PRI Opposes ‘Normal Trade Relations’ With China

July 30, 1999 

Volume 1/ Number 11

Dear Friend and Colleague:

This week the US Congress renewed Normal Trade Relations (NTR) with China. Years of “normal” trade relations with China have fueled China’s one-child policy of forced abortion and coercive “family planning.” Today, China stands poised on the threshold of entering the World Trade Organization, which would effectively make NTR with China permanent. The human rights abuses committed against the people of China by their own government are telling signs of the things to come as China maneuvers to become the dominant power in Asia.

Steven W. Mosher

President

PRI Opposes ‘Normal Trade Relations’ With China

The Population Research Institute (PRI) this week expressed its disappointment with the 260 to 170 vote in the US House to approve Normal Trade Relations (NTR) with China. PRI President Steven W. Mosher said that renewing NTR with China “sends the wrong signal to that country’s leadership, which continues to engage in a brutally coercive population control program as well as other human rights abuses.”

At a press conference on Monday 27 July 1999 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Mosher said that “human rights abuses committed by the Beijing regime against its own subjects are a harbinger of things to come to come in Asia as China becomes the dominant power in the region.”

The press conference, organized by the Family Research Council (FRC), featured FRC Chief Spokesperson Janet Parshall; Chinese dissidents Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng; Barbara Somson of the United Auto Workers; Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, and Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, Senior Director of National Security and Foreign Affairs, FRC.

“NTR benefits the Communist elite who control China’s state- and military-owned enterprises, and does not benefit ordinary Chinese workers,” Mosher said. “Yet China’s rogue economic system depends on human rights abuses committed against China’s entire work force population. The main victims have been women and children. NTR certainly does not benefit American workers, who should not be forced to compete with workers in China who are paid $1 a day, and who are forbidden to organize or strike for better working conditions or higher pay.”

NTR was originally granted to China by the US during the Carter Administration, under the name of Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, and has been renewed each year since. The increased trade that has resulted has not been met with the expected improvement in China’s human rights situation. On the contrary, the human rights situation in China is arguably worse than it was ten years ago.

NTR with China must currently be renewed on an annual basis by the president, but if China joins the World Trade Organization it will be granted NTR on a permanent basis.

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