US-China Relations: China policy on Capitol Hill

U.S.–China Relations

With China’s rapid ascendance to great power status, the U.S.–China relationship has become one of the most important international relationships in the world today. This book explores relations between the U.S. and China, focusing in particular on China policy-making in the U.S. Congress, which has been unusually active in the development of this relationship. Based on detailed analysis of China bills introduced in Congress over the past three decades, it provides detailed analysis of how Congressional policy-making works in practice, and explores the most controversial issues in U.S.–China relations: Taiwan, trade and human rights. It considers the voting patterns and party divisions on these issues, showing that liberals and conservatives often form an alliance concerning China because China’s authoritarian regime, human rights problems, soaring trade surplus with the U.S and rising military power attract criticism from both camps. It also argues that congressional committees, bicameralism and presidential veto make it virtually impossible for Congress to legislate on China, despite its intense preferences, and therefore Congress often turns to informal—but no less effective—means to exert influence on China policy, such as framing public opinion and generating situations that result in anticipated reactions by the executive branch or Beijing. Tao Xie is Assistant Professor at the American Studies Centre, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. He holds a Ph.D. in political science. His primary research interests are U.S. Congress and American electoral behavior.

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U.S.–China Relations China Policy on Capitol Hill

Tao Xie

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2009 Tao Xie All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tao, Xie, 1973– U.S.–China relations : China policy on Capitol Hill / Tao Xie. p. cm—(Routledge contemporary China series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. United States—Foreign relations—China. 2. China—Foreign relations—United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—1945– 1989. 4. United States—Foreign relations—1989-. 5. United States. Congress—Decision making. 6. Taiwan—Strategic aspects. 7. United States—Commerce—China. 8. China—Commerce— United States. 9. Human rights—China. I. Title. II. Title: United States—China relations. E183.8.C5T36 2008 327.73051—dc22 2008014023 ISBN 0-203-89014-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–77688–0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–89014–0 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77688–2 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–89014–1 (ebk)

To Zhang Can

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgments Introduction Congress and foreign policy 2 Why China? 5 Contributions of the book 9 Structure of the book 10

xi xiii xv 1

1

The new institutionalism and legislative behavior The new institutionalism 13 Determinants of roll call voting on foreign policy 19 Methodology 23

13

2

Congressional efforts to punish China Collection of China bills 27 Number and nature of China bills 29 What influences the ebb and flow of China bills? 34

26

3

Effects of congressional activism on China policy Bicameralism 43 Congressional committees 48 Presidential veto 50 More bark than bite? 52 Why so many China bills? 54 Does Congress matter in China policy? 55

43

4

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations Booming economic ties 60

60

x

Contents Congress and U.S.–China Trade 63 Legislative battle over PNTR 65 78

5

Congress and Taiwan Historical ties between Congress and Taiwan 79 Congressional attempts to enhance U.S.–Taiwan relations 82

6

Congress and China’s human rights Before Tiananmen: China as the exception 101 Tiananmen: the dividing line 104 MFN renewal and congressional efforts to change human rights in China 108

100

7

Beyond the case of China Selection of cases 123 Theoretical expectations 129

122

8

Conclusion Legislative institutions and their impact on China policy 142 The international environment and Congress’s China policy 144 Determinants of roll call voting on foreign policy 145 Policy implications 149 A look into the future 154

142

Appendix: Sources Source of China bills and coding scheme 157 Sources of other quantitative data 157

157

Notes Bibliography Index

161 177 199

List of figures

2.1 Classification of China bills (including amendments), 1973–2006 2.2 Time trend of China bills (including amendments), 1973–2006 2.3 Favorability ratings of China on 10-point scale, 1954–2001 2.4 Favorability ratings of China on four-category scale, 1977–2006 3.1 House–Senate ratios for China bills and bills in general (excluding amendments), 93rd–109th Congresses 3.2 Number of China bills (excluding amendments) by policy type and chamber, 1973–2006 5.1 Time trend of Taiwan bills introduced in each chamber, 1973–2006 6.1 Bills concerning China’s human rights, 1989–2006 6.2 Time trend of bills relating to China’s MFN status, 1973–2006 7.1 U.S. trade deficit with Japan, 1962–2006

32 33 37 38 44 45 82 106 109 125

List of tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2

House China bills by policy and type, 1973–2006 Senate China bills by policy and type, 1973–2006 Determinants of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) introduced in the House, 1973–2006 Determinants of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) introduced in the Senate, 1973–2006 Frequency of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) by chief sponsor and chamber, 1973–2006 Members of Congress who introduced ten or more China bills (excluding amendments), 1973–2006 Freestanding China bills enacted into law, 1973–2006 U.S.–China trade in goods, 1973–2006 U.S. imports of selected commodities from China in 1989–2005 Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 4444 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 4444) House roll call votes on the Taiwan Relations Act Senate roll call votes on the Taiwan Relations Act U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Taiwan’s ranking among U.S. arms sales to foreign countries Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 2386 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 2386) Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 1838 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 1838) House roll call votes on joint resolutions to disapprove of China’s MFN, 1990–2001 Logit analysis of House votes to disapprove of China’s MFN under President Bush

29 31 39 41 46 47 53 61 62 72

73 85 86 89 92

92 94 95 110 115

xiv

List of tables

6.3

Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes under Bush) 6.4 Logit analysis of House votes to disapprove of China’s MFN under President Clinton 6.5 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes under Clinton) 7.1 Total U.S. trade and deficit with Japan, Canada, and Mexico, 1985–2006 7.2 U.S.–Japan trade and automotive deficit, 1986–2006 7.3 Total U.S. trade and deficit with Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam 7.4 House roll call votes on trade and MFN extension for selected countries 7.5 Logit analysis of House roll call votes on trade with Japan, Canada, and Mexico 7.6 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes on Japan, Canada, and Mexico) 7.7 Logit analysis of House votes on extension of MFN to Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam 7.8 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes on MFN extension to Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam) A.1 Examples of coding of China bills

115 117

118 124 126 130 132 133

134 138

139 158

Acknowledgments

In the process of researching the book, I have accumulated an enormous debt to a number of individuals. Without their encouragement, support, advice, and critique, the book would never have evolved into what it is today. Jeff Jenkins offered a number of penetrating comments. Without his input, the book would have been much less alert to the complexities of congressional structures and procedures. The book also benefited from Victor Shih’s extensive knowledge of U.S.–China relations and international relations. Dennis Chong generously supported my training in quantitative methods. More than that, had it not been for his unfailing encouragement, I would have quit being a political scientist a long time ago. Sean Gailmard kindly helped me tackle many methodological questions. Each in his own way, John Bennett and Chris Bray made my life at Northwestern University more enjoyable. To Benjamin I. Page, I owe the most intellectual debt. Without his support, I would probably have not embarked on the project in the first place. His enthusiasm has sustained me throughout research and writing. He supervised the project from the beginning to the end, bringing to bear his enormous knowledge of American politics and guiding me through the art of academic writing. He certainly exemplifies the profound impact that a professor can have on students. Since we first met back in 2002, Jordan Jay Hillman has been an intellectual mentor and a fatherly figure to me. In addition to sharpening my thinking on many topics over numerous lunches which he generously paid for, he also invited me to have each Hanukkah and Passover dinner with his family. When I look back at the six years of doctoral study in the U.S., I am always grateful to Jay and his family. It was Professor Mei Renyi who inspired me to study American politics when I was a graduate student in Beijing ten years ago. Without his unwavering support, I would not have decided to pursue a doctorate. His insights into American politics have been a constant source of research ideas. Many former and current graduate students at Northwestern University helped me in a number of ways. In addition to livening up my social life, Julia Rabinovich was a great source of research ideas. Conservations with

xvi

Acknowledgments

Jean-François Godbout often ended up producing some fascinating reflections on my own research. Birol Baskan and I often discussed a wide range of topics over a cup of coffee. Jiangnan Zhu, Kai Zeng, and Qi Zhang enriched my intellectual as well as culinary life. Special thanks go to librarians at the Government Publications Section of Northwestern University Library, particularly Jiuping Chen, Beth Clausen, Ann Janda, Kathleen Murphy, Louis Takacs. Because of their smiles and patience, digging through government documents became a more pleasant process. I especially want to thank Jiuping, who never complained about my frequent and unannounced visits to his office. The Graduate School at Northwestern University provided a Graduate Research Grant, which helped cover the cost of collecting China bills. The School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University provides an ideal environment for a junior faculty. However, neither of the two institutions bears any responsibility for the views expressed in the book. Many thanks are also due the editorial staff at Routledge. Peter Sowden convinced me of the importance of the project and encouraged me to pursue it further. Tom Bates was instrumental in shaping the book as it stands now. The two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript offered a number of trenchant comments which improved the quality of the book. A short version of Chapter 4 was published in American Politics Research, and a different version of Chapters 2–3 was published in Journal of Contemporary China. I thank the two journals for granting me the right to reprint portions of the two articles. My father was deprived of a good education, but insisted that his son get the best education possible. Without his sacrifice, devotion, and love, I would not have accomplished what I have. Zhang Can has been a really good sport about being the wife of a junior faculty. Without her love, care, and sacrifice, I would not have been able to finish the project on time. There is no better way to thank her than to dedicate my first book to her.

Introduction

Only in the case of Communist China has the Congress played a major role over a long period of time to confine narrowly the president’s means of maneuver. (Herbert Carroll 1965: 161) While the executive branch is constitutionally charged with the management of foreign policy, on several occasions the Congress has decisively intruded into the management of China policy. When the Congress has chosen to immerse itself, its impact has proven profound and long-lasting. (Michel Oksenberg 1986: 218) The United States and our allies must recognize that in the upcoming “Pacific Century” no country will play a larger role in shaping the future of Asia than China, and no single bilateral relationship in the region will be more important to the US than the Sino–American one. (Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) 1996)

The U.S.–China relationship is arguably the most important international relationship in the world today. It involves one country that is the world’s foremost economic and military power, and another country that has the largest population and is enjoying rapid economic growth that could make it a great power in the near future. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of annual trade, thousands of students and scholars traveling across the Pacific each year, and issues related to Taiwan, China’s human rights, and non-proliferation make the relationship “simultaneously extensive and contentious, mutually beneficial and profoundly controversial” (Harding 1995: 49). The U.S. Congress has been unusually active in the development of this important relationship. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the China Aid Act of 1948, the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979, the annual congressional debates over the renewal of China’s Most Favored Nation trade status (MFN, now called Normal Trade Relations or NTR since 1998), and the legislative battle over granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) all attest to congressional activism in China policy.1 Since 2005,

2

Introduction

Congress has launched a series of initiatives pressuring Beijing to appreciate its allegedly undervalued currency. This record of legislative activism raises a number of crucial questions. Why is Congress so active in China policy? What are the causal factors that have influenced the collective policy of Congress, and what has influenced the legislative behavior of individual members? What overall impact has congressional activism had on U.S. China policy? Do the same dynamics that help explain congressional decision-making on U.S.–China relations also explain congressional policy-making generally? These are questions that this book attempts to answer. The first step toward answering these questions is to provide a brief survey of the literature on Congress and foreign policy so as to situate this study in proper context.

Congress and foreign policy2 The relationship between the president and Congress in foreign policy is “one of the abiding mysteries of the American system of government” (Schlesinger and De Grazia 1967: 1). The founding fathers drafted a constitution that purportedly divides foreign policy powers between the president and Congress. In reality, what the framers created is a system of “separated institutions sharing [foreign policy] powers” (Neustadt 1990: 29). Powers shared are frequently contested and jealously guarded. They are the source of endless disputes, accusations, and confrontations between the two branches. Corwin (1948: 200) famously wrote, “the Constitution, considered only for its affirmative grants of power which are capable of affecting the issue, is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.” Wilcox (1985: 38) concurred, “In some ways, our constitution is an invitation to disunity, for it divides the power in foreign policy between the two branches so as to give effect to our checks and balances system.” In Sundquist’s (1981: 16) words, the Constitution “put the two combatants [Congress and the president] in the ring and sounded the bell that sent them into endless battles.” Scholarly research on Congress’s role in foreign and defense policy has paid particular attention to three broad questions.3 What is the power of Congress in relation to the president?4 Why do members of Congress act as they do? How are decisions made in Congress? One school of thought contends that the president wins most of the battles against Congress. In proposing the two presidencies thesis, Wildavsky (1966: 7) asserted that “in the realm of foreign policy there has not been a single major issue on which Presidents, when they are serious and determined, have failed.” 5 To Spanier and Uslaner (1974: 69), “The President proposes, the President disposes.” Schlesinger’s (1973) condemnation of the imperial presidency also testifies to the dominance of the president over Congress in foreign policy.6 A number of factors are believed to be responsible for presidential dominance in foreign policy: executive monopoly of intelligence, the unitary nature of the presidency, presidential power to commit troops, public readiness to

Introduction

3

rally around the flag, and the norm of deference among members of Congress (Corwin 1948; Crabb and Holt 1984; Dahl 1950; Robinson 1967; Spanier and Uslaner 1974; Wildavsky 1966). In a word, in this view, the president dominates foreign policy-making and Congress’s role is one of “legitimating, amending, or vetoing executive proposals” (Robinson 1967: 14), or “accepting, modifying, or rejecting executive policies” (Spanier and Uslaner 1974). Some scholars disagree; they argue that patterns of executive–legislative interactions in foreign policy are cyclic, with the pendulum swinging in one branch’s favor at one time and in the other branch’s favor at another. Peppers (1975: 462) contended that the two presidencies thesis “came at the end of the propresidency swing,” suggesting that there would be a reverse swing back to Congress. In reassessing Wildavsky’s two presidencies thesis, Sigelman raised an important question: “Are we witnessing a secular change or a momentary fluctuation in the balance of power between President and Congress?” His answer was unequivocal: “the pendulum of power often shifts. In crisis periods, power tends to gravitate toward the Presidency, but eventually Congress has always moved to reassert its positions” (Sigelman 1979: 1204). Continuing with his boxing metaphor, Sundquist (1981: 16) noted, “The president may appear as the heftier contestant, he cannot win every round; the balance will continue to shift back and forth.” Indeed, congressional assertiveness in foreign policy since the 1970s appears to support the pendulum thesis of executive-legislative relationship (Abshire and Nurnberger 1981; Forsythe 1988; Franck and Weisband 1979; Ripley and Lindsay 1993; Wildavsky 1991). Other scholars have proposed a contingency view of executive-legislative interactions in foreign policy.7 For them, the balance of power between the president and Congress is not fixed; instead it varies considerably from one policy area to another. Lindsay and Ripley (1993) are the most forceful advocates of the contingency view. Based on distinctions among policies made by previous scholars (Huntington 1961: 3–4; Lowi 1967: 324–325; Ripley and Franklin 1980: 23–24), they contended that presidential power “is at a maximum” in crisis policy, “less extensive” in strategic policy, but “at its weakest” in structural policy (Lindsay and Ripley 1993: 18–22).8 To put it a different way, the power of Congress tends to be at its strongest in structural policy, at its weakest in crisis policy, and in between the two extremes in strategic policy. Instead of ascertaining which branch prevails under what circumstances and why, another line of research has focused on the causal factors underlying foreign policy-related legislative behavior of individual members of Congress, particularly roll call voting.9 Inspired by Miller and Stokes’ (1963) path-breaking study of constituency influence on members of Congress, this line of research can be further divided into two major sections. The first section examines the determinants of members’ votes on defense spending, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that ideology, not constituency

4

Introduction

interests, is the best predictor of roll call votes (e.g., Bernstein and Anthony 1974; Cobb 1969; Fleisher 1985; Lindsay 1990; McCormick and Black 1983; Moyer 1973; Ray 1981; Russett 1970; Wayman 1985). The second section concentrates on foreign trade policy. Here one study after another have reported strong evidence that party and constituency interests are the major determinants of members’ roll call votes (e.g., Bailey 2001; Bailey and Brady 1998; Conley 1999; Conybeare 1991; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998; McArthur and Marks 1988; Tosini and Tower 1987; Wink et al. 1996). A few scholars have also examined the process of foreign policy decisionmaking in Congress. The process consists of two components: committees and parties. Ray (1980) looked at the degree of responsiveness of the Armed Services Committees to the parent chambers. McCormick (1993) examined decision-making in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deering (1993) the Armed Services Committees, and White (1993) the Appropriations Subcommittees on Defense and Foreign Operations. Sinclair (1993) described the role of party leaders in foreign and defense policy, situating her analysis in the context of increasing intra-party homogeneity and inter-party heterogeneity since the 1970s and the resulting rise of party leadership. To sum up, students of Congress and foreign policy have conducted extensive research on the balance of power between the president and Congress, the causal factors that influence roll call votes, and the process of decisionmaking within Congress. These three issues will likely continue to animate scholarly debate on Congress and foreign policy. In fact, this book represents another attempt to address the three issues. However, instead of analyzing each of them separately, it combines the first and third into one broad question that asks how exogenous (e.g., constitutional rules) and endogenous (e.g., committees) structures and procedures influence Congress’s China policy. As is apparent to many students of American politics, this approach is grounded in the new institutionalism, which no scholar to my knowledge has applied to the study of U.S.–China relations. To address the second issue, I first examine roll call votes on three China-related issues, paying particular attention to the effects of partisanship, ideology, and constituency interests— the three factors that previous studies have reported as the major determinants of roll call behavior. Then I go beyond the case of China by analyzing roll call votes on six countries that are similar to China in relevant respects. A comparison of findings from the China case and those from the six countries suggests a general theory of roll call voting on foreign policy. At this point, some readers may pause and ask, “Wait a second, why do you choose China?” Answers to this important question are in the next section.

