American Chamber of Commerce Members of Shanghai, China Release No. 0141.00 Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman American Chamber of Commerce Members of Shanghai, China April 27, 2000 "Thank you, Dean. Thanks so much for the kind introduction. I first of all want to thank you for the kind dinner this evening -- especially thanks to our Consul General Hank Levine for showing us an excellent day today and tomorrow and to his entire team. I would like to introduce some members of the delegation who are with us. We have four distinguished members of Congress and one distinguished Governor. I would like them to stand. "The first is Governor Ed Schafer of the state of North Dakota, a Republican. I think he's here somewhere....right there. Today we went to a soybean crushing facility where we were watching the use of manual labor in ways that probably not a lot of American companies are using today. And Governor Schafer decided that in the spirit of fairness and equity he would participate in lifting a bag...at least one very heavy bag of soybeans. We disagreed as to how much it actually weighed but it was more than I could pick up. "Next we have Congressman Norm Dicks of Washington Sate, a Democrat. He likes to parenthetically add things like Boeing, Microsoft, Weyerhaeuser, and Starbucks. He is a longtime friend of mine. We came to Congress the same year together. He is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, and is a very effective member of Congress. Next we have a Republican from the State of Oregon, and that is Congressman Greg Walden - he's right over here. And, he sits on the House Agriculture Committee and is an effective member, a very smart member as well. "I would next like to introduce Greg Meeks. Now, he is from the....significant agricultural district in New York city, the Queens area, JFK airport. Greg has been a joy to have on this trip and he is a Democrat from the State of New York. "And finally we have Congressman Ruben Hinojosa, from the State of Texas, a Democrat. He is from the valley as we like to say, down in the southern part of the state. I've been there several times myself. Ruben in his own right was a very successful businessman before he came to Congress, and has brought a lot of insight into some of the issues that we are talking about today as well. "I was in Shanghai in January 1981 as a member of the United States Congress on one of the -- not the first congressional delegation but one of the first that came here. There were a few in the late 70's and you talk about change...it is extraordinary! You walk outside here and it's hard to believe that a place could change as much as this place has. And, so for that reason I think it's very significant that we're here during this time. "This is a presidential mission. It's not like a kind of traditional Congressional delegation. It's a Presidential mission where President Clinton had asked members of Congress to join me in a one-week visit to China to look at what's happening here with respect to our bilateral trade and other relationships and to come home hopefully to provide a positive perspective on the PNTR vote. But if nothing else, to come and try to glean additional information about it. We had two members that came with a pre-existing positive position for PNTR, and two members who were undecided. And I suspect that will be the case until members go home and then they can have the chance to perhaps reflect on it some more. "But it's an important period of time and they're all influential members of Congress and so what they see here will have a lot of impact not only on how they vote but also on how they communicate what they have seen to their colleagues. Second of all, as most people in this room know, but I think it's worthwhile pointing out to people who have some difficulty understanding the American system of government, and it is not always the easiest thing in the world to know, that just because the President wants something to happen doesn't mean that Congress always goes along with that. "Our founding fathers decided that they wanted a system of government in which the President was not the king, so they made the branches of government equal. In fact, they made them slightly weighted toward the Congressional branch because article one of the Constitution is the Congress. It's not the executive. Article two is the executive. Article one is the Congress. I served in Congress for eighteen years. I have a healthy respect for the fact that there was a method in this designation of making sure that the President would not have the ultimate power to make key unilateral decisions. It's confusing however when you go around the world and you are talking to parliamentary systems. And they do not understand - 'well how can this be? Clinton wants this to happen - how can it not just automatically happen?' And you explain to people that that's the way our system is. The President proposes, but Congress disposes. And that's the way it is on this particular item as well. "Now it turns out that the President feels very strongly, as I do, that engagement with China and China's accession to the WTO and approval of permanent normal trade relations is important not only for the economic future of the United States and United States' business but it is far more significant than that. This is not just an economic issue. This is truly an issue of what America's role in the world is going to be in the post-cold war era. And, the President believes that if we engage China, engage them economically, we will have the opportunity to engage China politically. We will have the opportunity to engage China on human rights, on religious rights, on labor rights, on all the other issues in which we have legitimate concerns and problems with things that are happening here. "But if we disengage with China, we allow ourselves to have two things that are a real problem for us. One is that agreements that have been negotiated with China are ones that are in the extraordinary best economic interest of the United States, particularly in agriculture, but with respect to the other items as well. And if we decide that we don't want to be a party to the agreements that we've negotiated, we open the door for the rest of the world to take advantage of those same agreements, which means particularly our friends in the European Union, who are competing with us on every economic issue that is out there in the world, will have a significant upper hand. "And, you know, my own belief is I want to see America maintain its economic pre-eminence. And I don't want to see us unilaterally give that up to anybody. And, I think that could happen. And so that's one thing. The economic things we've negotiated, I think, will be in our best interests, will be in the best interest of American workers and American businesses, and will allow China to grow economically as we've seen here in Shanghai. We've met with workers who work with Microsoft, and Intel, and Lucent, and Hewlett-Packard, in Beijing, and we've seen the rising standard of living, and rising incomes and that's going to benefit the United States economically as well as China. "The other thing that I think it's important to see in this arrangement is America has always had concerns, particularly since the second World War about how other countries treat their people, how other countries allow freedom of expression, religious expression, how they treat their children, how they treat their minorities wherever they exist. A lot of other countries don't care about this. We do. That's part of our culture and our heritage. Some people say we're busybodies. Stay out of our business U.S. But the fact is it's part of our natural soul, our natural culture. "So we do care and sometimes it causes a lot of people to think we're arrogant. But we do have some influence in trying to get people to change their behaviors