May 14, 2000

A LOOK AT CHINA BEHIND THE HEADLINES Congress will soon be debating whether to approve a trade agreement with China that would establish permanent normal trade relations between the two countries.

The debate so far has been conducted mostly in buzzwords and sound bites.

"Markets," says the pro-agreement faction, which is shorthand for the argument that China will someday soon have the world's largest economy and if we don't trade with them the rest of the world will, to our disadvantage.

"Human rights," say opponents, meaning that we should continue our annual debates about trade with China for whatever leverage real or imagined they may have on how the Chinese government treats its citizens.

But to one faction of supporters, "human rights" means that stable and increasing contacts between America and China, through trade, will ameliorate both political and economic conditions for the Chinese people.

And organized labor, which interprets "markets" to mean "jobs," opposes the pact.

Choosing up sides isn't politically predictable. The Clinton administration, which figures it's still short a few votes in the House, brought former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter to the White House last week to lobby undecided members of Congress. Vice President Al Gore, who wants to keep in Clinton's good graces for the campaign season but can't afford to alienate his labor supporters, declaimed, "It is right for American jobs, it is right for the cause of reform in China, and I believe it will move us closer to the strong and stable world community that we all seek to create."

If filling up on platitudes soon leaves you hungry again, there's more nourishing fare in a new book of essays, China Beyond the Headlines, edited by Timothy B. Weston and Lionel M. Jensen. Weston is an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Jensen is an associate professor of history and director of the Program in Chinese Studies at the University of Colorado at Denver. Several of the papers were first presented at a symposium held at University of Colorado in Boulder in the fall of 1997.

Jensen and Weston talked about their book last month at Denver's Tattered Cover bookstore, emphasizing that the United States and China, for all their differences, are alike in that both feel instinctively that they are the world's most favored nation, selected by history for a special destiny. Both modern nations were born in revolution and look back on a proud history; both have ethnically and racially diverse populations.

Diversity in the sense it's used today in American politics is not the first thing most Americans would think of in connection with China, so Susan Blum's article "China's Many Faces: Ethnic, Cultural and Religious Pluralism," is a good example of how the book illuminates areas of Chinese life little known in this country.

It's true that 92 percent of China's population identifies itself as Han Chinese. But 8 percent of 1.1 billion leaves 96 million people who are something else, classified into 55 different ethnic categories called "minzu."

With the Han densely concentrated within a relatively short distance from the coast, the sparsely populated areas inhabited largely by the minzu make up 50 to 60 percent of China's territory. In a few ways, the minzu are favored by the government; for instance, the one-child policy is laxly enforced for minorities, so much so that people with mixed ancestry often opt for minority status. In other ways, they are much worse off than the Han, with far greater rates of poverty and illiteracy. It's a prescription for discord.

The year I taught in China, 1987-88, we spent some time in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, in the far west of the country. It borders on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and three former Soviet Asian republics. The capital Urumqi is closer to Turkey than to Beijing, and the markets there were overflowing with Turkish goods smuggled in from the west. Merchants explained that with great pride, as an assurance of quality.

Though there are a great many Chinese in Urumqi, it was also easy to find residents who would have preferred to have nothing to do with China and had no hesitation in expressing that opinion to visiting Americans, often by turning away to spit on the ground.

Weston's article deals with the enormous upheaval in China's labor force associated with the economic reforms that began in 1978. The news is not all bad; Weston says that from 150 to 200 million people have been lifted out of poverty in just two decades, though by American standards incomes are still very low. But he also cites 1998 estimates by Chinese officials that the true figure for urban and rural unemployment combined is 17 percent, some 125-150 million people.

Jensen's article examines the ravages of corruption in China, with some very pointed comparisons to American political customs that closely resemble some Chinese practices. Chinese leaders understand this, he says, "which may explain why U.S. complaints against Chinese corruption create little obligation to regard them as serious."

As judged by the standard of asymmetric description -- the authors describe American conservatives as "arch-conservative" or "far right-wing" while no similar pejorative labels are attached to American liberals -- the contributors to this volume lie toward the left end of the American political spectrum. One, for instance, says that Marx's views of human nature have given way to Milton Friedman's (he thinks that's bad).

But, as Weston and Jensen cheerfully acknowledged in their talk, they don't agree on all matters Chinese, and it's quite all right with them if readers don't agree either. At least, they'll be better informed.

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