Introduction

5

Why China? An active Congress It is not too much exaggeration to say that of all the bilateral relationships the U.S. has with other countries, Congress has been most active in the relationship with China. One of Congress’s earliest actions was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded all Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. for ten years.10 Half a century later, under pressure from American silver producers Congress enacted the Silver Purchase Act of 1934 that had a devastating impact on China’s economy by driving up the value of the silver-based Chinese currency (e.g., Ho et al. 2005; Roberts 1936).11 When China was engulfed in a civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists in the late 1940s, Congress passed the China Aid Act of 1948 in order to salvage the Nationalist regime led by Chiang Kai-shek. After the Chinese Communists’ victory, Congress vehemently opposed U.S. recognition of China and China’s admission to the United Nations, delaying the former until 1979 and the latter until 1971.12 Meanwhile, Congress remained steadfast in its support for Chiang and the regime he established on Taiwan, passing the U.S.–Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, the Formosa Resolution, and the Taiwan Relations Act. Congress was conspicuously inactive in China policy in the decade after normalization. American euphoria about China that had been building since Nixon’s 1972 trip, which reached its zenith in the aftermath of Deng Xiaoping’s successful visit to the U.S. in 1979, plus the election of Ronald Reagan, who was a staunch supporter of Taiwan, probably diminished Congress’s interest in China policy.13 Yet this interlude of congressional reticence was cut short by the Tiananmen Incident. Since then, Congress has been extremely active in nearly every aspect of China policy. As Mann wrote: But especially after 1989, Congress’s involvement in China policy was far more pervasive. American decisions about Chinese students, grain sales, human rights, arms-control policies, business contracts and transfers of technology were not only influenced but, in some cases, initiated by Congress. (1999: 11) Moreover, from the Chinese perspective, Congress’s China policy has almost always been one of antagonism and punitive actions. The above review of Congress’s involvement in U.S.–Taiwan policy amply illuminates this point. It is primarily because of staunch congressional support for Taiwan that Beijing has not been able to regain control of the island. Another example of congressional antagonism involves MFN renewal. Congress first granted China MFN status in 1980 and had not objected to presidential renewal of it until 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Incident. Each year between 1990 and 2001, Congress attempted to revoke MFN or to add various conditions to its

6

Introduction

renewal (Pregelj 2001). Twice (both in 1992), Congress was just one step away from enacting legislation attaching human rights and other conditions to the renewal of China’s MFN. More recently, Congress initiated a series of punitive actions against China:

•

•

•

•

•

In May 2006, under pressure from Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science–State– Justice–Commerce and a long-time critic of China, the State Department announced that it would not use computers acquired from Lenovo, a computer company partly owned by the Chinese government, for classified work. The State Department initially planned to use 900 out of 16,000 Lenovo computers it purchased for classified work (Blustein 2006b; Kirchgaessner 2006; O’Neil 2006; Perez 2006). On June 30 2005, the House voted twice to block China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC for short) from acquiring the Californiabased Unocal Corporation. The first vote was on a provision to HR 3058 that would prohibit the Treasury Department from using any funds to favorably recommend the sale of Unocal to CNOOC. The provision passed 333–92. The second vote was on H.Res. 344 stating that U.S. national security would be jeopardized if the proposed Chinese takeover goes through. The resolution passed 398–15 (CQWR 2005: 1833, 1906, 1952–53). CNOOC eventually dropped its bid. On March 3 2005, confronted with mounting trade deficit with China, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill (S 295) to impose a stiff 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese imports unless the Chinese government appreciated its allegedly undervalued currency, which is believed to be partly responsible for the competitiveness of Chinese imports (Andrews 2006; Blustein 2006a; MacLeod 2006; Magnier and Lee 2006). Between February and July 2005, six resolutions were introduced in Congress, denouncing Beijing’s attempts to justify its use of force against Taiwan by enacting an anti-secession law, which was eventually ratified by the People’s Congress on March 14 2005 (Culpan and Pan 2005; Los Angeles Times 2006; Pan 2005). On February 3 and March 17 2005, Congressman Henry Hyde (R-IL) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) respectively introduced H.Res.57 and S.Res.91, urging the European Union to maintain its arms embargo on China. The former passed 411–3 and the latter with unanimous consent. Partly because of strong opposition from Congress, the European Union postponed the lifting of the embargo (CQWR 2005: 714; Los Angeles Times 2005).

Not surprisingly, Beijing has consistently viewed Congress as the “anti-China bastion” in the U.S. and frequently lashed out at it. “There are always people in Congress who oppose improvements in U.S.–China relations. Every time

Introduction

7

relations get better, they will go out of their way to create obstacles, but history will show this to be futile,” said the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, referring to a series of China-related bills passed by the House immediately after President Jiang Zemin’s visit to the U.S. in 1997 (quoted in The Australian 1997). In 1999, a resolution was introduced in each chamber, attacking China’s human rights record and calling on the Chinese government to launch an official investigation of the Tiananmen Incident, and Beijing was furious. “The attempt of those anti-China U.S. congressmen to interfere in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights is doomed to failure,” said Zhu Bangzhao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson (quote in Laris 1999). In reaction to the Cox Report on alleged Chinese thefts of U.S. nuclear secrets, the Chinese blasted the Cox Committee, accusing members of the committee of “clinging to Cold-War mentality,” harboring “deep prejudice and hostility toward China,” and creating “a lot of rumors . . . to stir up anti-Chinese sentiments” (quoted in ibid.). During congressional debate over CNOOC’s proposed bid for Unocal, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement demanding that “the U.S. Congress correct its mistaken ways of politicizing economic and trade issues and stop interfering in the normal commercial exchanges between enterprises of the two countries” (quoted in Harney and Roberts 2005). Scholarly neglect Yet despite congressional activism and antagonism, only a few scholars have paid close attention to Congress’s role in China policy. This scholarly neglect appears to have something to do with the American constitutional structure. Though Congress, particularly the Senate, does have a number of foreign policy powers such as treaty ratification and approval of ambassadorial appointments, it is the executive branch that is constitutionally charged with the management of U.S. foreign policy. In the case of China policy, it is President Nixon who initiated the normalization process; it is President Carter who negotiated the terms of normalization; and it is President George H. W. Bush who almost single-handedly salvaged the relationship from a total breakdown in the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident. As a result, some scholars of U.S.–China relations may have underestimated Congress’s influence in China policy. What Chang (1993) concluded about Congress’s role in U.S.–China relations seems to be representative of the general impression among them: For the most part, Congress and other non-administration sources are excluded from the dialogue and discourse in the making of China policy. When their voices are heard sporadically over the course of SinoAmerican relations, they usually come out supporting the actions and decisions taken by the White House. (Chang 1993: 244)

8

Introduction

Thus most students of U.S.–China relations tend to focus on the executive branch (e.g., Harding 1992; Lampton 2001; Mann 1999; Ross 1986; Ross 1995; Suettinger 2003; Tucker 1983; Tucker 1994). Those who do pay particular attention to Congress usually focus on the late 1940 up until the late 1950s, a period when Congress was unusually active and influential in China policy (e.g., Dulles 1972; Finkelstein 1993; Grasso 1987; Purifoy 1976; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983). Some scholars also highlight Congress’s role in the normalization process, particularly the enactment of the TRA (Kraft 1991; Sutter 1983; Tan 1992). Only a handful of scholars have conducted exclusive analysis of Congress’s China policy (Mann 2001; Oksenberg 1986; Sutter 2001; Xie 1993; Yang 2000; Zhang 1995). Nor have students of American politics showed strong interest in Congress’s role in China policy, notwithstanding the voluminous literature on Congress’s role in U.S. foreign policy generally (e.g., Corwin 1948; Crabb and Holt 1984; Dahl 1950; Franck and Weisband 1979; Lindsay 1994; Ripley and Lindsay 1993; Robinson 1967; Spanier and Uslaner 1974) and roll call voting on foreign policy (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cronin and Fordham 1999; Fordham 1998; Lindsay and Ripley 1992; McCormick and Wittkopf 1990; McCormick and Wittkopf 1992). The discipline’s emphasis on rigorous theorizing is partly responsible for the lack of interest. China is “merely one case,” it is said, and no matter how important it is, you cannot build a good theory with one case. As a result, only a few students of American politics have paid detailed attention to Congress’s involvement in China policy (Crabb and Holt 1984; Nokken 2003; Rourke 1983: 74–76, 130–145; Westerfield 1955: Chapter 12, Chapter 16). However, it is not just scholars who have largely neglected Congress. Policy-makers in Beijing, after many years of frustration with and criticism of Congress’s China policy, have yet to make earnest and concerted efforts to understand the mysterious beast called Congress and to influence its behavior (see Harney and Roberts 2005; Ma 2006; Mufson 1998; Weisskopf 1993). “Some of the older [members of the Chinese] leadership don’t understand that simply because a senator gets up on the floor of the Senate and says some uncomplimentary things about China that [sic] that’s not necessarily government policy,” said James Sasser, former U.S. ambassador to China (quoted in Mufson 1998). When the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister suggested in a meeting that Congress not bring up something about China, an impatient Senator John Glenn (D-OH) snapped back: “You just don’t understand our form of government if you think anybody can tell a particular Congressman or Senator not to bring up something about China” (quoted in Sciolino 1996). Says a public affairs director at a large U.S. manufacturer with considerable investment in China, “The Chinese might have got the hang of capitalism, but they don’t understand democracy and the free press yet and that shows up in the way they misread the political mood here” (quoted in Harney and Roberts 2005). The former Chinese President Jiang Zemin himself candidly admitted in 1995 that the Chinese

Introduction

9

“haven’t done enough lobbying of U.S. Congress” (quoted in Sciolino 1996).

Contributions of the book This study attempts to make a number of significant contributions to scholarly research on Congress’s role in China policy. First and foremost, whereas most previous scholars have examined Congress’s China policy either at the macro level (Mann 2001; Oksenberg 1986; Sutter 2001) or at the micro level (Nokken 2003; Xie 1993; Xie 2006; Yang 2000), this study offers careful analyses at both levels. At the macro level, I examine the patterns of Chinaspecific bills, resolutions, and amendments (hereafter referred to collectively as “China bills” unless otherwise specified) introduced in each chamber in 1973–2006. No scholar to my knowledge has performed a similar study. This is the major contribution of this book. The purpose of this analysis is to provide additional support for the new institutionalist claim that how legislators’ preferences are aggregated also affects what policy outcomes are arrived at. To my knowledge, no scholar has applied the new institutionalism to the study of U.S.–China relations. In particular, macro level analysis focuses on the impact of congressional committees, bicameralism, and presidential veto on Congress’s China policy. Micro level analysis focuses on roll call votes. While previous studies examined only one or two issues in U.S.–China relations, this analysis will be the first to analyze roll call votes on the three most controversial issues in U.S.–China relations, namely, U.S.–Taiwan relations, U.S.–China trade, and China’s human rights.14 Taiwan has been the central issue in the bilateral relationship since 1949. Human rights have been a constant source of dispute since 1989. As the U.S. trade deficit with China has skyrocketed since the mid-1990s, bilateral trade has become an immensely controversial topic on Capitol Hill. Second, most previous studies of Congress’s China policy are qualitative analyses relying almost exclusively on observations, unstructured interviews, and/or anecdotal evidence (Crabb 1985; Mann 2001; Oksenberg 1986; Rourke 1983; Sutter 2001; Westerfield 1955; Yang 2000), with only a few of them having both qualitative evidence and quantitative data (Nokken 2003; Xie 1993; Zhang 1995). This study will combine both, but with far more and better quantitative data. For instance, particularly helpful is the dataset of China bills introduced in each chamber between 1973 and 2006. Some other data such as state exports to China, which were simply not available to previous authors, are now available thanks to efforts by scholars and U.S. federal government agencies. Third, I also highlight the implications of my findings for policy-makers in both Washington and Beijing as well as for organizations and individuals interested in promoting friendly U.S.–China relations. Considering the importance and complexity of the relationship, the controversy it has generated in both societies, and congressional activism in China policy, it is highly desirable

10

Introduction

that the policy implications of this study be discussed. The aim is to help policy-makers as well as concerned organizations and individuals work for a better U.S.–China relationship, one that is characterized by fewer disputes, conflicts, or confrontations and more dialogue, cooperation, and partnership. Apart from its significant contributions to scholarly research on Congress and China policy, this study also marks a small but important step in building a general theory of congressional policy-making. To ascertain whether the same dynamics that explains congressional policy-making on China-related issues also explains congressional policy-making in general, I compare China with six similar countries: Japan, Canada, and Mexico on trade and Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam on human rights. The findings from this comparative analysis lay the foundation for a general theory of congressional policy-making.

Structure of the book Chapter 1 spells out the theoretical foundation of my analysis of congressional policy-making toward China. The first part reviews the new institutionalism as applied to the study of the U.S. Congress. While legislative scholars usually focus on endogenous structures and rules such as committees and House special rules (e.g., Schickler 2000; Schickler and Rich 1997; Shepsle 1986; Shepsle and Weingast 1981, 1984, 1987; Sinclair 1994), I also examine exogenous structures and rules imposed by the U.S. Constitution, i.e., bicameralism and presidential veto. The most important prediction from the new institutionalism is that these endogenous and exogenous institutions severely constrain the ability of Congress to assert itself in foreign policy through legislative means. Thus it would be misleading to judge Congress’s influence in China policy by merely counting how many China bills were enacted into binding legislation that prescribes or proscribes presidential actions. The second part reviews past research on roll call voting, with particular attention to three factors: party, ideology, and constituency interests. Chapter 2 presents the general patterns of China bills introduced in 1973– 2006. The first part describes the number, type, and nature of China bills in each chamber and documents the time trend of China bills. The second part attempts to identify macro-level determinants of the number of China bills introduced in each chamber. I report that far more China bills were introduced in each chamber after the Tiananmen Incident. Also, the first session of each Congress witnessed more China bills than the second session. In addition, more China bills were introduced when Republicans were the majority in the House and when a Democratic president was in the White House. Chapter 3 continues to analyze China bills in order to illustrate the impact of legislative rules and procedures on Congress’s China policy. I adduce evidence that congressional committees as gatekeepers have kept most China policy proposals from Congress’s legislative agenda, that the Senate has served as a check on House activism in China policy, and that the supermajority

Introduction

11

requirement for overriding presidential veto has repeatedly thwarted congressional attempts to enact major changes to China policy. The next three chapters are analyses of China-related roll call votes. Chapter 4 examines roll call voting on HR 4444, the bill that granted permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China. Party has the largest impact, with Democrats considerably more likely to vote against the bill (hence against their own president Bill Clinton). The ideological ends of both parties, instead of voting against each other, actually formed a coalition against the bill. Constituency interests generally have rather weak impact on the vote. Chapter 5 analyzes House votes on two bills regarding U.S.–Taiwan relations, namely, the U.S.–Taiwan Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Cooperation Act of 1997 and the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act of 2000. Controlling for other factors, the impact of constituency interests is far weaker than that of party or ideology in both votes. Without controlling for hawkishness, party has the largest impact. Once hawkishness is controlled for, party no longer has any significant impact and hawkishness turns out to have the biggest impact. Though both liberals and conservatives seemed to be supportive of the two bills, the former was much less so than the latter. Moreover, a comparison of findings from the two votes suggests that many members of Congress voted strategically on the second one. In Chapter 6, I first offer a detailed historical-comparative account of congressional involvement in China’s human rights. A central theme of this account is that the Cold War had profoundly shaped Congress’s human rights policy. In the latter part of the Cold War when the two countries formed a strategic alliance against the former Soviet Union, Congress largely turned a blind eye to China’s human rights problems. The demise of the former Soviet Union, plus the Tiananmen Incident, liberated congressional critics and resulted in unprecedented congressional activism in China’s human rights. Next, I analyze the ten House votes on joint resolutions to disapprove of China’s MFN status in order to punish its alleged violation of human rights. During the Bush years, Republicans were consistently more likely to oppose these resolutions than Democrats. During the Clinton years, Democrats demonstrated little party loyalty. Except for one year, the ideological ends of both parties formed an alliance on these resolutions. Moreover, the strength of this alliance increased during the Clinton years. Chapter 7 goes beyond the case of China by analyzing roll call voting on six other countries: Japan, Canada, and Mexico on trade and Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam on MFN extension. Constituency interests have bigger impact on trade votes involving Japan, Canada, and Mexico than on the China trade vote (i.e., the vote on China’s PNTR). Whereas liberals and conservatives were almost always united on the two issues involving China, such a coalition appeared far less frequently on votes involving these six countries. Finally, loyalty to one’s president seems to be the most important determinant of votes on MFN extension to the other three countries, but it has much smaller impact on votes involving China.