and treat their people with dignity and respect. Now I don't want to be so arrogant to say that we have a monopoly on virtue in the world, but I can tell you this. That if we disengage with China on this issue, we lose our leverage to try to move them along in the modern world in terms of their political systems, in terms of the other things that we have been so concerned about. And that also reduces the power of the United States to have influence in Asia, that reduces the power of the United States to have influence between China and Taiwan in terms of those relations. That has the potential of reducing the ability of the United States to influence what happens in the entire Asian region. And that is also then something that weakens America's ability to have influence on the things we care about, which are the things that I just mentioned before. "These are things that I think the President feels about very strongly. At the same time, I would have to tell you that these issues are extremely controversial at home, that the vote is extremely close. My judgment is that the President's position will prevail. But it will require an extensive amount of hard work and education and proper articulation of the issues during the next four weeks. It also requires us to sit down and sometimes recognize we can't oversell what we're doing here either. There are no miracles in this world. We do the best that we can. We think that the world will be better if we go down this road, but we can't promise people that we'll have heaven on earth if we pass this thing either. That won't happen either because that's going to be determined by market principles and by what you all do and other kinds of things here. "But this is I think an extremely important issue for the future of both the United States in terms of our ability to influence the world as well as China and its ability to grow and create economic wealth and then the intended political freedoms that will hopefully come from that as well. And which we have seen. There is much more openness here than I had ever thought of before I came. And I was for PNTR before I came. So this is a real eye opener to see this. We go on to Hong Kong tomorrow. We're here tomorrow when we'll meet with the Mayor. We'll be meeting with people involved with the Taiwan issue. We're going to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Then we go on to Hong Kong where we'll meet with human rights leaders and meet with the Hong Kong leadership as well. It will give us a good perspective. "Let me close out by just saying this. Members of Congress are approaching this issue with great seriousness and I believe with great integrity. There are differences of positions on these issues, but the job is to basically sell it on what is best for America and that's how people will ultimately vote on what they think is best for America. And we just have a lot of hard work to do during the next four or five weeks to get that information out. So saying that I think I will stop now. I thank you for your attention. I think it would be worthwhile to get some questions to the Members of Congress who are here so they can have a chance to talk about their views on this subject. Thank you all very much. Question and Answer Discussion Period and Closing Remarks of Secretary Glickman "If I may perhaps have a final word. "First of all, I think it's pretty extraordinary. You just heard one of the best discussions and debates that I've heard on these issues tonight. You basically heard a debate in the U.S. House of Representatives tonight before your every eyes. And the person who toasted the Congress I think, it was a very effective way to begin this thing and I think it shows you that these are serious issues, people will have different perspectives on them. "They're based on integrity, they're based on strong positions and, you know, hopefully, through the American political process, people will be able to find consensus on them and do the right thing for their country as well as for their own constituents. But I think it's profound that you heard eloquent speeches from very smart people that have strong positions on these issues. "I would say a couple of things. Under the laws of this country, I am not permitted to lobby you. These guys can lobby you; I can't. I can educate you, you know, and you define the differences. But I can't tell you what to do or how to do it. The only thing I can tell you is this. There are a couple of points made tonight that are very important. "One of them is that these things have consequences. This is not a free vote. This vote has consequences for America. And if you believe that this has those kind of consequences for you and your companies or your interests, then you have an obligation to use your Constitutional prerogatives to let your folks know how you feel about it, because others are doing that and you need to do that. You may be for it or you may be against it, but you have an obligation to communicate. "I want to kind of close with this argument that in my judgment, based on my understanding of America's role in the world and the post- Cold War Era, there are great challenges for our country continue to be leaders, because if we don't lead, others will fill in the gaps. Our retreat from leadership, and I personally would view a vote against this as a retreat from leadership, will allow people and places to fill in that don't have those same values systems, and I think that's harmful to not only other worlds' economic systems, but ours as well. "The other thing I've quickly learned from my years in Congress is just because I believe something is right doesn't mean that the other person doesn't have something constructive to add. You've heard some constructive things here tonight about some of the concerns that some of these folks have. Now I happen to agree with Congressman Walden and Congressman Dicks very strongly, but I also listened to what the other folks have said and I think they had some valuable things to say. I think the business community does not aggressively fight these issues at all. Many times I think that we know what's right, this is the right thing for our company and people should just automatically go along with it, because that makes sense to us. But the fact of the matter is, that's not the way the American political system works at all. It's people who roll up their sleeves and work in the trenches that are the ones that can usually get what they want done. "The third thing that I would say is that while no agreement is perfect, I also recall the slogan that "perfect is the enemy of the good." The fact is that this is a good agreement. It may be that in the era of perfection it could have been made better. But I personally believe that the bilateral agreement that Charlene Barshefsky and the USTR negotiator, along with the Commerce Department and our USDA people, is a stunning, amazing ability for the U.S. to be able to get from China something we dream of getting from other countries in the world. Imagine the reduction of tariffs and openings that we're getting from China that we can't get from our friends in Europe or in other parts of the world. It's just amazing. "But for whatever reason. This vital information is not out there very well. It's kind of like it happened and these things will just kind of pass on their own. It doesn't happen that way. In America decisions are made based upon what elected representatives think is in the best interests of their country and you have an obligation to participate in that process in whatever way you think it's important. Again, I can't tell you how to do it, but I think you did tonight hear something which is rare in our system, is to get a little taste of what the great American political system is and hear it outside the halls of Congress. And it's something that you should remember for a very long time indeed."