Editorial

Trade Membership for China

If China is prepared to honor international fairtrade rules, it should be admitted to the World Trade Organization. It makes no practical sense to complicate this issue with other considerations about China, including its poor record on human rights. Those important questions can be better handled in other ways.

China wants membership in the new trade organization to establish its place in the international community even though it will win few tangible economic benefits. Countries like the United States have already extended low tariffs and other trade privileges to China. But membership can force the Chinese to take steps toward a fully functioning market economy. Trade organization rules require that foreign investment and trade be conducted on commercial terms, with no subsidies for exports or restrictions on imports.

Washington demands, for instance, that China make explicit any subsidies the Government provides state-owned factories that allow them to sell goods below cost. Membership would also require China to drop restrictions that force foreign investors there to export products they make in China. China will have to honor patents and copyrights.

Membership, then, can be useful to the West as a catalyst for reform in China. It would give leverage to Chinese officials who are pushing for political and market reforms. Policies that put more power in impersonal markets remove power from government bureaucrats. Membership will also ease less tension between China and the United S Rather than clashing directly over trade disputes, the two countries could turn to an impartial international jury to resolve commercial tensions.

Technically, the United States cannot block China's entrance into the World Trade Organization. But some members of Congress want to force -the Administration to get its approval before coming to agreement with the Chinese, fearing China will win favorable terms. Such an intrusion is unnecessary. The Administration has no reason to go easy on China, knowing Congress already has the authority to prevent the Administration from extending trade privileges to China even if it gains membership in the World Trade Organization.

Others in Congress recoil at inviting China into the trade organization because of its human rights abuses and contempt for democracy. Those concerns 'are warranted, but Chinese membership in the trade organization will not preclude America from pressuring China on these issues. The World Trade Organization, which Washington worked hard to establish, should not be used for political and, diplomatic ends, however worthy they may be.

The important task for the Administration is to negotiate commercially fair terms, phased in quickly enough that China must initiate reform immediately. Congressional interference serves no good purpose.