12

Introduction

The final chapter concludes the book. In addition to summarizing the various findings, I also discuss the implications of the findings for policy-makers in Beijing and Washington as well as for concerned organizations and individuals who are interested in promoting friendly relations between the two countries. Two caveats are in order before I proceed. First, when I speak of “Congress’s China policy,” I do not mean that Congress is a monolithic bloc speaking with one coherent voice on how to deal with U.S.–China relations. To begin with, Congress has two chambers—the House of Representatives and the Senate—and the two chambers do not always agree with each other on foreign policy. Second, the House has 435 members and the Senate 100 members, and each member is independently elected by—and hence is individually accountable to—his or her constituents, not to other members or the president. This electoral independence means that under many circumstances members are free to disagree with each other or with the president, without fearing retribution from fellow members or the White House. Thus, it is possible to have “435 secretaries of state” in the House and 100 more in the Senate (Washington Post 1978a). In a word, it would be naïve to expect uniformity of views and attitudes among members of Congress. Congressman Clement Zablocki (D-WI) aptly captured what this means for China policy: When anyone refers to a “congressional view” on a matter such as this [U.S. policy toward China], there is not just a single view. Perhaps one could say that there are 435 views in the House and 100 in the Senate, and that these may not always be the same from one week to another. (quoted in Yang 2000: 29) Second, the very notion of China policy, as Oksenberg (1986: 208) cautioned, is “an intellectual abstraction” that, upon close examination, can lose its purported analytical clarity. China policy is the sum of official actions proposed or implemented regarding U.S. relations with China. It encompasses many issues: arms sales to Taiwan, textile quotas, military relations, cultural and educational exchanges, export control, IPR protection, and so on. China policy also includes “issues that primarily concern other countries but in which China is a significant, perhaps silent partner” (ibid.). U.S. policy toward North Korea stands out as a key example, since China is the single most important ally of that country. U.S. policies toward Pakistan and some Middle East countries are also complicated by China’s involvement in those regions, mainly through its actual or alleged sales of weapons. Furthermore, all these issues are not only part of China policy, but also part of broad U.S. foreign policy as well—non-proliferation, trade, human rights, etc. Thus there are some problems related with the term “China policy,” though it continues to be an analytically useful concept.

1

The new institutionalism and legislative behavior

By the mode of its election and the greater length of the term by which its seats are held, the Senate is almost altogether removed from that temptation to servile obedience to the whims of popular constituencies to which the House is constantly subject, without as much courage as the Senate has to guard its virtue. (Woodrow Wilson 2006: 153) Just as the standing committees control legislative action, so the chairmen are masters of their committees . . . In short, committee chairmen exercise crucial powers over the legislative process. (George Galloway 1953: 289)

Starting with Mayhew’s (1974) path-breaking work, the study of Congress has taken on a decidedly rational choice flavor. That is, members of Congress are assumed to be utility-maximizing rational actors who have certain goals and preferences, and these goals and preferences determine their behavior. Yet in pursuing the various goals, they are constrained by a multitude of structures and procedures that govern collective decision-making in Congress. These structures and procedures are the focus of a long line of research called the new institutionalism. Yet to my knowledge no scholar has applied the new institutionalism to the study of U.S.–China relations. Meanwhile, inspired by Miller and Stokes’s (1963) classic study, students of American politics have conducted voluminous research on roll call voting. A handful of students of U.S.–China relations have also examined Chinarelated roll call votes (Xie 1993; Zhang 1995). With few exceptions, previous studies of roll call voting tend to focus on the impact of three sets of factors, namely, party, constituency, and ideology.

The new institutionalism The new institutionalism is a variant of the rational choice theory.1 More accurately, it is a response to the rational theory that emphasizes the

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New institutionalism, legislative behavior

institutional context in which rational individuals interact (for a review, see Shepsle 1989). Underlying the rational choice theory is the assumption— borrowed from homo economicus—that individuals are purposeful agents who have preferences and try to maximize them. The rational choice theory itself is a rejection of the sociological approach that explains individual behavior on the basis of social norm, status, and learned responses. Yet in hailing the utility-maximizing individual, rational choice theorists seem to care little about the context in which individual behavior takes place or the sources of preferences and beliefs. As a result, rational man becomes “an atom unconnected to the social structure in which he or she is embedded” (Shepsle 1989: 134). The new institutionalism attempts to address this difficulty by turning to institutions in which individuals are embedded. Institutions include both structures and procedures. In the study of legislative politics, structures refer to “the division and specialization of labor (committees), leadership organization, staffing arrangements, party groupings,” and procedures “rules of debate, amendment, and those regulating other features of daily official life” (ibid.: 135). Legislative structures and procedures govern how Congress conducts its legislative business. The U.S. Constitution does not provide for them. Instead, Article I, Section V reads: “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings . . .” As a result, at the beginning of each Congress, a simple majority decides on the kind of structures and procedures that will govern the flow of legislative business in each chamber. Out of respect for precedents and because of the transaction cost involved in formulating, negotiating, and passing new ones, legislative structures and procedures of one Congress are usually inherited from the previous Congress with few modifications.2 In the theoretical literature on Congress, legislative structures and procedures usually—if not always—mean committees and House special rules. But this is a rather narrow definition that includes only endogenous structures and procedures. In this book I define legislative institutions more broadly to include two exogenous institutions: bicameralism and presidential veto. This broad definition should not be controversial. First, no bill may be enacted into law unless it is approved in identical form by both chambers. Second, Congress and the president share legislative powers in that the president may veto a piece of legislation, but his veto is subject to override by a two-thirds majority in both chambers. One of the most important insights from the new institutionalism is that legislative structures and procedures—particularly committees and special rules—induce equilibrium. This is called structure-induced equilibrium, or SIE for short (e.g., Shepsle 1979, 1986, 1989; Shepsle and Weingast 1981). Thus, the new institutionalism provides an answer to the social choice problem first identified by Arrow (1951) and further developed by other scholars (e.g., Black 1958; McKelvey 1976; Plott 1967; Riker 1988; Schofield 1978). To make a long story short, the social choice problem refers to the absence of a stable outcome under simple majority rule or other decision-making

New institutionalism, legislative behavior

15

processes in multi-dimensional politics. The new institutionalist response is to set up structures and procedures that reduce multi-dimensional politics to one-dimensional politics. In the one-dimensional world, the median voter prevails and a stable outcome can be produced (Black 1958; Downs 1957). Congressional committees To understand Congress, one must understand its committees. For most members of Congress, political life on Capitol Hill begins and ends with committees. Moreover, it is committees to which bills are referred; it is committees that hold hearings on bills; and it is in committees where bills are marked up. In a word, committees are where the bulk of legislative work gets done. Woodrow Wilson (2006: 69) famously wrote, “Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-room is Congress at work.” Because of the central role of committees in the legislative process, they “have life-or-death control over legislative proposals” (Johnson et al. 1994: 450–451). As Bryce (1911: 157) vividly put it, “A bill comes before its committee with no presumption in its favor but rather as a shivering ghost stands before Minos in the nether world.” Committees and rules of procedures lie at the heart of the theoretical literature on Congress (e.g., Shepsle 1979, 1986, 1989; Shepsle and Weingast 1981, 1987, 1994; Weingast and Marshall 1988). While conceptually distinct, committees and rules of procedures are actually inseparable. For rules of procedures give shape to the committee structure and constitute the major source of committee power. Wrote Woodrow Wilson (2006: 62), “The privileges of the Standing Committees are the beginning and the end of the rules.” Under the committee structure, each committee can be viewed as responsible for one policy dimension. Each and every bill—with rare exceptions— must be referred to the committee(s) with proper jurisdiction over the policy content of the bill. The chamber ordinarily may not vote on a bill unless it is approved by the referred committee. Moreover, committees have ex post veto power, i.e., the power to kill a piece of legislation at the conference stage (Shepsle and Weingast 1987).3 Last but not least, the germaneness rule, closed rule, and other special rules in the House impose severe restrictions on amendments offered by non-committee members on the floor. These special rules empower committee to be monopoly supplier of policy alternatives to the status quo (Denzau and Mackay 1983; Krehbiel 1991: Chapter 5). To put it a different way, they give committees gatekeeping rights.4 As a result of gatekeeping rights, majority cycling can be avoided and equilibrium induced because the chamber needs to consider only one issue at a time, instead of voting on a multitude of policy issues at the same time. And in single-dimension politics, the median voter is where the equilibrium lies. In a word, the committee structure transforms multi-dimensional politics into single-dimension politics and induces equilibrium. In so far as substantive policy is concerned, gatekeeping rights enable

16

New institutionalism, legislative behavior

committee members to keep controversial or undesirable policy proposals from reaching the floor, while at the same time proposing policy alternatives that they prefer. To be sure, the full chamber does have certain tools—e.g., the discharge rule—to force a committee to report a bill to the floor, but these tools are rarely used and, even if they are used, almost always fail (Krehbiel et al. 1987).5 Maltzman (1997: 65) thus asserted, “Undoubtedly, the most important tool possessed by committee is their gatekeeping power.” Woodrow Wilson, that astute student of American government and politics, described in vivid language the power of committees over bills: The fate of bills committed is generally not uncertain. As a rule, a bill committed is a bill doomed. When it goes from the clerk’s desk to a committee-room it crosses a parliamentary bridge of sighs to dim dungeons of silence whence it will never return. (Wilson 2006: 63) Moreover, gatekeeping rights—along with possible committee-floor similarity in policy preferences—ensure that bills reported by committees almost always prevail on the floor.6 For if a bill approved by a committee is voted down on the floor, the committee—as a monopoly supplier of policy alternatives—can retaliate in the future by not reporting any bill favored by the floor majority. Fully aware of the gatekeeping rights of committees, a member will usually vote for bills that come to the floor. Thus Congressman Clem Miller (1962: 110) wrote, “Congress is a collection of committees that come together in a Chamber periodically to approve one another’s actions.” Because of gatekeeping rights, committees can serve a variety of useful purposes. In the informational theory of legislative organization, gatekeeping rights encourage committee members to acquire policy expertise because they make it difficult for non-committee members (i.e., non-experts) to challenge the policy proposals of committee members (Krehbiel 1991: Chapter 5). In the distributive theory, committees help members achieve their electoral goals because they facilitate gains from trade (Mayhew 1974; Weingast and Marshall 1988). In the partisan theory, committees become tools of the majority party to set the legislative agenda (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005).7 Aided by the gatekeeping rights of committees, members with intense policy preferences are expected to have significant impact on substantive policy. If they also happen to be the chairmen of committees or subcommittees, then almost certainly they will exert disproportionate power in the policy areas about which they have intense preferences. Janda et al. (1995: 380) wrote, “Government by committee vests a tremendous amount of power in the committees and subcommittees of Congress—especially in their leaders.” In the realm of foreign policy, chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have often held up ambassadorial appointments, and their counterparts in the House have often stalled on foreign aid and State Department authorization bills (McCormick 1993).

New institutionalism, legislative behavior

17

Bicameralism The Senate, where each state is equally represented—as opposed to proportional representation on the basis of population in the House—was originally created as a political compromise between the smaller states and the larger states at the Constitutional Convention (e.g., Madison 1969; Wood 1969; Wirls and Wirls 2004). In the arguments of James Madison, the father of the Constitution, what once was a political compromise became a necessary good for republican government. In particular, the Senate can serve as a check on the more numerical and hence presumably more volatile House. “The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders, into intemperate and pernicious resolutions,” asserted Madison (1982d: 315). Woodrow Wilson (2006: 154) agreed with Madison, asserting that being “less quickly sensitive to the hasty or impulsive movements of public opinion constitute its [the Senate’s] value as a check, a steadying weight, in our very democratic system.” Toward this end, the framers made the Senate much smaller in size, stipulated special qualifications for and election of Senators, and gave them a much longer tenure.8 In a word, the Senate as a separate and distinct body is expected to be a “cooling saucer” to the House.9 Wrote James Madison (1969: 83), “The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” As Fenno (1982: 3) nicely pointed out, the founding fathers, suspicious of “certain infirmities endemic to large, popularly elected legislatures—tendencies to instability in action, to impulsive, unpredictable, changeable decisions, and to a short-run view of good public policy,” set up the Senate as “a restraining, stabilizing counterweight, as being a source of a more deliberate, more knowledgeable, longer-run view of good public policy.” The single most important policy implication of bicameralism is that it significantly increases the difficulty of lawmaking. First, “structural differences between House and Senate elections ensure that policy views will not be distributed and aggregated identically in the two chambers” (Binder 2003: 81). Second, it takes only one chamber—presumably the less numerical Senate—to scuttle a piece of legislation. A long line of research has produced evidence that bicameralism indeed increases the probability of legislative gridlock (e.g., Binder 2003; Krehbiel 1998; Brady and Volden 1998; Patterson and Mughan 1999; Tsebelis and Money 1997). Presidential veto Presidential veto and the supermajority requirement for congressional override clearly reflect the founding fathers’ deep suspicion of “accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether

18

New institutionalism, legislative behavior

of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective” (Madison 1982a: 244). Two means were adopted to prevent the concentration of powers. As Madison (1982c: 262) wrote, “A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary controul [sic] on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” For Madison, the “auxiliary precautions” consist of a constitutional structure under which “the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others” (Madison 1982b: 252). In Federalist Papers No. 51, he most forcefully and eloquently spelled out the rationale behind such a constitutional structure: But the general security against a graduate concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defence [sic] must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to check ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. (Madison 1982c: 262) The Constitution that was ratified in 1787 epitomizes Madison’s theory of checks and balances. In the realm of foreign policy, the president is the Commander-in-Chief, receives and appoints ambassadors, and negotiates treaties, but he is also instructed to seek the “advice and consent” of the Senate on treaties and ambassadorial appointments. Moreover, only Congress can declare war against a foreign country, and it is Congress that appropriates money to raise and support the armed forces. Since the president and Congress share foreign policy powers, congressional participation in foreign policy-making becomes unavoidable. As a result, the two branches have engaged in a perennial struggle for foreign policy prerogatives (e.g., Corwin 1948; Crabb and Holt 1984; Lindsay 1994; Schlesinger 1972). Above all, the founding fathers gave each branch a powerful institutional weapon with which to guard its foreign policy powers. The president may veto a piece of legislation passed by Congress, but the latter may override the veto with a two-thirds majority. Because of the veto and override, neither branch can absolutely dominate the other. Nonetheless, it is extremely difficult to assemble the constitutionally required supermajority to override the president’s veto. Congress has two distinct chambers, 535 members, and dozens of committees. Each member (Senators in particular), committee, and chamber may be able to derail any veto-overriding battle. In fact, since 1973 only one presidential veto in foreign policy has been overridden, and that is President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act. Thus in the final analysis, the supermajority requirement gives the president

New institutionalism, legislative behavior

19

a decisive advantage vis-à-vis Congress, making it hard for the latter to pass substantive legislation prescribing or proscribing policy actions for the former. As a result, Congress often turns to other means of influence in foreign policy. The other means include procedural legislation, participation in diplomacy, framing public opinion, and creating situations that generate desired reactions from the executive branch (see Franck and Weisband 1979; Lindsay 1993; Lindsay and Ripley 1993).

