Getting China Wrong. Aaron L. Friedberg. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Aaron L. Friedberg
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
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Жанр произведения: Социология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781509545131
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just under 1% of total US foreign direct investment.59

      As James Mann explains, during the 1980s, Beijing had observed that former US government officials and politicians “often sought to make money from their China connections” once they left office.71 The CCP was not shy about encouraging these “old friends” to weigh in on its behalf with their former colleagues, and the Chinese government also started to retain law and public relations firms in Washington for the same purpose.72 What was truly distinctive about the fight over MFN status, however, was not Beijing’s direct lobbying of US officials, but its broad, brazen, and systematic use of threats and inducements to shape the behavior of American companies, and through them the policies of the US government.

      As early as 1990, a Chinese commercial counselor had written to American executives urging them to “display your impact” and “do some promotion work” with Congress, the White House, and the “news mediums [sic].” Exhortations were soon accompanied by action. Three years later, in the runup to yet another vote on MFN status renewal, Chinese trade delegations fanned out across the United States on a well-publicized, multi-city “shopping spree” that resulted in promises to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cars, planes, and oil exploration equipment. At the same time, albeit more discreetly, US companies were being “regularly threatened with cancellation of orders or loss of future deals” if China lost its preferred trade status.73

      According to a senior figure at one of China’s leading think tanks, as the date for Clinton’s decision approached, “[W]e began to realize that economic interests were deepening and started to think that the US wouldn’t dare cancel MFN.”77 This judgment turned out to be correct, but the analyst’s observation is incomplete and also rather coy. The mobilization of American business, and the political outcome that it helped to produce, were not simply the inevitable byproducts of an objective deepening in economic relations between the United States and China; they were the result also of a deliberate and highly orchestrated influence campaign by Beijing.

      On May 26, 1994, President Clinton announced that he would not only renew China’s MFN status but also, henceforth, “delink human rights” from the annual process of extension.78 Despite appeals from human rights advocates, labor unions, and the representatives of older manufacturing industries already feeling the weight of import competition from China, Congress voted to uphold this decision. The impact was immediate. With the specter of suspension removed, at least for another year, and China’s development back on track, trans-Pacific commerce was free to grow faster than ever before. Within weeks, companies like Caterpillar, Apple, Owens-Corning, and Kentucky Fried Chicken all announced plans for major new investments in China.79

      1 1. James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 35–6.

      2 2. Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), pp. 74–85.

      3 3. Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan Decides to Relax Curbs on China Trade,” New York Times, June 6, 1981.

      4 4. Hugo Meijer, Trading with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward the People’s Republic of China (New York: Oxford