[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> --- begin forwarded text
>
> Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 19:46:20 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Robert Weissman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Against China PNTR
> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>
> Should China be fully immersed into the corporatized global economy?
>
> The debate over whether the U.S. Congress should grant Permanent Normal
> Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as permanent most favored nation)
> status is about many things, but none more important than this basic
> question.[SNIP]
> This should not be a hard question to answer. Opening the economy further
> to U.S. and other multinational corporations and deregulating the economy
> further will exacerbate the worst social and economic tendencies in China,
> while undermining many of the country's important achievements of the past
> 50 years.
First, let me say at the level of plaintive wish-things-were-different that I
really wish political and social conditions in China were such that not only
did China not apply to join WTO but took a leading part in global struggle
to abolish WTO.
But they are not that way. And whatever my doubts of and quarrels with
the present Chinese regime, I do not believe that the U.S. Congress is
a proper forum for ajudicating the interests of the Chinese people. So
from the viewpoint of a u.s. activist the question, "Should China be fully
immersed into the corporatized global economy?" far from being a basic
question is not even a question at all. It is racist for anyone to argue that
the U.S. Congress knows (or can know) more about the interests of
China than the Chinese know. I have a good deal of respect for Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman -- but the arrogance and u.s. chauvinism
of this argument appalls me.
Carrol