Determinants of roll call voting on foreign policy There is an enormous body of research on roll call voting on foreign and defense policy (see Lindsay and Ripley 1992, for an excellent review). Yet previous studies tend to focus almost exclusively on what I call “countryblind” issues such as defense spending (e.g., Bartels 1991; Clotfelter 1970; Cobb 1969; Lindsay 1990; Moyer 1973; Ray 1981; Russett 1970; Wayman 1985) and foreign trade policy (e.g., Bailey and Brady 1998; Conley 1999; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998). Only a handful of scholars have examined roll call votes concerning particular countries (Leogrande and Brenner 1993; McCormick and Black 1983; Nokken 2003; Xie 1993, 2006), This focus on country-blind issues may be attributable to the prevailing belief among many scholars that any analysis of roll call votes concerning a particular country is a case study and thus has little theoretical value. Yet this theoretical challenge can be overcome by increasing the number of countries studied. In fact, this is the task I set for myself in Chapter 7. In this section, I will briefly discuss the effects of three factors on roll call voting, namely, party, constituency interests, and ideology. Before I proceed, however, I need to say a few words about the use of roll call data. Voting on a roll call is merely one of the myriad legislative activities a member of Congress is routinely engaged in. Other legislative activities include sponsoring legislation, holding hearings, participating in floor debates, etc. Yet of all the legislative activities, scholars seem to be particularly interested in roll call voting. Several factors may explain this special interest among scholars (for the pros and cons of using roll call data, see Schneider 1979: Chapter 4; Xie 1993: 12–14; Zhang 1995: 111–115). First, roll call votes are easily accessible. Second, roll call votes are almost free of measurement errors. By contrast, interviews or surveys often have measurement errors due to interview techniques, question wording, coding, or response rates, to name just a few. Third, roll call votes are often good indicators of a member’s preferences. A member may support protectionism at a labor union gathering and denounce it at a chamber of commerce meeting, but he or she can cast only one vote on a trade bill. When forced to go on record, members generally cast votes in line with their preferences, whether those preferences derive from personal beliefs, constituency influence, or party leadership. To be sure, roll call votes have their disadvantages too. First, though roll call votes reveal preferences, they tell nothing about the intensity of preferences.

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New institutionalism, legislative behavior

That is, no matter how much a member supports or opposes a bill, he or she has only one vote to cast. Second, when members vote strategically, it would be wrong to take a roll call vote at its face value. Thus a conservative may vote for a liberal amendment to a bill that would probably pass on its own, knowing that the bill with the amendment would be voted down on the floor. The Powell Amendment that killed federal aid to public schools is one of the best examples of strategic voting (see Stewart 2001: 33–35). Last but not least, roll call votes are informative only on issues that reach the final stage of the legislative process; they tell us nothing about issues that are excluded from the legislative agenda. However, since I do not use roll call votes to study preference intensity or agenda setting, these shortcomings become largely irrelevant. Strategic voting appears to be present in one vote that I examine, but I have taken it into account in the analysis. Party “[P]olitical parties created democracy, and . . . modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties,” declared E.E. Schattschneider (1942: 1). Political parties can be viewed as endogenous institutions created by politicians to achieve certain goals (Aldrich 1995; Downs 1957). Wrote Aldrich (1995: 28): “A series of problems that necessarily arise in elections and in governance make it possible for politicians to win more of what they seek to win, more often, and over a longer period by creating political parties.” The Democratic Party and the Republican Party have dominated American electoral politics since their emergence in the early nineteenth century. Because of the twoparty system, party politics (or partisanship) has become an integral part of American politics. Partisanship manifests itself in two fundamental ways in the halls of Congress. On the one hand, it means loyalty to the president of one’s own party, because the president is the leader of his party and his leadership extends to the legislative arena. In behavioral terms, party loyalty entails, among other things, voting for the president’s policy agenda in spite of one’s own preferences or constituent preferences. Indeed, Bond and Fleisher (1990) adduced evidence that the most important determinant of a president’s legislative success is party loyalty. The demand for loyalty is particularly high when the opposition party has a majority in Congress, since the majority party has strong electoral incentives to embarrass the president, with a view toward winning the presidency in the next election. On the other hand, partisanship also means electorally-induced inter-party differences. Because of electoral competition and historical circumstances, the two parties have developed relatively stable and usually distinct positions on a number of issues that generally reflect the preferences of their respective electoral bases. For example, since the 1940s, the Republican Party has tended to be the party of free trade, whereas the Democratic Party has been the party of protectionism (see Bailey and Brady 1998; Gibson 2000; O’Halloran

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21

1994). When members take distinct positions along electoral lines, it can be viewed as partisanship. As Davidson and Oleszek (1990: 130) aptly put it, partisanship means “constituency differences translated into issues.” However, it is sometimes difficult to empirically distinguish between the two aspects of partisanship. Again, take foreign trade as an example. When Republicans vote for a free trade bill supported by a Republican president, it is likely that they do so not only because of their loyalty to the president, but also because of their traditional support for free trade, and the latter may be more important a factor than the former. However, it is hard to distinguish the one from the other in this particular case. On the other hand, it is easier to distinguish the two aspects when a Democratic president sends to Congress a free trade bill. Given the Democrat Party’s traditional alliance with labor unions, a vote in support of the president can be a vote against labor unions in light of the latter’s long-standing opposition to free trade. In general, when a foreign policy issue has apparent and immediate implications for the electoral bases of the two parties, the likelihood of inter-party conflict significantly increases. Crabb thus wrote: Nonetheless, when an issue in the foreign policy area has an evident and substantial bearing upon domestic policy—as with the issue of tariff versus reciprocal trade, foreign aid spending, and the size and composition of the armed forces—then the difficulty of arriving at bipartisan understandings is greatly increased. Not only is the difficulty increased, but the desirability of bipartisan co-operation may be greatly reduced, if not altogether eliminated. (1957: 174) Ideology Ideology is “a configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together by some form of constraint or functional interdependence” (Converse 1964: 207). Hinich and Munger (1994: 11) defined it as “an internally consistent set of propositions that make both prescriptive and proscriptive demands on human behavior.” According to Hunt (1987: 12), ideology is “integrated and coherent systems of symbols, values, and beliefs.” What these various definitions have in common is the coherence and consistency of one’s beliefs. Translated into plain language, the ideological hat one wears enables others to predict—with reasonable accuracy—where one would stand on a particular issue. For example, being a liberal generally means support for abortion and gun control, while being a conservative often means opposition to abortion and gun control. The other important attribute of ideology is stability. Once formed, ideology tends to remain remarkably stable over time and across issues.10 As Poole and Rosenthal (1997: 8) vividly noted, “Members of Congress come to Washington with a staked-out position on the [ideological] continuum, and

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then, largely die with their ideological boots on.” In a word, coherence and stability are the defining characteristics of ideology. It is precisely because of these two attributes that a member’s roll call votes on a wide variety of issues across a long period of time can be arranged on a simple liberal-conservative continuum (ibid.). And empirical research has produced an impressive amount of evidence that ideology usually has the biggest impact on members’ votes on foreign and defense policy (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Leogrande and Brenner 1993; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985). Usually members from the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are expected to take opposite positions on a particular issue. For example, a liberal is expected to oppose the war in Iraq while a conservative is supposed to support it. However, on certain occasions ideological foes may form a temporary alliance out of strategic considerations or genuine policy concerns. For instance, a piece of legislation may be too conservative for liberals but too liberal for conservatives. Liberals may cast sincere votes to kill it, while conservatives may vote strategically by joining the liberals, knowing that they can introduce a more conservative alternative once the proposal at hand is defeated (see Aldrich and Rohde 2000; Nokken 2003). As will be shown shortly, such a coalition of liberals and conservatives is frequently found on China policy because of the peculiarities of U.S.–China relations. Constituency influence Constituency influence stems from the electoral connection (Fiorina 1974, 1977; Mayhew 1974). If members of Congress are assumed to be “singleminded seekers of reelection” (ibid.: 5), they should be responsive to constituency interests in order to get reelected. The electoral connection is relatively strong for House members whose two-year term puts them on a short leash with their constituents. The much longer tenure of Senators enables them to have relatively more autonomy from constituency influence (see Fenno 1982). While not every member is single-mindedly in pursuit of reelection, other goals such as power within Congress and good public policy are impossible to achieve without being elected (Fenno 1973; Mayhew 1974). Regardless, reelection generally requires responsiveness to constituency interests, particularly but not exclusively economic interests. And a long line of research has produced ample evidence that constituency economic interests have significant impact on legislative behavior, particularly roll call voting (e.g., Bailey 2001; Bailey and Brady 1998; Conley 1999; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998). Indeed, even during the height of the Cold War when security issues seemed paramount, economic interests influenced Senators’ voting on foreign policy (Fordham 1998). However, it is possible that constituency influence on foreign policy may not be strong, or at least not as strong as it is on domestic policy. First and foremost, the American public is notorious for its poor knowledge of foreign policy issues (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) and is widely believed to have

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no stable, meaningful, or coherent foreign policy preferences (see Page and Shapiro 1992: chapter 1).11 As a result, they are not expected to pay much attention to how their representatives in Congress vote on foreign policy issues. Moreover, most foreign policy decisions—with foreign trade being the single most important exception—do not have clear, immediate impact on domestic constituents. Even on defense spending (e.g., weapons purchase and military bases), an issue that presumably has huge constituency implications, responsiveness may be weak because the costs are diffuse and benefits are highly concentrated. Lindsay and Ripley aptly explained why constituency influence in foreign policy may be weak and it is worth quoting them in length: [M]ost members of the House and Senate have great freedom in taking substantive positions on foreign policy issues. One reason is that most constituents are uninformed or unconcerned about specific issues. Voters care mostly about pocket-book issues, and many foreign policy issues have no heavy economic components . . . Even when voters do have opinions on a foreign policy issue, they often do not hold their opinions very strongly, at least not strongly enough to punish errant legislators at the polls. And the public’s memory of foreign policy developments typically fades quickly: witness the speed with which public anger over U.S. policy toward China after the 1989 crackdown dissipated. (1992: 422) To conclude, with the probable exception of foreign trade, most foreign policy decisions do not have direct impact on domestic constituents. As a result, voters at home may not pay much attention to them. This enables members to enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy in foreign policy-making. Instead of following constituency preferences, they are likely to follow their own foreign policy preferences, the president’s plea for loyalty, or the dictates of party leadership. This may help explain why most previous studies have produced little or no evidence of a significant relationship between defense spending and roll call voting (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985).

Methodology Having laid out the theoretical foundation of my analysis of congressional policy-making toward China, I will briefly discuss methodology. This study combines both qualitative (i.e., historical-comparative analysis) and quantitative (i.e., statistical analysis) methods. Many scholarly works in American politics today employ only the latter, while most students of U.S.–China relations choose the former. Such methodological pluralism is necessary for three reasons. First, dry statistics will do little justice to the intense passions this controversial relationship evokes among many members of Congress. It

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is one thing to tell readers how many China bills a member introduced in one session or how he or she voted on a China bill, and it is quite another to describe his or her feelings and attitudes toward China. Thus whenever possible and appropriate, I will let members speak for themselves through extensive use of quotes. Second, historical-comparative analysis provides important contextual background for quantitative analysis. Moreover, in some instances where quantification is impossible or extremely difficult, historical-comparative analysis is perhaps the only tool available. For example, I rely on historicalcomparative analysis to support my argument that the Cold War had a significant impact on Congress’s human rights policy toward China and that democratization has been the primary source of congressional support for Taiwan since the 1990s. Third, quantitative methods are useful in identifying general patterns of congressional behavior toward China. They can be very precise about the effects of a particular factor, whereas qualitative analysis offers only impressionistic observations. More specifically, negative binomial regression is used to examine the determinants of the number of China bills introduced in each chamber, and logit regression is utilized to analyze the effects of party, ideology, and constituency interests on roll call behavior. In so far as roll call analyses are concerned, three methodological issues deserve special notice. First, since this study examines not only roll call votes on three China policy issues but also roll call votes on U.S. relations with other countries, it is imperative that the same set of independent variables be used across issues and countries. Otherwise, cross-issue or cross-country comparison becomes problematic. Second, because constituency variables are usually highly correlated with party and ideology due to the electoral connection, including all of them in the same equation can potentially dampen the effects of the former. Consequently, each regression has two models, the first with only constituency variables and the second with party and ideology added. This method allows me to ascertain the independent effects of constituency variables and to identify instances where their effects are dampened by party and ideology. The third methodological issue concerns constituency opinion. Given the theoretical and empirical significance of public opinion, it is desirable that I examine its effects on legislative behavior. Normative democratic theory postulates that elected officials should be responsive to public opinion (Dahl 1956, 1998), and rational choice models of democracy predict that selfinterested politicians will respond to public opinion in order to be elected (Downs 1957). Empirically, research in American politics has produced ample evidence that public opinion has some effects on public policy (e.g., Erikson et al. 2002; Miller and Stokes 1963; Page and Shapiro 1983; Russett 1970; Sobel 2001). Moreover, numerous studies have produced evidence that constituency opinion has varying impact on roll call behavior (e.g., Bartels 1991;

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Erikson 1981; Herrera et al. 1992; Holian et al. 1997; McDonagh 1993; Miller and Stokes 1963; Page et al. 1984). Thus, it appears imperative that I include constituency opinion in my analysis. And I do have an aggregate measure of public opinion when I examine the determinants of the number of China bills introduced in each chamber. However, I do not include any direct measure of constituency opinion in roll call analyses because there simply is no district or state-level public opinion data about China policy.12 It is beyond the scope of this study to offer an in-depth analysis of the effects of public opinion on Congress’s China policy at both the individual and the aggregate level. Such a research topic would develop into a major project in and of itself.

2

Congressional efforts to punish China1

The thing, [sic] that angers me the most is I hear people saying let us not use MFN. There must be some other approach we can take. What other device is there for Congress? This is the only game in town. (Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL), U.S. Congress 1997c: 97) For four years the President has pursued a policy best described as “aggressive appeasement,” rolling over on issue after issue like an obedient puppy determined to receive the approval of a demanding master . . . [I]t amounts to the continuation and intensification of a tragic 25-year unrequited love affair with Beijing. (Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) 1997)

During his six-day state visit to the U.S. in 1997, the former Chinese President Jiang Zemin dropped by the Capitol Hill and had breakfast with 55 members of Congress, including all the members of the leadership except for House Republican Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), who stayed away to protest China’s alleged suppression of religious liberties. The lawmakers peppered Jiang with pointed questions on everything from religious persecution to forced abortion, from organ harvesting to Chinese transfer of nuclear technology to Iran (CQ Almanac 1997: 8: 39). Republicans “listened in stony silence” as Jiang fiercely defended China’s human rights practices (Campbell 1997). “It reminded me of the old days of the Soviet Union,” Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) said after the breakfast. “He denied everything” (quoted in ibid.). On the Democratic side, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) said he told Jiang that “we could not have a normal relationship with a country that trampled on the rights of its people” (quoted in Slavin and Nichols 1997). Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) remained highly critical after the exchange with Jiang. “In my view, the responses were evasive,” she said (quoted in Mitchell 1997). In retrospect, Jiang’s meeting with the lawmakers—and his summit with Clinton for that matter—would probably not have happened, had it not been for Republican restraint on China bashing. In late September, despite

Congressional efforts to punish China

27

strong reservations from several Democrats and Republicans, the House International Relations Committee marked up five bills critical of China. These bills were ready for floor action in early October, but under intense pressure from President Clinton, House Republican leadership agreed to postpone floor consideration until after the summit (CQ Almanac 1997: 8: 38). Immediately after Jiang’s departure, the House launched a “legislative blitzkrieg” on China (Campbell 1997). Within five days, that is, November 5–9, the Republican-controlled House passed nine bills, including the five bills already approved by International Relations. Among other things, these bills aimed to do the following:

• • • • • • • • •

Increase funding for human rights monitoring in China and extend congressional review of nuclear technology transfer to China (HR 2358). Deny U.S. visas to Chinese officials involved in religious persecution (HR 967). Require the Secretary of Defense to study the feasibility of constructing a theater missile defense for Taiwan (HR 2386). Impose sanctions on China for transferring cruise missiles to Iran (H.Res. 188). Appropriate funds to enforce the ban on Chinese prison labor products (HR 2195). Condemn forced abortion in China and propose a visa ban on Chinese officials involved in forced abortion (HR 2570). Oppose international loans to China (HR 2605). Authorize the president to monitor, restrict, and seize the assets of and ban companies in U.S. associated with the Chinese army (HR 2647). Increase broadcasting by Radio Free Asia to China (HR 2232). (CQ Almanac 1997: 8: 39–40; CQWR 1997: 1536–37, 2618–20)

Though none of the nine bills was enacted into law, the sheer number nevertheless attests to congressional activism in China policy. Some readers may wonder whether this flood of China bills was unique due to Jiang’s visit. As will be demonstrated shortly, this is not an isolated episode, but reflects a general pattern of congressional activism and antagonism in China policy.

