May 30, 2000	atimes.com

Editorials China: From freer trade to greater freedom? From US President Clinton to conservative Republicans in the US Congress who voted for permanent normal trade relations with China, expectations run high that freer trade will over time lead to greater political freedom in China. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the man whose 1972 mission to China paved the way for US-China diplomatic relations, expressed similar hopes in a recent interview. Are these hopes and expectations realistic? The answer is yes - if several other factors are taken into account: time, progress with the resolution of political and security issues that historically have always dominated economic ones in China, and a more precise concept of the type and degree of political liberties China is expected to implement. Freer trade between China and its international trading partners will take time to yield political consequences. There is no direct route from greater freedom in economic exchanges to greater political leeway. The two principal avenues that lead from economic to political liberties are institutionalization of the rule of law and accountability and the development of social pluralism. As economic exchange with foreign partners proliferates, these partners will demand that their relations with Chinese counterparts are based on reliably enforceable contracts adjudicated by courts able to render judgement on the merits of a given case rather than on the basis of political considerations. In formal terms, the elements of a commercial legal code exists in China. But enforcement remains largely arbitrary, can be - and frequently is - swayed by interference of political officials, and there is little sense that justice is handed down in an even-handed manner. There will be progress in this - but over time. Similarly time-consuming is the process of formation of interest groups willing and able to advance their own goals and back them up politically and legally. There are few shortcuts in the growth of pluralism and legal systems. It is a generational issue, not one that yields results overnight. As the evolution of political liberties backed by the rule of law is thus to be measured in decades, not years, a key is whether it might be disrupted or reversed by overriding political and security issues: to put it simply and directly, unless there is simultaneous and early progress on the resolution of the Taiwan issue, not only the present, but also the next generation of Beijing leaders will tend to view demonstrative demands for greater liberties as a national security threat and deal with them harshly and with little concern for immediate economic consequences. The evolution of political freedoms on the mainland will progress smoothly only if there is progress on economic and political unification with Taiwan. Lastly, the specific political forms through which greater liberties are institutionalized in China will almost certainly not take the form of Western-style democracy. Look not just at China, but at the rest of East Asia. Even highly industrialized Japan remains stuck with, in essence, one-party rule. Democratic progress and implementation of the rule of law - whether in the commercial or political sphere - are slow and cumbersome elsewhere in the region. Moreover, while the debate over Asian values has subsided with the Asian crisis, there is nonetheless a strong case to be made that the most adequate forms of political rule must evolve locally, informed by social and cultural norms, rather than being copied wholesale from elsewhere. Indeed, then, progress toward greater freedom in China will speed up as the country enters the WTO and increases its international economic exchanges; but no rapid change should be expected. China today is a vastly different and freer country than in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping decreed economic opening to the outside world and liberalization of the economic regime. The country will yet again be vastly different 20 years from now. But it's the type of changes and the pace of change of the past two decades that provide the best guideline to what we should expect over coming years, not some dramatic turn of events.

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