PNTR, WTO and Chinese Labor Standards
AN OPEN LETTER FROM AMERICAN ACADEMIC SPECIALISTS
ON CHINA'S ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
China's workers need higher labor standards, but opposing Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China is not going to help. To the contrary, China's participation in the WTO and the implementation of full WTO-member relations between the United States and China through the passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) offer greater, more dependable prospects for progress on this long-term challenge.
Normal trade relations in the context of China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) are an important way for China to raise the standard of living of its people. WTO membership will also contribute to the development of a law based system in economic relations.
China's low wages and often poor working conditions are mostly the result of China's poverty. Child labor similarly is more the product of families so poor that the small extra income these children bring in is important to family survival. China's failure to regularly and vigorously enforce its existing laws against child labor and poor labor standards reflects a system of law that is only slowly being reestablished after decades of neglect.
With China on the brink of entry into the WTO, what is needed is an energetic effort to help China enforce its own laws and to strengthen its legal system in general. Efforts of this sort have been underway for some time through bilateral and multilateral public and private bodies and have already born modest fruit.
Attempts to enforce labor laws by means of trade sanctions are by contrast a weak and blunt instrument for enforcing China's labor standards. Opposing PNTR and WTO membership for China would undermine the very forces that are contributing to rising standards for Chinese labor and enforcement of its existing labor laws. Denial of normal trading relations and resort to sanctions are also easily prey to abuse by special interests desirous of disguising their true protectionist purpose.
Whoever may benefit from a sanctions approach to trade with China, it will certainly not be Chinese workers or their children.
March 30, 2000
Signers (Listed Alphabetically):
Loren Brandt
Professor of Economics
University of Toronto
Author, "Redistribution in a Decentralizing Economy: Growth and Inflation in China," Journal of Political Economy, April 2000; " Markets, Human Capital and Income Inequality in China," forthcoming.
Thomas R. Gottschang
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross
Research Associate, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University
Editor: Du Runsheng, Reform and Development in Rural China (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); Co-author: "Institutional Change in Transitional Economies: The Case of Accounting in China," Comparative Economic Studies (Winter 1998).
Doug Guthrie
Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University
Author, Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China (Princeton, 1999); "The Evidence is Clear: Foreign Investment Spurs Workplace Reform in China" (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2000).
Gary H. Jefferson
Carl Marks Professor of International Trade and Finance
Graduate School of International Economics and Finance
Brandeis University
Co-editor, Enterprise Reform in China: Ownership, Transition, and Performance,1999.
Lawrence J. Lau
Kwoh-Ting Li Professor of Economic Development
Department of Economics
Stanford University
Co-author, "China's Foreign Economic Relations," China Review 1997; "The China-United States Bilateral Trade Balance: How Big Is It Really?," Pacific Economic Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, February 1998; "New Estimates of the United States - China Bilateral Balances,", March, 1999.
Barry Naughton
Professor
Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego
Author: Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993 (Cambridge University Press, 1995); The China Circle: Economics and Technology in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Brookings Institution Press, 1997).
Dwight Perkins
H.H. Burbank Professor of Political Economy
Harvard University
Author, "How China's Economic Transformation Shapes Its Future," in Ezra Vogel, editor, Living With China: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century, WW Norton, 1997; China: Asia's Next Economic Giant, (Henry M. Jackson Lectures) University of Washington Press, 1986, 1989.
Thomas G. Rawski
Professor of Economics and History
University of Pittsburgh
Author, Economic Growth and Employment in China. N.Y.: Oxford University Press (for the World Bank), 1979; "China: Prospects for Full Employment". Employment and Training Papers, no. 47. International Labour Office, Geneva. 1999.
Bruce L. Reynolds
Professor of Economics
Union College
Author, Chinese Economic Reform: How Far, How Fast? (Harcourt,1988); "China's Integration into World Capital Markets" (forthcoming); Editor, China Economic Review, Cornell University
Scott Rozelle
Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of California, Davis
Chair, Committee of Professional Relations with the People's Republic of China,
American Agricultural Economics Association
Co-author, "China's Food Economy to the 21st Century: Supply, Demand, and Trade," Economic Development and Cultural Change, July 1999; Co-author, "How China Will NOT Starve the World," Choice, First Quarter 1996; Co-author, "Liberalization and Rural Market Integration in China," American Journal of Agricultural Economics (May 1997).
Ezra F. Vogel
Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences
Harvard University
Author: One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform (1989); Editor, Living With China: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (1997)
Martin King Whyte
Professor of Sociology and International Affairs
The George Washington University
Author, "The Changing Role of Workers," in The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms, ed. R. MacFarquhar and M. Goldman (1999); "Human Rights Trends and Coercive Family Planning in the People's Republic of China," Issues and Studies, August, 1998.
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