Collection of China bills Admittedly, one can construct an indicator of congressional activism and antagonism in China policy from a variety of sources, including the number and nature of congressional hearings or floor remarks. Bills are chosen for several reasons. First, it is relatively easy to locate and code bills. Thomas, the online legislative database of the Library of Congress, allows search of bills, resolutions, and amendments (hereafter collectively referred to as bills unless otherwise specified) introduced in each session and chamber since 1973. It also lists the major sponsor(s) and co-sponsor(s) of these bills. In addition to

28

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a one-sentence summary, Thomas also provides a more detailed summary of each bill prepared by the Congressional Research Service. These two types of summaries greatly facilitate bill coding. Second, if passed by both chambers in identical form and signed by the president, a bill becomes law and is bound to have policy implications. Since one of the tasks of this study is to find out the impact of congressional activism and antagonism on China policy, it seems appropriate to study bills instead of hearings or floor remarks. Last but not least, sponsoring a bill generally requires much more legislative resources than holding a hearing or speaking on the floor. To sponsor a bill, a member needs to not only devote staff resources and legislative expertise, but also use political capital to influence other lawmakers if the bill is to be reported out of committees and passed on the floor. By contrast, holding a hearing or speaking on the floor usually demands far fewer legislative resources. In other words, sponsoring a bill generally indicates more intense policy preferences than holding a hearing or speaking on the floor. A China bill is defined as one that deals exclusively with China policy. “Exclusively” means that it addresses only China-related issues. Thus an authorization or appropriations bill that has China-related riders is not included here.2 Also excluded are bills that target not only China, but also other countries or other policy issues. For example, an amendment to grant asylum to citizens of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China who recover an American POW is not counted as a China amendment. China policy is defined broadly to include not only Congress’s policy toward Beijing, but also its policy toward Taiwan.3 This should not be a controversial definition. Beijing has always considered Taiwan a renegade province. Moreover, in the Washington–Taipei–Beijing triangle that has existed since 1949, Congress’s policy toward one has almost always had important implications for its policy toward the other. For example, the Taiwan Relations Act ostensibly governs U.S.–Taiwan relations, but few would deny that it also represents U.S. policy toward Beijing. It is a constant reminder to Beijing that the U.S. is firmly committed to Taiwan’s security and that only peaceful means may be used to resolve disputes across the Taiwan Strait. I use Thomas as the exclusive source of China bills. Two schemes are used to code these bills. The first is the specific policy issue each bill addresses: U.S.–Taiwan relations, MFN renewal, China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), generic trade issues, generic human rights issues, funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), Tibet, the Tiananmen Incident, export control, and foreign assistance.4 Bills that address any combination of the ten issues or issues that cannot be neatly classified into any of the ten categories are put into Other. Second, each bill is coded according to its policy nature, that is, whether it is punitive, neutral/technical, or favorable to China. Punitive bills criticize the Chinese government and propose certain punitive actions, such as

Congressional efforts to punish China

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condemning China’s human rights practices, supporting strong U.S.–Taiwan relations, or calling for tighter export control regarding China. Technical/ neutral bills deal with technical issues in bilateral relations such as approval of tax treaties or fishery agreements. Bills that address U.S.–Taiwan trade or Taiwan’s human rights also belong to this category because they have no explicitly positive or negative implications for U.S.–China relations. Favorable bills promote U.S.–China relations. Thus bills that establish student or parliamentary exchange programs, urge recognition of China, or relax export control will be viewed as favorable ones. Details on data collection and coding are contained in the Appendix.

Number and nature of China bills Between 1973 and 2006, 543 China bills were introduced in the House and 332 in the Senate. Table 2.1 classifies House bills by policy issue and bill type. There were 189 concurrent resolutions and 90 simple resolutions. Together, these two types of resolutions constitute 51 percent of the China bills introduced in the House. A concurrent resolution is used to express opinion on behalf of both chambers; it is also used to set adjournment date or congressional budget. A simple resolution, by contrast, is used to take action on behalf of only one chamber or to express its non-binding opinion. A simple resolution is also used to modify or propose an internal rule or to create a new committee. Unlike bills, joint resolutions, or amendments, however, these two types of resolutions do not make law. This raises an important question that will be answered in the next chapter: Why did members introduce so many non-binding resolutions? House members were most likely to sponsor concurrent resolutions when Table 2.1 House China bills by policy and type, 1973–2006

Taiwan Generic human rights MFN Export control Generic trade Tibet Tiananmen UNPF WTO Foreign assistance Other Total

Concurrent resolution

Simple Joint Bill resolution resolution

112 33

21 15

5 1

22 22

7 4

167 75

3 4 11 7

2 5 7 7 5

21 4

22 11 22 9 7

3 22 2 2

48 45 35 29 21 14 10 6

2

Amendment Total

14 1

9 5

1 18 189

27 90

4 37

34 163

10 64

93 543

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Congressional efforts to punish China

they wanted to express their opinions about U.S.–Taiwan relations, as 112 out of a total of 167 Taiwan bills were concurrent resolutions. Meanwhile, these Taiwan-related concurrent resolutions accounted for nearly 60 percent of House concurrent resolutions on China policy. In a word, concurrent resolution seems to be the most popular legislative vehicle to express one’s preferences about Taiwan policy. In 1975, for example, 15 concurrent resolutions declaring congressional support for Taiwan were introduced in the House. There were 37 joint resolutions, and 21 of them were related to the renewal of China’s MFN status. Since Congress first granted MFN status to China in 1980, it had not objected to its renewal until 1990. Outraged by the Tiananmen Incident and determined to punish Beijing for its alleged human rights violations, Congress repeatedly attempted to revoke China’s MFN status (for a comprehensive review of the legislative history regarding China’s MFN status, see Pregelj 2001). Under the Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Act, Congress has to pass a joint resolution to disapprove of presidential renewal of MFN status and the joint resolution is subject to presidential veto. This is why the vast majority of joint resolutions were related to MFN renewal. When it comes to funding to the UNPF, House members relied exclusively on amendments. Because this is an issue that involves funding and foreign policy, it is not surprising that all the 14 amendments were attached to foreign relations authorization bills. In 1995, the House considered HR1561, which appropriates funds for foreign operations for fiscal years 1996 and 1997, and three amendments were introduced to prohibit or limit funding to the UNPF unless it ceased its activities in China. In 1998, President Clinton vetoed the fiscal year 1999 State Department authorization bill (HR 1757) because antiabortion Republicans inserted two amendments that imposed stringent restrictions on funding to international population programs in general and those in China in particular (CQWR 1998: 2921). House members also relied heavily on amendments to deal with export control policy toward China.5 Nearly half of legislative measures concerning export control were amendments. Like MFN, export control did not become a salient issue on Capitol Hill until after the Tiananmen Incident. In 1990, five amendments were sponsored in the House that imposed various restrictions on the issuance of export license, particularly regarding U.S. satellite export. Amidst accusations of Chinese theft of U.S. nuclear secrets and Clinton’s relaxation of export control in exchange for corporate campaign donations, the House approved in 1998 four amendments to the defense authorization bill that would prohibit the transfer of missile technology and U.S.-made satellites to China (CQWR 1998: 1375–76, 1400–1403). Table 2.2 presents the distribution of China bills in the Senate. There were 57 concurrent resolutions and 74 simple resolutions; they combine to account for nearly 40 percent of the China bills introduced in the Senate. This is considerably smaller than that in the House (51 percent). Of 57 concurrent resolutions, 27 are related to Taiwan, and these concurrent resolutions make

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Table 2.2 Senate China bills by policy and type, 1973–2006

Taiwan Generic human rights MFN Tiananmen Tibet Generic trade Export control WTO UNPF Other Total

Concurrent resolution

Simple resolution

Joint Bill resolution

27 9

21 16

1 1 6 2 2

3 10 6 1

2 4

9 57

17 74

1 20

Amendment

Total

4 2

10 8

18 25

80 60

7

18 9 3 4 2 6

5 10 3 3 8 3 1 27 103

31 23 22 17 17 9 1 72 332

18 78

up slightly more than 30 percent of the Taiwan bills introduced in the Senate, which is about half of the corresponding percentage in the House. However, Senators were more likely than their House counterparts to use simple resolutions to convey their opinions about Taiwan policy, as 21 out of 80 Senate Taiwan bills were simple resolutions, compared with 21 out of 167 in the House. As in the House, the largest number of Senate joint resolutions—seven to be exact—was related to MFN renewal. However, they account for only slightly more than 30 percent of all the Senate joint resolutions, as opposed to 57 percent in the House. Thus in both absolute numbers and percentages, Senators were less likely to sponsor joint resolutions disapproving of presidential renewal of China’s MFN status. The most striking difference between the two chambers lies in the number of amendments. Even though the Senate is less than one fourth the size of the House, it has nearly twice the number of amendments. Except for export control, there were more amendments in the Senate for each policy issue than in the House. Anyone who is familiar with the internal operations of Congress knows that this inter-chamber difference in amendments results from different rules governing floor debate in each chamber.6 Having discussed the frequency of each type of bills, I will examine congressional activism in each policy issue. Excluding the Other category, three policy issues have the same ranking in each chamber. In descending order, they are Taiwan policy, generic human rights, and MFN renewal. There were 167 Taiwan bills in the House and 80 in the Senate. When combined, this means that on average seven Taiwan bills were introduced in Congress annually during the 34-year period, or more than one out of four China bills introduced in Congress during this period pertained to Taiwan policy. The number of generic human rights bills is 75 and 60 in the House and the

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Senate respectively. These bills pertain to such issues as religious freedom, political dissent, and labor rights. One can argue that bills respecting the Tiananmen Incident, funding to the UNPF, and Tibet should also be counted as human rights bills. For many members of Congress, the Tiananmen Incident exemplifies Chinese violation of human rights. The controversy over funding to the UNPF arose amidst allegations of forced abortion in China, which was viewed by many members of Congress as violations of human rights. Tibet attracted congressional attention due to alleged Chinese repression of Tibetans. If these bills were counted, then the total number of human rights bills would jump to 245. In addition, there were 79 bills related to MFN renewal. Since the MFN debate was primarily about how to use trade to leverage human rights progress in China, these bills can also be viewed as human rights bills. If so, the number of human rights bills would be 324, surpassing that of Taiwan policy. Export control does not attract as many headlines as China’s human rights or the soaring U.S. trade deficit with China, but it is clearly an important part of Congress’s China policy, particularly in the House. As was briefly mentioned in the Introduction, Congress not only makes sure that the U.S. maintains a tight export control regime regarding China, but also successfully pressured the European Union to delay its lifting of arms embargo against China. Bilateral trade seems to be another issue of major concern to members of Congress, as 52 bills concerning issues like tariffs, textile quotas, and intellectual property rights (IPR) were introduced. Also, 19 bills specifically addressed issues concerning China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. With only six bills, foreign assistance (e.g., international loans to China) does not seem to be an issue of particular concern to Congress. Figure 2.1 classifies China bills according to several general categories

Figure 2.1 Classification of China bills (including amendments), 1973–2006.

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related to floor action, party of chief sponsor, session, and timing before or after the Tiananmen Incident. The findings can be summarized as following:

• •

• •

Far more China bills (665) were introduced in the 17 years after 1989 (including 1989) than those introduced in the 17 years before it (210). This huge disparity strongly suggests that the 1989 Tiananmen Incident has been a major source of congressional activism in China policy. The total number of China bills introduced in the first session of each Congress (578) is nearly twice that in the second session (297). This is strikingly similar to the aggregate ratio for all bills introduced in Congress during the same period.7 One reason for inter-session difference may be that members introduce bills in the first session so as to allow more attention and time for committee and floor consideration of their bills, knowing that the legislative agenda is crowded but time is limited.8 Republicans sponsored 475 China bills and Democrats 394 bills, with Independents contributing 6 bills (which are not presented in Figure 2.1). This inter-party difference is quite noteworthy because more Democrats held office during this period than Republicans. Congress took floor action—voice vote or roll call vote—on 259 bills, or less than one-third of all China bills introduced. Since the full chamber normally may not debate and vote on a bill unless it is reported out of a committee, it appears that committees failed to report the vast majority of China bills to the floor.

The time trend of China bills is depicted in Figure 2.2. A tentative impression

Figure 2.2 Time trend of China bills (including amendments), 1973–2006.

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from this graph is that the ebb and flow of these bills was largely determined by the major events in bilateral relations. For example, the sudden surge of China bills in 1979—from 6 in 1978 to 37 in 1979—coincided with heated congressional debate over Carter’s decision to recognize China and over future U.S.–Taiwan relations. What resulted from the debate was the controversial Taiwan Relations Act. In 1989, 63 China bills were introduced, as opposed to 9 in the previous year. The Tiananmen Incident of 1989 was almost certainly responsible for this deluge of China bills on Capitol Hill. The huge spike in 1997–80 bills compared to 22 in 1996—may be attributed to a number of events such as the reversion of Hong Kong to Beijing, the former Chinese President Jiang’s visit to Washington, and congressional investigations of alleged illegal Chinese campaign contributions. The trend line seems to provide support for what Suettinger (2003: 434) called an “event-driven” relationship. Next, I will show the nature of China bills. According to my coding scheme, there were 18 favorable and 57 neutral/technical China bills in the House, and the corresponding numbers in the Senate were 13 and 38 respectively. Most favorable bills pertain to export control, MFN, and Other. The largest number of neutral/technical bills is related to human rights in Taiwan and issues under Other. When these two types of bills are deducted from the total number of China bills, I arrive at the number of punitive bills: 468 in the House and 281 in the Senate. All the bills about generic human rights, Tibet, Tiananmen, and UNPF are punitive, so are most bills on U.S.–Taiwan relations. Punitive bills accounted for 86 percent and 85 percent of all the China bills introduced in the House and the Senate respectively. In a word, when we talk about Congress and China policy, we are really talking about a punitive Congress. To sum up, Congress has been extremely active in China policy, particularly U.S.–Taiwan relations, China’s human rights, MFN renewal, and export control. Moreover, Congress has been unambiguously antagonistic toward China, calling for one punitive action after another. Also, the major events in bilateral relations—such as normalization and the Tiananmen Incident— seem to have determined the ebb and flow of China bills. Last but not least, the Tiananmen Incident almost single-handedly transformed Congress into an active player in China policy.

What influences the ebb and flow of China bills? Having examined the number and nature of China bills, I will conduct a quantitative analysis of macro-level factors that affected the number of China bills introduced in each chamber. It is worth reiterating that this is an aggregate analysis, not individual-level analysis such as one that examines roll call behavior. As such, the findings and conclusions should not be construed as necessarily applicable to individual-level legislative behavior.

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Hypotheses Hypothesis 1: More China bills will be introduced under divided government than under unified government, other things being equal. The two political parties have frequently used China policy to attack each other, particularly in times of divided government, that is, the presidency and Congress are controlled by different parties. When Republicans regained majority control of Congress in 1947—the first time since 1933—congressional debate about what the U.S. should do respecting the Chinese civil war became much more partisan (e.g., Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983, 1994; Westerfield 1955). Republicans intended to use the China issue to embarrass President Truman, with an eye toward defeating him in the coming 1948 election. Rourke (1983: 6) wrote, “In control of Congress for the first time in almost two decades and confidently looking forward to capturing the White House in 1948, Republican foreign policy activity became increasingly motivated by partisan considerations.” In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident, the Democratic majority in Congress launched harsh criticism of President Bush’s China policy and their criticism seemed to be largely motivated by partisanship. Ross (1992: 290) claimed that the Democratic-controlled Congress used China policy as a “vehicle for both pursuing its foreign policy agenda and weakening the president’s domestic popularity.” Harding (1992: 244) asserted that the “deep division between the White House and Congress on China policy . . . reflect[s] simple partisan politics, with the Democrats seeing in China one of the few foreign policy issues on which a popular new Republican president might prove vulnerable.” Richard Bush (1995: 149–150) agreed: “China became subject to the dynamics of divided government. A Democratic Congress, with support from some conservative Republicans, sought to use the China issue to embarrass a Republican administration for political gain.” Similarly, when Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, they became immediately active in China policy. They put enormous pressure on Clinton and forced the latter to grant a visa to Lee Teng-hui, the former Taiwanese president. Then the Republican-controlled House passed the U.S.–Taiwan Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Cooperation Act in 1997 and the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act in 2000 (e.g., Bush 2004: Chapter 7; Mann 2001; Yang 2000: Chapter 6). In the meantime, Republicans launched highprofile investigations of allegedly illegal Chinese campaign donations in the 1996 presidential election (e.g., CQWR 1997: 1140, 1568, 1601, 1861). In 1998, the Republican majority formed a Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, chaired by Congressman Christopher Cox (R-CA). In early 1999, the committee released the highly controversial Cox Report (CQWR 1998: 1375, 1400–1402, 1886–1889).

