China & Human Rights Issues

The MFN debate is illuminating over how different groups view trade with China. MFN status entitles a country to economic preferences granted by the U.S. only to its best trading partners. Goods from countries on the MFN list are allowed into the United States at the lowest possible import tax, which makes the goods more attractive to U.S. consumers. In the Chinese view, winning MFN status is very important. China is one of the United States' major trading partners, selling the U.S. some $19 billion worth of goods each year, and the U.S. in turn sells China more than $6 billion worth of products each year. It is the President who decides which nations will receive MFN status. President Bush granted the status to China for

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anges its view of human rights. In 1992, visiting American business people said it was not their business to discuss human rights with the Chinese, but today many American executives are beginning to do just that, perhaps from a perception that the American public is uneasy with the way China is being given special treatment and perhaps out of a genuine concern that human rights policies are not changing as hoped in the past. The annual debate over MFN brings the issue to light again and again (Gibney 46). The issue was raised most recently with the release of the Cox report, a congressional report from 1999 on Chinese espionage that made numerous allegations: "The report said Chinese agents stole information on every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal and spirited away classified data on the neutron bomb" (Duffy, Fang, Omestad, Whitelaw, and Newman 28). The WTO debate is tied to the MFN debate in the U.S. because, under WTO rules, the United States must grant China the same trade status as all other WTO members or risk being shut out itself from the trade concessions Beijing offers in order to gain membership (O'Neill). The Chinese take the view that America is only harboring ill feelings abo
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Some common words found in the essay are:
O'Neill Chinese, Supporters MFN, Chinese American, Tiananmen Square, President Clinton, WTO China, Western Japanese, Chanda Huus, China MFN, Whitelaw Newman, human rights, mfn status, rest world, status china, membership wto, eastern economic review, 1994 yearbook, chinese view, asia 1994, chinese system, political prisoners, asia 1994 yearbook, mfn status china,
Approximate Word count = 1471
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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