- their
 heavy manufacture industrial products, including weapons, will never
 show up in U.S.).

Those joint-venture businesses with the foreign investment take the
advantage of cheap labor cost in China (thanks to Communist regime's
massive & wasteful price subsidies) making those labor-intensive
products for export and competing with other third-world countries
for the U.S. market --- the U.S. consumers benefit from having
more sources of the cheap labor-intensive products.

(The U.S. simply cann't/shouldn't compete in the labor-intensive
 industries --- U.S. workers don't want/need low-pay jobs).

On the other hand, U.S.' export to China generates a lot of high-pay
jobs for U.S. workers --- China is the biggest customer of Boeing
Aircraft Company, which in turn is the biggest U.S. exporting company.

As a matter of fact, the Most-Favored Nation status (MFN, a misleading
term) is just a non-discriminatory status, and all countries (now except
Cuba, N.Korea, Vietnam) have it --- but the general American public
are not aware of this fact.

In some senses, the MFN is helping the development of democracy in
Mainland China --- FYI, in those developed coast regions with a lot
of foreign investments, the Communism is practically DEAD and replaced
by the market-oriented private economy --- capitalism.  But some of
the social vices, e.g. prostitution & gambling, which were eradicated
long time ago by Communists, surface again as the by-products. (They
might not even be the social vices --- perfectly legal in Nevada :-) ).

Revoking China's MFN status will just make those China's Gorbachev's
& Yeltsin's lose their powers to the Communist hardliners, and human
right violations worse.  U.S. domestic industries won't benefit from
it --- other third world countries will quickly fill the vacuum of
cheap labor-intensive products. But a lot of U.S. high-pay jobs will be
lost because of it.  In addition, it's possible many of those workers
in China's coast regions, who lose jobs due to revoking of MFN, might
attempt to become boat people/economic refugees and flee to U.S. ---
there have been some incidents in U.S. Pacific islands.  If the
economic situation in China got really bad, people would do whatever
to get to U.S. --- the government no longer has the control it used
to have on people and people have known the real outside world.
Just imagine tens of millions of boat people/economic refugees
(I'm not making up this doom picture --- it's in a novel "Yellow Peril")
floating in the Pacific, trying to land on U.S. territories.
I guess no countries in the world will be able to accommodate them
and a lot of tragedies will happen.

Just as Richard Nixon mentioned recently, the MFN status and foreign
trade/investment are just like "sweet poison" (for China's Communist
regime), which is making changes from inside out.  And that is why
those Communist hardliners are strongly against the economic reforms
& foreign trade/investment.

James Huang