36

Congressional efforts to punish China Hypothesis 2: The number of China bills introduced should be positively associated with the strength of anti-Communism in Congress, other things being equal.

Ideology has profoundly influenced U.S. policy toward China. Harding (1992: 17) wrote, “Ideological considerations have been a constant source of ambivalence and opposition to Sino-American relations in both societies for more than forty years.” The onset of the Cold War coincided with the outbreak of the Chinese civil war, and the U.S. supported Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese Communists primarily because of his flawless record of anti-Communism. In particular, the China bloc in Congress—a group that consisted mostly of right-wing Republicans—successfully pressured the Truman administration to provide military and economic aid to Chiang even when his cause seemed hopeless (Christensen 1996; Koen 1974; Rourke 1983; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983; Yang 2000: Chapter 2). The eventual defeat of Chiang and the outbreak of the Korean War made anti-Communism an even more salient factor in China policy (Finkelstein 1993; Grasso 1987; Purifoy 1976). Within Congress, anti-Communism manifested itself in steadfast congressional opposition to U.S. recognition of China and China’s admission to the United Nations (Bachrack 1976). Though the Cold War ended more than a decade ago, anti-Communism appears to be still alive on Capitol Hill today because China remains under Communist rule. When he was in the Senate, Jesse Helms (R-NC) still used such ideologically charged language as “Red China” or “communist China” (CQWR 1999: 2605). Commenting on a 1996 House resolution (H.Con.Res.148) reaffirming U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s security, a close observer of Congress wrote that support for the resolution reflected “the enduring strength of anti-Communism in the unsettled post-Cold War era” (CQWR 1996: 712). Also, using content analysis and survey responses, Chen (1992) identified two periods of strong impact of anti-Communism on U.S. China policy (1949–1953 and 1980–1982) and one period of weak impact (1969– 1972). During the first two periods, China policy was “rigid and confrontational” (ibid.: 43), whereas in the third period China policy was “flexible and cooperative” (ibid.: 72). Hypothesis 3: The number of China bills will be negatively associated with favorable public opinion about China, other things being equal. A long tradition of research in American politics has produced ample evidence that public opinion exerts significant impact on public policy (e.g., Erikson et al. 2002; Miller and Stokes 1963; Page and Shapiro 1983). Moreover, the effects of public opinion are not confined to domestic policies, but are reported in foreign policy as well (e.g., Mueller 1994; Page and Shapiro 1983; Russett 1990; Sobel 2001). Some scholars also have reported evidence that public opinion influenced China policy (Kusnitz 1984; Teles

Congressional efforts to punish China

37

1998). Though these studies did not examine specifically the relationship between public opinion and Congress’s China policy, they lead to the expectation that Congress may also respond to public opinion in formulating China policy. More specifically, fewer China bills are expected when the American people have a more favorable opinion of China. Three other factors could have impacted the number of China bills introduced in each chamber, namely, session, the Tiananmen Incident, and elapse of time. Because of crowded legislative agenda, members are expected to introduce more China bills in the first session of each Congress just to give their bills more attention and time. The Tiananmen Incident is arguably the single most important event in U.S.–China relations since the two countries normalized their relations in 1979. It nearly destroyed all the good feelings toward China that had been accumulating among Americans since Nixon’s landmark visit (see Figure 2.3 and Figure 2.4). The time trend of China bills (see Figure 2.2) also indicates that Congress has become decidedly much more active and punitive since the Tiananmen Incident. Finally, it is highly likely that the number of China bills increased over time as a result of expanding economic, cultural, and military ties between the two countries. That is, more issues require legislative actions as bilateral relations grow. Methodology Because there are two major political parties and three branches—the White House, the House, and the Senate—party control of government can come in any of the following four forms: unified Republican control of White House

Figure 2.3 Favorability ratings of China on 10-point scale, 1954–2001.

38

Congressional efforts to punish China

Figure 2.4 Favorability ratings of China on four-category scale, 1977–2006.

and House (Senate), unified Democratic control of White House and House (Senate), Democratic President–Republican House (Senate), and Republican President–Democratic House (Senate). The first three forms are included in regression analysis, with the last form being treated as the baseline. Favorable public opinion about China is measured as the percentage of Americans who reported having a favorable opinion of China in various surveys. Notwithstanding slight variations in question wording and response categories, these survey responses are generally good indicators of Americans’ overall opinion of China (see the Appendix). For a year in which no such question was asked, the average of the previous and following years is used. For years in which there were multiple surveys, the average is taken. It is hard to construct an aggregate measure of anti-Communism in Congress. Instead, I use a rather crude measure, namely, the percentage of Republican membership in each chamber. Republicans in general have traditionally been more vocal in anti-Communism than Democrats.9 To be sure, not every Republican adopts a hard-line approach to China. Furthermore, hard-liners often had to compromise with moderate Republicans like Doug Bereuter (R-NE) (see CQWR 2000: 263). But, in general, the more Republicans there were in each chamber, the more punitive China bills would be introduced due to their antipathy toward Communism. The first session of each Congress is coded as 1 and the second session 0. Tiananmen is coded 0 for years before 1989 and 1 for years thereafter (including 1989). I include a time trend variable Year, which is expected to capture any autonomous change in the number of China bills that is independent of

Congressional efforts to punish China

39

other variables. Last but not least, since House rules make it much more difficult to amend a bill on the floor than in the Senate, I exclude amendments in the following analysis. Findings I run two negative binomial regressions, one for each chamber.10 Results for the House are presented in Table 2.3. Since the average number of China bills introduced in the House between 1973 and 2006 is 14, this means that controlling for other factors, a Democratic president facing a Republican majority in the House witnessed an estimated 22.68 (1.62 × 14) more China bills, as compared with a Republican president facing a Democratic-controlled House. This is clear indication of the important impact of divided government on China policy. Notice that between 1973 and 2006, there was only one Democratic president who faced a Republican majority in the House, and that president was Bill Clinton. As discussed shortly before, House Republicans were particularly active in China policy after they regained House majority in 1995. Table 2.3 Determinants of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) introduced in the House, 1973–2006 Independent variables

Coefficients

Estimated effects

Unified Republican

1.48** (.53) −.29 (.22) 1.62** (.46) 1.34** (.40) .62** (.14) .007 (.008) −.09** (.03) −.03 (.03) 67.8 (56.00) .17 −99.65 9.87

20.72

Unified Democratic Democratic President–Republican House Tiananmen Session Favorability rating Republican percentage Year Constant Pseudo R2 Log likelihood Likelihood ratio test against α = 0 N = 34

22.68 18.76 8.68

1.26

Notes: Cell entries are negative binomial regression coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at .01

40

Congressional efforts to punish China

Clinton’s situation was strikingly similar to that of President Harry Truman, whose China policy was subject to bitter attacks by the newly inaugurated Republican majority. This statistical finding plus Truman’s experience with the Republican-controlled Congress strongly suggests that a House Republican majority tends to use China policy as a partisan issue to attack Democratic presidents. Unified Republican control of the House actually led to 20.72 more China bills than a Republican president facing a Democratic majority, controlling for other factors. During the 34-year period, the House was under unified Republican control only for six years (2001–6). Among other things, George W. Bush’s tough stance in dealing with the collision of a U.S. reconnaissance plane with a Chinese fighter jet in early 2001, congressional frustration with the astronomical trade deficit with China, and congressional opposition to the European Union’s proposed lifting of arms embargo against Beijing may be responsible for the increase of China bills under unified Republican control of the House. Consistent with my expectation, the first session of each Congress produced 8.68 more China bills than the second session, when other factors are controlled for. Also, a post-Tiananmen House session had 18.76 more China bills than a pre-Tiananmen session, holding other factors constant. This provides strong evidence that the Tiananmen Incident was primarily responsible for congressional activism and antagonism in China policy since 1989. Republican membership appears to have significant impact, but it has a wrong sign. That is, when other factors are held constant, increase in House Republican membership actually led to fewer China bills. One possible explanation is that during the studied period, significant increase in Republican membership in the House occurred after two major events in U.S.–China relations, namely, the Taiwan Relations Act and the Tiananmen Incident. And these two major events brought about a sharp increase in China bills introduced in the House. Finally, contrary to my expectation, favorable public opinion does not appear to have any significant impact. Table 2.4 reports regression results for the Senate. Now only three factors have significant effects: session, Tiananmen, and favorability rating. Since the average number of China bills introduced in the Senate was 6.7, this means a first session in the Senate witnessed on average 6.2 more punitive bills than a second session. A post-Tiananmen Senate session produced 9.2 additional China bills, compared with a pre-Tiananmen one, controlling for other factors. Thus in both chambers, significantly more China bills were introduced in the post-Tiananmen years. Suettinger thus wrote of the impact of the Tiananmen Incident on U.S.–China relations: The events of June 4 dealt an enormous setback to bilateral relations between the United States and China—a setback from which, in some ways, they have never recovered. Indeed, one could say that the Tiananmen crackdown set the U.S.–China relations on an entirely different course,

Congressional efforts to punish China

41

Table 2.4 Determinants of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) introduced in the Senate, 1973–2006 Independent variables

Coefficients

Unified Republican

−.62 (.48) −.08 (.31) −.07 (.50) 1.38* (.52) .93** (.18) .02* (.10) .03 (.05) .02 (.031) 42.47 (56.04) .21 −78.61 4.38

Unified Democratic Democratic President–Republican Senate Tiananmen 1st Session Favorability rating Republican percentage Year Constant Pseudo R2 Log likelihood Likelihood ratio test against α = 0 N = 34

Estimated effects

9.2 6.2 .1

Notes: Cell entries are negative binomial regression coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at .01; * significant at .05.

one that is far more contentious and hostile than at any time since the late 1950s. (2003: 85) Contrary to my expectations, however, more favorable public opinion about China is positively associated with the number of Senate China bills. Even though substantively insignificant—one point increase in favorability rating resulted in 0.1 more China bills—this finding nonetheless indicates the possible existence of a gap between public opinion and Senators’ preferences. That is, as the American public gradually recovered from the initial shock of the Tiananmen Incident, Senators generally remained critical of Beijing and continued to introduce China bills. This finding seems to support Suettinger’s (ibid.: 426) claim that “post-Tiananmen congressional attitudes on China are likely to change only slowly and at the margins.” Finally, that none of the divided government variables are significant in the Senate suggests that the upper chamber as a whole has not demonstrated significant partisanship in its approaches to China policy.

42

Congressional efforts to punish China

To sum up, quantitative analysis provides strong support for three conclusions. First, the first session of each Congress witnessed significantly more China bills than the second session. Thus the electoral institution as an exogenous force has had some impact on Congress’s China policy. Second, as perhaps the single most important event since normalization, the Tiananmen Incident has cast an enduring shadow over Congress’s China policy. Third, House Republicans tend to use China policy as a political issue against Democratic presidents.

3

Effects of congressional activism on China policy

In both the American and Swiss Constitutions the Upper House has as much authority as the second; it could produce the maximum of impediment—a dead-lock, if it liked. (Walter Bagehot, quoted in Wilson 2006: 151) Given an active subcommittee chairman working in a specialized field with a staff of his own, the parent committee can do no more than change the grammar of a subcommittee report. (Congressional staff member, quoted in Goodwin 1962: 596)

In the previous chapter, I adduced evidence that Congress has been extremely active in China policy. The next logical question is: What is the impact of congressional activism on U.S.–China policy? In answering this question, one should consider the institutional structure under which Congress makes China policy. After all, Congress and its members do not make China policy (or any policy for that matter) in an institutional vacuum. If the institutional structure makes it extremely difficult for Congress to transform its collective preferences into policy outcomes, then Congress cannot have much impact on China policy, regardless of how active it is or how strong its policy preferences are. As will be shown in this chapter, bicameralism, the committee structure, and presidential veto have combined to severely constrain Congress’s ability to assert itself in China policy.

Bicameralism The founding fathers created a second and distinct chamber in the hope that it would serve as a “cooling saucer” to the first and presumably more activist chamber. Thus, the first and most crucial step in assessing the policy impact of bicameralism is to find out whether the House is indeed more active than the Senate. Figure 2.1 already shows that the number of China bills introduced in the House is larger than that of the Senate. However, this finding does not

44

Effects of congressional activism

necessarily constitute conclusive evidence of House activism in China policy. First, the House is more than four times larger than the Senate, which makes any inter-chamber comparison based on absolute numbers potentially problematic. Second, one can argue that the inclusion of amendments can skew the results because it is much easier to sponsor amendments in the Senate than in the House. The first problem can be dealt with by examining interchamber ratios instead of absolute numbers and the second by excluding amendments.1 I first calculate the ratio of House China bills to Senate China bills for each Congress, and then compare it with the ratio for bills in general (i.e., all bills introduced in each Congress). The purpose of this exercise is to find out: (1) whether there is any inter-chamber difference in China policy; (2) whether that difference—if any at all—is consistent across each Congress; and (3) whether that difference is unique to China policy or exemplifies a general pattern. The House–Senate ratios for China bills and bills in general are depicted in Figure 3.1. With the exception of the 95th Congress (which has a ratio of 14), the inter-chamber ratio of China bills stabilizes around 2 (the mean is 2.2). The ratio for China bills is nearly identical to that for bills in general (the mean is 2.3), and the correlation between the two ratios is 0.565 and significant at 0.05. All these statistics indicate that the House has indeed been

Figure 3.1 House–Senate ratios for China bills and bills in general (excluding amendments), 93rd–109th Congresses.

Effects of congressional activism

45

Figure 3.2 Number of China bills (excluding amendments) by policy type and chamber, 1973–2006.

significantly and consistently more active in China policy than the Senate. More importantly, this pattern of inter-chamber difference is not unique to China policy, but exemplifies House activism in congressional policy-making in general. Figure 3.2 depicts inter-chamber difference in the number of China bills in each policy area. The most striking finding is that in each policy area the number of China bills in the House is consistently larger than that in the Senate. In terms of ratio, which is not reported here, the House–Senate ratio for each policy area fluctuates closely around 2 (the mean is 1.97 if foreign assistance is excluded). This ratio is nearly identical to the average aggregate House–Senate ratio of China bills reported above (2.2). Thus, in the particular case of China policy, what is true for aggregate level inter-chamber difference also appears to be true when it comes to specific policies. Table 3.1 provides additional evidence of House activism. It depicts the frequency of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) by chief sponsor in each chamber. Of the hundreds of members who served in Congress during the 34-year period, only 174 representatives and 79 Senators ever introduced any China bill. Of those who did, 92 representatives and 37 Senators introduced only one China bill. That is, more than half of representatives and close to half of Senators who introduced any China bill at all

46

Effects of congressional activism Table 3.1 Frequency of the number of China bills (excluding amendments) by chief sponsor and chamber, 1973–2006 Number of China bills

House

Senate

Total

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 16 17 18 22 37 Total

92 38 13 8 5 4 0 2 3 3 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 174

37 9 9 10 3 5 3 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 79

129 47 22 18 8 9 3 3 3 3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 253

introduced only one bill. The average is 2.7 (449 divided by 174) for each representative and 2.9 (229 divided by 79) for each Senator. While the average number of bills introduced by representatives and Senators is strikingly similar, they mask the important fact that a handful of House members were particularly active in China policy. Nine representatives introduced ten or more China bills; together they introduced 148 China bills out of a total of 449. By contrast, only two Senators introduced ten or more China bills; together they introduced 33 out of a total of 229. It seems that inter-chamber difference in China policy arises primarily because the House has more members with more intense China policy preferences. Table 3.2 lists the nine representatives and two Senators as well as the policy issues that were addressed in their bills.2 Up to this point, I have adduced strong evidence of House activism in China policy. The next step is to establish that the Senate has checked House activism in China policy. Two concrete examples will help illustrate the function of the Senate. In response to the Tiananmen Incident, Congress proposed a number of sanctions against China, but these sanctions were never enacted into law (Oberdorfer 1989; Phillips 1989). The House put the sanctions in a foreign aid authorization bill (HR 2655) that died in the Senate. The Senate attached its own version of sanctions to the routine State Department authorization bill (HR 1487) that President Bush vetoed for other reasons. A

10 1

3

4 6 4 1 10 2

Senate Jesse Helms (R-NC) Claiborne Pell (D-RI)

4

HR

1

1 1

6

FA

House Gerald Solomon (R-NY) Tom Lantos (D-CA) Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) Stephen Solarz (D-NY) Chris Smith (R-NJ) Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) Christopher Cox (R-CA) Trent Lott (R-MO) Dawson Mathis (D-GA)

EXP

3

11 4 1 1 1 4 1

MFN

4

4

2

1 3 6

Other

1

1 2 1

TAM

7

1

1 2 2

Tibet

Table 3.2 Members of Congress who introduced ten or more China bills (excluding amendments), 1973–2006

1

1

Trade

2 3

7 4 10 9

10 3 1 12

Taiwan

22 11

37 18 17 17 16 13 10 10 10

Total

48

Effects of congressional activism

substitute bill (HR 3792) was never reported out of the Senate due to jurisdictional dispute (CQ Almanac 1989: 1642, 3261). The second example concerns Congress’s failed attempt to strip China of its MFN status. Between 1990 and 2001, the House voted each year on a joint resolution to disapprove of presidential renewal of China’s MFN status. The Senate, by contrast, voted only once on such a resolution. Meanwhile, the House twice passed bills conditioning MFN renewal on China’s human rights progress, and twice it garnered enough votes to override presidential vetoes. But because the Senate on both occasions sustained the vetoes, the two bills never became law. In a word, bicameralism has had profound impact on Congress’s China policy. No matter how active the lower chamber was, its legislative initiatives regarding China would have had little chance of being enacted into binding legislation unless the upper chamber had been equally active and agreed with these initiatives. Moreover, my findings about inter-chamber differences are not unique to China policy, but reflect a general pattern of House activism in congressional policy-making. To the extent that the founding fathers were wary of an active House churning out one piece of legislation after another, my findings seem to justify their concerns and to vindicate their decision to set up a second chamber as a restraining force.

