[asia-apec 1404] The Real Enemy is the WTO, Not China

[Anuradha Mittal]

(This is being distributed by the Progressive Media Project. If anyone 
wants to reprint it, please let us know.)

The Real Enemy is the WTO, Not China

by Anuradha Mittal and Peter Rosset*

After a successful battle in Seattle, free trade opponents in the United 
States have launched the next big fight: No Permanent Most Favored 
Nation Status for China. Even before Seattle, China's possible 
integration into the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the signing of 
a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S., had intensified the debate on 
human rights in China.

The AFL-CIO recently announced a major new multi-year campaign, 
beginning with the mobilization of working families around the 
Congressional vote on permanent normal trade relations for China. 
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney declared China to be one of the worst 
offenders of human rights in the world, using executions and even 
torture to maintain order and violating workers' rights. He cited the 
fact that China has not yet ratified the two United Nations Covenants on 
human rights it agreed to sign before President Clinton's trip to China 
in 1998. Finally, the AFL-CIO released the Hart Research Survey which 
indicates that 65 percent of the registered voters in
the U.S. oppose giving China permanent trade access.

The debate over China's accession to the WTO and the granting most 
favored nation status is a crucial one to examine, if we are committed 
to building an international coalition against economic policies which 
work against the interests of the world's working poor. This attack on 
China is a disservice to those in developing countries who are 
challenging their own governments to ensure basic human rights for all. 
Third World opponents of the WTO have to defend themselves against 
unfounded accusations, along with the other protestors who were in 
Seattle, of working against the interests of the poor, and of promoting 
a U.S. agenda.

The present approach in the U.S., as expressed by the debate on China,
labor standards and child labor, is seen by Third World countries as
clearly framed to suit rich countries. Northern countries would write a 
social clause into the WTO, and as a result child labor would be banned 
(without any guarantee that parents could find jobs), but inhuman 
treatment of migrant farm workers and other unfair labor practices in 
the U.S. would not. In fact, linking labor and environmental standards 
to the WTO would be like a double whammy for developing countries. While 
the WTO trading rules will open the economies of the poor countries to 
foreign investment, products and services, Western countries would be 
able to shut off imports almost at will from any Third World country by 
invoking these standards.
The Third World rightly fears that Northern countries are less motivated 
by real concern for children and the environment than they are 
interested in maintaining mechanisms that favor them in trade.

Most Third World environmentalists and labor groups have consistently
opposed trade sanctions as a way of enforcing environmental and labor
rules, because trade sanctions are inherently an inegalitarian tool. 
They can only be used by rich countries against the poor countries. Any 
attempt on part of India or Nigeria or Brazil to apply trade sanctions 
against the U.S., ironically the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse 
gases, would not get very far.

The way the debate on China has been phrased so far, it is a good
reflection of the unjust distribution of power in our unipolar world.
Private side deals with the U.S. and the European Union are the
pre-conditions for China's entry into a global body, despite support 
from most other nations. The drum beat villainizing China on grounds of 
its human rights records legitimizes claims by the Third World that the 
U.S. will impose Western values every time it's self-interest is in 
play. While the Chinese will suffer from their government's rush to 
enter the WTO, the Third World will never support an imperial system 
that gives one country--the U.S.--veto power.  Yet that only scratches 
the surface of the contradictions surrounding this issue.

Those castigating China and other developing countries need to recognize 
that is hypocritical for the U.S. using trade sanctions to punish 
countries that violate human rights. They forget the fact that the U.S. 
itself has yet to ratify the International Covenant for Economic, Social 
and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child 
as well as the Convention of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women 
(CEDAW). It is not coincidental that the only industrialized country to 
reject basic human rights also boasts the highest disparity between the 
rich and poor, and the highest child poverty rate. And yet, the U.S. 
assumes moral authority when it
comes to human rights.

Anyone who is opposed to the Chinese joining the WTO, or being granted
most favored nation status on the grounds of human rights, needs to be
reminded that the U.S. has, in many instances, acted like the rogue 
nations it criticizes. Since when has the U.S economic system become the 
paragon of virtue? Maybe other WTO members should be offended by the 
quasi-slavery conditions faced by farm workers in parts of the U.S., or 
by prison labor and sweatshops here in America.  Any member country 
could say that U.S. law, which makes it possible to execute a teenager 
or a grandmother, is an offense against humanity.  These and other 
charges might form the justification for an embargo on U.S. exports or 
for its expulsion from the WTO!

It is not surprising that Western labor unions are concerned about the
growing number of jobs leaving their countries. But they need to point 
the finger at U.S. support for trade agreements such as the WTO and 
NAFTA, rather than at other countries. Let's not forget that NAFTA-- 
with its labor side agreement--eliminated over 400,000 jobs in the U.S., 
and drove some 28,000 small businesses in Mexico out of business. 
According to a report put out by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 
February 2000, the manufacturing sector alone lost 341,000 jobs in 1999. 
Job losses accelerated in 1999 because of the rapid growth of imports 
from the NAFTA countries as well as China, Japan and Western Europe that 
competed with goods produced by U.S. manufacturing industries. The WTO 
and NAFTA are the direct cause of unemployment and poor working 
conditions, not the tool to correct these problems!  Instead of adding 
hollow social clauses we should block these inhuman treaties.

We need to question the leadership of the American labor movement--as 
they support anti-labor, pro-free trade, Al Gore for President, who 
claims to support both 'free trade' and 'union solidarity'--without any 
recognition of the contradictions between them. The labor movement in 
the U.S. needs to be politically free, able to publicly criticize U.S. 
policies which hurt working people everywhere, instead of receiving 
subsidies from the USAID. One might ask what role U.S. labor's long 
anti-communist tradition plays in China bashing today?

If we can accept that corporate globalization will never be effectively 
countered without a global movement that crosses North-South boundaries, 
then the American labor and environmental movement needs to give up its 
single-country bashing history. Of course it is appropriate to castigate 
China or any other country for accepting only those human rights that 
suit the regime's political and economic interests. The Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights was drafted to reflect universal aspirations 
and standards for human dignity. However, a campaign on China is not 
going to benefit workers in either country. The bottom line is that 
while China should have the same
right as any nation to join the WTO, we should recognize that in fact 
the WTO is bad for people everywhere, whether they are Chinese, 
American, Mexican or Indian. It's not China joining the WTO that hurts 
America workers--it is the WTO itself.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
* Anuradha Mittal and Peter Rosset are based at Food First/The Institute 
for Food and Development Policy <http://www.foodfirst.org> in Oakland, 
CA.  They recently published "America Needs Human Rights" (Food First 
Books, 1999).

 
Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst at foodfirst.org.
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