Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 18, 1994                   TAG: 9409210047
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By EUGENE P. TRANI
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE COLD WAR HAS ENDED

Despite these criticisms, there are good reasons for strengthening our economic ties with China.

It is true that in deciding in June to renew most-favored-nation status with China, President Bill Clinton put economic interest over human-rights concerns. China wants to become a full-fledged member of the world economy. Among other objectives, the United States wants to put a dent in its $22.8-billion trade deficit with China.

It also is true that in a landscape littered with Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda and Cuba, President Clinton could use a foreign-policy success, and better relations with China could fit the bill.

But what about our humanitarian, ideological agenda?

The answer is that it has not worked. It did not work during U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's visit to China last winter. And it has not worked in the past.

In the '80s, the Reagan administration sought an American agenda for China - human rights, guarantees for the future of Hong Kong, autonomy for Tibet and a ban on nuclear testing. The Chinese ignored us and went about experimenting with market reform on their own terms - to remarkable success.

China enjoys the fastest-growing economy in the world. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how the benefits of most-favored-nation trading status will further communism in a country whose expanding middle class is the result of free-market reform. And if the United States wants to reassert a greater degree of influence for American industry in a volatile world market, it cannot afford to ignore China.

There is, however, a larger point that the economics-vs.-human-rights debate misses. The difference between an economic policy with China now and our international role of the past is not between economic interests and human-rights interests. It is between economic interests and Cold War interests.

Since the mid-'40s, nearly all our foreign-policy decisions - and accompanying military and national-security expenditures - rested on containing the Soviet threat. Where that threat was not a factor, human-rights violations did not generally concern us.

That Cold War policy eventually drained the resources of the United States and the Soviet Union, and toppled the latter. Now, we have an opportunity to establish a new foreign-policy role for the United States in a post-Cold War era, and China offers a test case.

An economic focus that includes free trade allows us to make economic security our new global priority. It also can be argued that greater trade relations with the United States will help bolster China's middle class, which eventually will demand social and political reform.

The long-term impact of using economic aid to secure favorable political outcomes has a historic precedent in another foreign-policy decision: the Marshall Plan following World War II. Initially a program of economic aid, the Marshall Plan succeeded in forestalling the spread of communism in war-torn Western Europe and established America's leadership in foreign policy.

The phenomenon of economic reform's ushering in democracy also has precedence in Asia. The governments of countries like Taiwan and Singapore, which have a history of repression, have been transformed as a result of economic evolution.

The Chinese also may find it difficult to play a credible role on the global stage with the specter of human-rights abuses sitting on their shoulders. Besides, what is the alternative? Not to strengthen our economic relations with China while Germany and other nations - notably Russia - do?

While it is important for U.S. officials to keep human rights on the agenda with China - as Secretary Brown did during his trip - it is time to re-evaluate our influence in a world that has been forever altered by the end of the Cold War.

For the time being, cementing our economic ties with China - for our benefit as well as theirs - while letting the Chinese deal with their own domestic issues appears to be the better course. This is a foreign-policy opportunity we cannot afford to ignore.

Eugene P. Trani is president and professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.