Congressional committees To what extent has the committee structure affected Congress’s China policy? Part of the answer is shown in Figure 2.1, which shows that only 259 out of a total of 875 China bills were reported out of committees to the floor. It should be noted that the numbers in Figure 2.1 include amendments, but House rules severely limit amendment opportunities. Therefore, I retabulate the floor status of bills excluding amendments, and find that 119 (or 16.8 percent) of the 708 China bills were reported out of committees. It is worth noting that my estimate is not unique to China bills, but seems to be representative of bills in general. For example, Ripley (1983: 145–146) found that only a nearly identical 16 percent of the 26,566 bills introduced in the 89th Congress were ever reported out of committees. My finding plus Ripley’s illuminate the enormous power of committees as gatekeepers: on average, about 84 percent of bills introduced in Congress die in committee rooms. It is no wonder that Woodrow Wilson (2006: 63) called committees the “dim dungeons of silence” from which few bills will ever return alive. What about the final status of those 119 China bills reported out of committees? According to the new institutionalism, committee-approved bills will almost always prevail on the floor (e.g., Crombez et al. 2006; Denzau and Mackay 1983; Shepsle and Weingast 1987; Weingast and Marshall 1988). Consistent with this perspective, it turns out that 105 China bills were passed and only 14 were rejected on the floor. That means the probability of a

Effects of congressional activism

49

committee-approved China bill being passed on the floor is close to 0.88 (105 divided by 119). Ripley (1983: 200) reported that an average of 70 percent of committee-reported bills were passed unamended on the floor.3 Of the 14 rejected bills 13 (12 in the House and one in the Senate) were joint resolutions to disapprove of presidential renewal of China’s MFN status, and the remaining one was a House bill. The floor majority approved all the concurrent resolutions and simple resolutions reported out of committees. Of the 64 House amendments, 51 were passed and 7 rejected; of the 103 Senate amendments, 63 were approved and 19 voted down. My analysis so far provides strong support for theoretical claims about committee power, that is, the power to block policy alternatives and the power to prevail on the floor. In what follows, I will give a few concrete examples of how committee members used gatekeeping rights to influence China policy. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), former chairman of the full Senate Finance Committee (2001–2003) and its Subcommittee on International Trade (1991– 1994), has been a staunch supporter of free trade in general and U.S.–China trade in particular (Baucus 1994a, 1994b, 1996; Gugliotta 1991). He played an instrumental role in maintaining China’s unconditional MFN status. Since MFN legislation falls within the jurisdiction of International Trade, Baucus used the prerogative of his chairmanship to successfully block any joint resolution to disapprove of unconditional MFN from being reported to the Senate floor. In addition to trade, Baucus was also actively involved in Taiwan policy. When the House passed HR 1838 to shore up U.S.–Taiwan military relations, Baucus promised to put a hold on the bill. Since a hold is the equivalent of a filibuster threat, the bill was doomed.4 Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY), former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1995–2001), has also been a strong advocate of friendly U.S.–China relations (U.S. Congress 1999, 2001d). Since 1995 he has played a role similar to that of Baucus, fending off efforts by religious conservatives in the Senate to attach human rights conditions to MFN renewal. In 1998, he prevented the passage of several anti-China resolutions in the Foreign Relations Committee before Clinton’s state visit to China (CQWR 1998: 3206). Partly because of the two Senators’ influence, the Senate never directly voted on a joint resolution to disapprove of MFN renewal. The Senate voted only once on the issue and that was in 1999. By a vote of 12–87, it overwhelmingly rejected a motion to discharge from the Finance Committee S.J.Res.27 that would revoke China’s MFN for one year. While these two Senators epitomize the power of committee chairmen to block certain policies, Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) exemplifies the power of committee chairmen to propose new policies. Being the chairman of the House International Relations Committee from 1995 to 2000 and a staunch supporter of Taiwan, Gilman had profound impact on U.S.–Taiwan policy. Under his chairmanship, six resolutions reaffirming U.S. commitment to

50

Effects of congressional activism

Taiwan were reported out of the committee, and he managed to have them all approved on the House floor under suspension of rules.5 In addition, the committee marked up six bills in 1997 that aimed to deny visas to Chinese officials who are involved in religious persecution, increase the number of human rights monitors stationed in China, authorize more funding for Radio Free Asia, punish China for alleged missile sales to Iran and push development of a missile defense system to protect Taiwan (CQ Almanac 1997: 8–38). All six bills were passed in the House. Had Gilman refused to schedule hearings or committee votes on these bills, they probably would not have been reported out of the committee and passed on the floor. To conclude, the congressional committee structure has had profound impact on Congress’s China policy. From the perspective of Beijing, however, this impact has been mostly positive, as the vast majority of “anti-China” bills died in committees. Had it not been for committees serving as gatekeepers, many more China bills would undoubtedly have been passed (in one chamber or both chambers), and Congress’s China policy—and U.S.–China relations for that matter—would probably have been quite different. Also, it should be noted that my findings are not specific to congressional policymaking toward China, but conform to the general pattern of committee power in congressional policy-making.

Presidential veto There have been three presidential vetoes and three unsuccessful congressional overrides respecting China policy.6 The first took place in the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident. Congress attempted to provide protection for Chinese students who were then studying in the U.S., hence the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act (HR 2712). The bill, sponsored by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), would waive for four years the requirement that they first return to China before applying for new visas or permanent residency. The bill passed the House by a unanimous vote and the Senate by a voice vote. President Bush vetoed the Act on November 30 1989, on the grounds that the Chinese had threatened to cut off all educational exchanges if the bill were enacted into law. In its stead, the president issued an executive order granting Chinese students similar protections. The House voted overwhelmingly (390–25) to override Bush’s veto, but the Senate failed by four votes (62–37) (see Yang 2000: 76–80; Mann 1999). The other two vetoes took place in 1992. The first concerns HR 2212, or the U.S.–China Act of 1991. Sponsored by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the bill attached strict human rights conditions for the extension of MFN in 1992. It would bar the president from extending MFN in 1992 unless Beijing accounted for and released all political prisoners arrested during the Tiananmen Incident. It also required China to make “significant progress” in other human rights areas before it could be granted MFN. The bill passed the House 313–112 on July 10 and the Senate 55–44 on July 23 1991. The Senate

Effects of congressional activism

51

did not pass the conference report until February 1992, and Bush promptly vetoed it on March 2. The House quickly voted 357–61 to override Bush’s veto on March 11, but the Senate failed by a vote of 60–38 (Yang 2000: 90–107). Several months later, Donald Pease (D-OH) and Nancy Pelosi introduced HR 5318, or the U.S.–China Act of 1992. It is similar to HR 2212 in that it requires presidential certification of overall Chinese progress in human rights before the granting of MFN. However, it is significantly different from HR 2212 in one aspect: instead of imposing non-MFN tariffs on all Chinese goods, it would target only goods made by China’s state-run enterprises. On July 21 1992, the House passed HR 5318 by a vote of 339–62, and the Senate passed it by voice vote on September 14. Two weeks later, President Bush vetoed the bill. While the House voted 345–74 to override the veto on September 30, the Senate upheld Bush’s veto the next day by a vote of 59–40 (Yang 2000: 107–111). Regardless of why the three vetoes were sustained, which will be discussed later on, the three unsuccessful overriding attempts convey two important points. First, the two-thirds majority requirement essentially guarantees that the president will prevail most of the time in his battles against Congress. Second, bicameralism further enhances presidential dominance. If there were only one chamber, then Bush’s three vetoes almost certainly would have been overridden. Yet the Senate consistently sustained Bush’s vetoes, nullifying whatever victory the House scored vis-à-vis the president. The three veto fights also raise an important question: Why did President Bush’s China policy preferences differ sharply from those of many members of Congress? Bush’s background as the former U.S. liaison officer in Beijing in 1974–1976 is often cited as a key factor behind his determination to prevent Congress—at almost any political cost—from inflicting irrevocable damage to a relationship that had been carefully nurtured since 1972 (e.g., CQ Almanac 1989: 1411–1414). That is, since Bush was personally and intimately involved in the normalization process, he is supposed to have strong incentives to maintain and promote friendly U.S.–China relations regardless of the policy preferences of Congress. However, a close look at executive-legislative interactions in China policy reveals that Bush is merely one of the many presidents whose policy preferences diverged from those of Congress. In the late 1940s, Congress insisted on providing military and economic aid to Chiang Kai-shek despite Truman’s objection (Tsou 1963; Westerfield 1955: Chapter 12, Chapter 16; Grasso 1987; Purifoy 1976; Rourke 1983: 130–145); Carter established diplomatic relations with China despite strong congressional opposition (Sutter 1983; Tierney 1979); and Clinton’s engagement policy was widely criticized on Capitol Hill (Lampton 2001; Mann 1999; Suettinger 2003). Thus a general question arises: Why does the president often disagree with Congress in China policy? Party politics appears to be the major factor that induces executivelegislative disagreements in China policy. Inter-party electoral competition

52

Effects of congressional activism

often motivates members of the opposition party to attack the president’s China policy for political gains, particularly when the president’s party has a minority in Congress. The new Republican majority in 1947 and 1995 launched incessant criticism of Truman and Clinton’s China policy, and the Democratic majority mercilessly attacked Bush’s China policy between 1990 and 1992. Another reason probably has something to do with institutional differences. By constitutional design, members of Congress are expected to be responsive to parochial interests within their districts, while the president follows national interests. Moreover, the two institutions are electorally independent of each other. That is, the president does not owe his office to Congress, nor does he have the authority to appoint or remove a member of Congress. Thus members of Congress frequently advocate foreign policies that are different from or contrary to those of the president’s. Take human rights, for example. Congress initiated the human rights campaign in the early 1970s, but the targets of the campaign were mostly U.S. allies. Out of national security or other strategic concerns, however, the executive branch was unwilling to jump on the congressional bandwagon and criticize its allies for human rights violations (e.g., Cohen 1979; Forsythe 1988; Hehir 1992). In the case of China policy, Congress was most outspoken in its condemnation of the Tiananmen Incident, but President Bush was determined to maintain normal relations with China, a country in which the U.S. has a wide range of vital interests: cultural, economic, strategic, and political. In a word, because of partisan politics and institutional differences, Congress and the president often disagree with each other in China policy in particular and foreign policy in general.

More bark than bite? In the end, primarily because of the various institutional constraints, Congress has rarely been successful in enacting its policy preferences into binding legislation. Table 3.3 shows freestanding China bills that were enacted into law between 1973 and 2006. A total of merely 15 China bills became binding legislation. A denominator is needed in order to calculate the proportion of China bills that were enacted into law. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, 410 China bills were non-binding resolutions that would not have become law even if they had passed. Then there were 167 amendments. Even if an amendment is passed, it is not freestanding legislation. If these two types of bills are excluded, the total number of China bills that could have been enacted into law is 298. Thus a mere 5 percent (15 divided by 298) of eligible China bills were fortunate enough to pass the two chambers and have the blessing of the president’s signature! Of these 15 public laws, the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) is arguably the most important. It has been the bedrock of U.S.–Taiwan relations since 1979;

Effects of congressional activism

53

Table 3.3 Freestanding China bills enacted into law, 1973–2006 Congress Year

Bill

Public law

Purpose Extend diplomatic privileges and immunities to the Liaison Office of People’s Republic of China and to members thereof Indemnification for any loss or damage to archaeological objects on exhibition in U.S. Taiwan Relations Act

93

1973

S1315

PL 93–22

93

1974

S3304

PL 93–287

96

1979

PL 96–8

96

1979

HR2479 S245 S1916

96

1980

HR6440

PL 96–445

99

1985

SJR238

PL 99–183

101

1990

SJR275

PL 101–299

102

1991

S1216

PL 102–404

106

1999

HR1794

PL 106–137

106

2000

HR4444

PL 106–286

107

2001

HR428

PL 107–10

107

2001

HR2739

PL 107–158

108

2003

HR441 S243

PL 108–28

108

2004

PL 108–235

109

2005

HR3793 HR4019 S2092 HR4562 S2784

PL 96–327

PL 109–287

Authorize OPIC operations in China Establish priorities in the payment of claims against China Approve and implement the agreement for nuclear cooperation between China and the U.S. Designate May 13, 1990, as the National Day in Support of Freedom and Human Rights in China and Tibet Provide for adjustment of immigration status for certain Chinese nationals Support Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, particularly the WHO Grant China permanent normal trade relations Endorse and obtain an observer status for Taiwan at the WHO Amend PL 107–10 to endorse and obtain an observer status for Taiwan at the WHO Amend PL 107–10 to endorse and obtain an observer status for Taiwan at the WHO Endorse and obtain an observer status for Taiwan at the WHO Award a congressional gold medal to Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

54

Effects of congressional activism

it has also been the primary source of major conflicts in U.S.–China relations, the most recent being the missile crisis in the Taiwan Strait in 1995–1996. There were five public laws enacted between 1999 and 2004 that urged the executive branch to endorse and obtain an observer status for Taiwan in the World Health Organization. Compared with the TRA, however, these laws have had little impact on the Washington–Taipei–Beijing triangle. Then there were two public laws that declared congressional support for human rights in Tibet. The other laws were either neutral/technical or favorable toward China, such as authorizing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to operate in China and granting China permanent normal trade relations status. To conclude, the preponderance of evidence indicates that, despite its activism and antagonism, Congress has had minimal success in transforming its policy preferences into binding legislative outcomes. To put it bluntly, Congress’s China policy appears to be more bark than bite. This finding raises two more questions. First, if most China bills were never enacted into law due to inter-chamber disputes, committee screening, and presidential veto, why did members of Congress nonetheless introduce so many of them? Second, does Congress matter in China policy and how? While my answers to these questions may appear to be China-specific, the logic underlying them is applicable to congressional policy-making in general.

