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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).