Why so many China bills? Short of becoming binding legislation, these bills serve a variety of useful purposes. First, they allow members to stake out positions on issues of potential interest to their constituents, campaign donors, and interest groups (e.g., Mayhew 1974). Consequently, the significance of these bills depends less on their fate on the floor and more on the political signals they send out. For example, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), one of the harshest critics of China’s human rights on Capitol Hill, sponsored a number of bills conditioning MFN renewal on China’s human rights. Fully aware that she was fighting an uphill battle against pro-trade moderates and the president, Pelosi nevertheless introduced these bills because they made her look good among Asian immigrants and Bay Area liberals (Yang 2000: 88). “The fight for human rights is an ethic in San Francisco, make no mistake about that,” she asserted (quoted in Sandalow 1994). Partly because of her relentless crusade for human rights in China, Pelosi had become a rising political star in the early 1990s, which paved the way for her eventual rise to the House Democratic leadership. Second, even if it is a non-binding resolution passed in only one chamber (or both chambers), it nonetheless conveys to the outside world the collective preferences of Congress. If the vote margin is big—overwhelming or unanimous—then other policy-makers in Washington and Beijing should be fully

Effects of congressional activism

55

aware of the potential cost of acting against the collective will of Congress. In other words, though most bills do not appear to have teeth in them, they can induce desirable actions from relevant political actors. This is the law of anticipated reactions (Friedrich 1941). In May 1995, the House unanimously passed a concurrent resolution (H.Con.Res.53) urging President Clinton to grant a visa to Lee Teng-hui, the former Taiwanese president. Two months earlier, the Senate passed the same resolution with only one dissenting vote. In anticipation of even stronger congressional action—mandatory legislation and a successful override if it is vetoed—President Clinton reneged on his promise to the Chinese government and decided to issue a visa to Lee (see Mann 1999: 320–326). Last but not least, though most China bills were never reported out of committees or enacted into law, addressing merely a small number of them could exhaust the administration. As Lampton incisively pointed out: Even if most of the proposed bills stand little chance of becoming law, the administration must devote so much scarce human resources and leadership attention to putting out the bushfires that in its exhaustion it gives in somewhere simply to extinguish the most damaging proposals. (2001: 338) In 1993, President Clinton had to expend a considerable amount time lobbying against the Murkowski Amendment declaring that the TRA supersedes the 1982 Communiqué governing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan (Yang 2000: 189– 190). In 1997, in the midst of congressional debate about MFN renewal and prior to Clinton’s summit meeting with the former Chinese President Jiang Zeming, Christopher Cox (R-CA) initiated 11 separate pieces of legislation on China (CQWR 1997: 2865, 2777). Faced with such a legislative flood, Clinton had no choice but to compromise by increasing funding for Radio Free Asia and stationing more U.S. diplomats in China to monitor human rights, the two options that were least damaging to U.S.–China relations (Lampton 2001: 338).

Does Congress matter in China policy? Since Congress is a legislative body, one is tempted to assess its influence in foreign policy by counting the number of substantive laws it passes. Yet binding legislation is merely one indicator of congressional influence. Through other and less formal means such as creating situations that generate desired reactions from the executive branch, enacting procedural legislation, and framing public opinion, Congress has firmly established itself as a formidable player in China policy. What Lindsay and Ripley wrote about how Congress influences U.S. foreign policy in general also applies to U.S. China policy in particular:

56

Effects of congressional activism But fixating on substantive legislation obscures the fact that Congress influences policy by various indirect means: by setting up situations that generate desired reactions by the executive, by changing the way decisions are made in the executive branch, and by framing public and elite opinion about foreign policy. (Lindsay and Ripley 1993: 18)

The “rule of anticipated reactions” predicts that rational actors will behave strategically, adjusting their actions in anticipation of reactions from other actors (Friedrich 1941). Because of strategic behavior, it is misleading to judge the relative influence of the president or Congress by merely what meets the eye. The president may deter Congress from taking certain actions by making known his policy preferences (e.g., his intention to use the veto). Conversely, Congress can deter the president from taking certain actions by signaling its collective preferences through actual or promised passage of legislation. Thus, Lindsay and Ripley (ibid.: 25) wrote, “The existence of such strategic behavior has important implications for the study of defense and foreign policy: the relative power of Congress and the president cannot be judged solely on the basis of observed behavior.” Examples of anticipated reactions abound in Congress’s China policy. Lee Tenghui’s visit to the U.S., which was discussed shortly before, is a good example of anticipated reactions. Another example comes from U.S. sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan. In 1999, the Clinton administration seemed reluctant to approve sales of long-range early warning radars to Taiwan. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), then chairman of the House International Relations Committee, wrote to President Clinton to urge his approval. He also wrote to Secretary of State Madeline Albright, threatening to introduce legislation approving such sales. In the end, the administration agreed in principle to sell early warning radars to Taiwan (Kan 2002: 5). Meanwhile, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) co-sponsored S 693 (the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act), a bill that was two months later introduced in the House as HR1838 and which eventually passed the House in 2000. Though the bill never became public law because of stiff opposition from a number of Senators, it created an environment in which it became hard for Clinton to reject Taiwan’s arms purchase requests (CQWR 1999: 2605–2607; CQWR 2000: 262, 953; Lampton 2001: 333–334). It is worthwhile saying a few more words about Senator Jesse Helms, who exercised enormous influence on China policy during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1995–2000 (see Berke and Myers 1997). His preferences on China policy and his toughness were so well known on Capitol Hill that he often exercised influence by doing nothing (e.g., U.S. Congress 1997b, 1998c, 2000a, 2000c).7 As Lampton (2001: 339, italics original) pointed out, “In politics as well as in life, fear can be a powerful force; simply being tough and dedicated deters both the executive branch and other legislators from even attempting to pursue certain courses

Effects of congressional activism

57

of action.” In the 1999 search for a U.S. ambassador to China, for example, several candidates were ruled out simply because they were presumably unacceptable to Helms. In a word, because of strategic behavior resulting from anticipated reactions, “[t]he influence of legislators like Helms . . . often is measured as much by what did not happen as by the legislation they eventually shepherd into law” (ibid.: 339, italics original). Instead of prescribing (or proscribing) policy actions for the executive branch, as substantive legislation does, procedural legislation establishes the processes by which policy decisions are made within the executive branch (Lindsay and Ripley 1993). Through procedural legislation like reporting requirements or the creation of new agencies, Congress has firmly put its imprint on many aspects of China policy. The annual State Department report on China’s human rights, which was first mandated by Congress in 1980, forces the administration to include human rights as an important aspect of U.S. China policy. Because the report always offers unflattering assessments of the overall human rights situation in China, the Chinese government has never failed to rebut the report (e.g., BBC Chinese 2004, 2005, 2006). In fact, starting from 1999 Beijing began to issue an annual report on U.S. human rights. As a result of Congress’s procedural legislation, the annual State Department report and the Chinese report have become the symbol and a major source of U.S.–China confrontations on human rights. Another example of procedural legislation is the creation of the Office of the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Affairs within the State Department under Public Law 107–228. A number of legislators, including some of the heavyweights on Capitol Hill like Jesse Helms, Bob Dole, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, have been strong supporters of human rights in Tibet.8 Congress has also held a number of hearings on alleged Chinese human rights violations in Tibet (e.g., U.S. Congress 1988, 1997a, 2001b, 2002). The executive branch, by contrast, has been largely quiescent on the issue, except when the State Department issues its annual report on human rights China, which includes human rights in Tibet. To ensure that the executive branch includes Tibet in its overall China policy and to provide access to human rights groups and Tibetans, Congress created the Office in 1997. Since Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Tibet since 1949, it condemns the creation of the Office as another instance of U.S. interference in Chinese domestic affairs (e.g., BBC Chinese 2001; People’s Daily 1997). Probably the best example of procedural legislation is the Jackson–Vanik Amendment that prohibits the president from granting MFN to Communist countries unless he waives the requirement. Originally enacted to punish the former Soviet Union for its restrictions on Jewish emigration, the Amendment became the statutory tool with which a frustrated Congress tried to shape China policy in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident. Because of this procedural requirement, the president and Congress locked horns over China policy each year between 1990 and 2000, and twice the president

58

Effects of congressional activism

had to use his veto power to save unconditional MFN for China. While the president always managed to renew unconditional MFN for China, the annual debate nonetheless caused many uncertainties in and considerable damage to U.S.–China relations. Moreover, the annual debates on MFN renewal forced the administration to treat human rights as a top priority in China policy. By holding public hearings in which legislators as well as outside groups and experts testify on relevant policy issues, members of Congress can greatly shape public preferences, which in turn can influence the president’s policy options. As Lampton (2001: 336) aptly pointed out, “Often televised, hearings can cumulatively help shape media, congressional, and ultimately popular discourse and create boundaries that the executive branch will itself decide not to transgress.” In a series of high-profile hearings held in 1966, Congress discussed the state of U.S.–China relations and came to the conclusion that the U.S. should readjust its foreign policy by reaching out to China (CQ Almanac 1966: 424–429). These hearings laid the critical foundation of public support for a normalized relationship with China, which in turn encouraged and facilitated the Kissinger–Nixon initiatives to form a strategic alliance with China. One reason that human rights has remained a top priority in U.S. China policy since 1989 is frequent congressional hearings. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), former chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and currently chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations, is one of the most vocal critics of Chinese human rights on Capitol Hill. He has held the largest number of hearings on human rights in China (e.g., U.S. Congress 1998a, 1998b, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006a, 2006b). According to Lampton (2001: 336), Smith held at least five sets of hearings on China’s human rights in 1995, the first year of his chairmanship. In a February 2006 hearing, Smith blasted the top executives of U.S. internet companies for allegedly aiding the Chinese government in cracking down on political dissent (U.S. Congress 2006b) He even invited Chinese officials to testify before his hearings. Each time the Chinese would refuse, and Smith would view it as Chinese unwillingness to cooperate on human rights issues, hence more hearings on Chinese human rights (Lampton 2001: 336–337). These hearings undoubtedly have contributed to the salience of the issue among American people and their support for a strong human rights policy toward China. In a word, it is misleading to judge Congress’s impact on China policy by simply counting the number of bills enacted into law. Congress has significantly influenced China policy through procedural legislation, creating situations that generate desired reactions by the executive branch, and by framing public opinion. On balance, then, Congress’s influence lies not so much in telling the executive branch what to do as in setting up road blocks in U.S.– China relations. Sutter thus wrote:

Effects of congressional activism

59

The overall effect of such strong congressional criticism has been to act as a drag on forward movements in U.S.–China relations. The constant critiques divert administration policy-makers from other tasks, forcing them to defend and justify their China policies before skeptical and sometimes hostile Congress. (2001: 108)

4

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations1

Congress, of course, is oriented not to academic theory but constituencies— where voices, financial contributions, and votes carry decisive weight in elections. In trade matters, as a result, it tends to listen to well-organized groups that have a clear focus of concern, strong local support, and a situation susceptible to ready emotional understanding: the loss of jobs of automakers in Detroit or steel workers in Pennsylvania or garment and apparel workers in North Carolina. (Mark Bisnow 1990: 283) When we trade with other countries, we export more than farm equipment, soybeans, or computer chips. We export part of our society. Part of our American values and ideals [sic]. This is good for the WTO. It is good for China. It is good for the United States. And I believe it will help keep the peace. (Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Congressional Record 2000: S791) Do my colleagues know that . . . China has still not accounted for those missing or detained in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrators? Eleven years . . . And this administration and this Congress wants [sic] to grant China permanent trade status? Shame. (Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), Congressional Record 2000: H514)

Booming economic ties While strategic cooperation formed the foundation of U.S.–China relations during the latter part of the Cold War, today economic ties are the bedrock of the bilateral relationship. Some statistics on bilateral trade will illuminate the growing interdependence between the two economies. China is the third largest trading partner of the U.S. and the U.S. is China’s top trading partner. Total bilateral trade has grown at an exponential rate, from $2.3 billion in 1979 to $343 billion in 2006 (see Table 4.1). U.S. exports to China have increased from $1.7 billion to $55.2 billion, with an estimated 199,000 highpaying American jobs dependent on exports to China (Scott 2005: 4). Meanwhile, U.S. imports from China have increased at an even higher rate, from $592 million in 1979 to $287.8 billion in 2006 (see Table 4.1). The

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations

61

Table 4.1 U.S.–China trade in goods, 1973–2006 (millions of dollars) Year

U.S. exports

U.S. imports

Total trade

U.S. balance

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

689 806 303 134 171 820 1,724 3,754 3,602 2,912 2,176 3,004 3,855 3,106 3,497 5,021 5,755 4,806 6,278 7,418 8,762 9,281 11,754 11,992 12,862 14,241 13,111 16,185 19,182 22,127 28,367 34,721 41,925 55,224

63 114 157 201 200 324 592 1,058 1,865 2,283 2,244 3,064 3,861 4,771 6,293 8,510 11,989 15,237 18,969 25,727 31,539 38,786 45,543 51,512 62,557 71,168 81,788 100,018 102,278 125,192 152,436 196,699 243,470 287,773

752 920 460 335 371 1,144 2,316 4,812 5,467 5,195 4,420 6,068 7,716 7,877 9,790 13,531 17,744 20,043 25,247 33,145 40,301 48,067 57,297 63,504 75,419 85,409 94,899 116,203 121,460 147,319 180,803 231,420 285,395 342,997

626 692 146 −67 −29 496 1,132 2,696 1,737 629 −68 −60 −6 −1,665 −2,796 −3,489 −6,234 −10,431 −12,691 −18,309 −22,777 −29,505 −33,789 −39,520 −49,695 −56,927 −68,677 −83,833 −83,096 −103,065 −124,069 −161,978 −201,545 −232,549

Source: 1973–1984, Harding (1992: Table A-2); 1985–2004, U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. alone absorbs about one-third of all Chinese exports to the world. For example, China has been the top supplier of footwear and toys to American consumers since 1991; in 2005, Chinese imports alone accounted for 71 percent of total U.S. footwear imports and 78 percent of total U.S. toys imports. Since 2003, China has been the leading source of American apparel imports—both knit and not-knit (see Table 4.2). As a result, the U.S. has been running an enormous trade deficit with China. In fact, the last time the U.S. had trade surplus was back in 1982. Between 1983 and 2006, U.S. trade deficit with China increased from an insignificant $68 million to $232.5 billion (see Table 4.1). The influx of

1989

1990

1991

1992

11.72 5.26 45 1

1

1994

11.18 4.52 40

1993

22.22 3.28 15 1

1

2

2 21.06 3.51 17

13.89 1.38 10

12.19 1.57 13

1

12.29 6.22 51

1

12.11 5.82 48

1995

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

3

3

3

3

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

22.87 25.99 28.14 28.69 32.80 31.69 30.90 33.19 35.29 37.51 3.51 4.16 3.81 3.75 4.17 4.15 4.48 5.49 6.62 10.23 15 16 14 13 13 13 14 17 19 27

2

15.06 18.65 21.65 23.71 26.41 26.86 27.82 29.72 31.58 33.29 1.51 1.84 1.86 2.02 2.03 2.28 2.62 3.20 4.10 6.58 10 10 9 9 8 8 9 11 13 19

1

13.96 16.58 17.84 18.23 19.25 20.27 21.44 21.04 21.96 24.45 7.50 9.36 10.55 11.08 12.38 12.22 14.44 16.10 17.22 19.14 54 56 59 61 64 60 67 77 78 78

1

12.75 14.02 13.88 14.07 14.85 15.24 15.39 15.60 16.51 17.93 6.39 7.41 8.01 8.43 9.19 9.76 10.23 10.57 11.35 12.72 50 53 58 60 62 64 66 68 69 71

1996

Source: Office of Trade and Industry Information (OTII), Manufacturing and Services, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.

Apparel articles and accessories, not knit etc. US Total 13.36 14.36 14.89 17.97 19.86 From China 1.59 2.11 2.30 3.07 3.79 China % 12 15 15 17 19 US Total Ranking 2 2 1 1 1

Apparel articles and accessories, knit or crochet US Total 8.58 8.62 8.85 10.29 10.63 From China 1.07 1.09 1.13 1.40 1.51 China % 12 13 13 14 14 US Total Ranking 4 2 3 2 2

Toys, games and sport equipment; parts and accessories US Total 7.80 8.47 8.18 10.09 10.94 11.10 From China 1.73 2.14 2.61 3.69 4.17 5.15 China % 22 25 32 37 38 46 US Total Ranking 2 2 1 1 1 1

Footwear, gaiters etc. and parts thereof US Total 8.39 9.58 9.56 10.17 From China 0.72 1.48 2.53 3.40 China % 9 15 26 33 US Total Ranking 5 3 1 1

Year

Table 4.2 U.S. imports of selected commodities from China in 1989–2005 (billions of dollars)

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations

63

Chinese products arguably have had tremendous negative impact on American jobs and wages. Unable to compete with cheap Chinese imports, many American manufacturing businesses were forced to close, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs. According to one estimate, U.S. trade with China eliminated a net 1,460,000 jobs in 1989–2003 (Scott 2005: 4). The astronomical trade deficit with China has put both the White House and Congress under political heat, but for two reasons the political heat has been particularly intense for Congress.2 First, of the three branches of government, only Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate foreign trade. Second, because of the electoral connection, constituents adversely affected by Chinese imports—mostly blue-collar workers and labor unions— have put increasing pressure on members of Congress to address skyrocketing trade deficit (see Sostek 2006; Trumka and Hughes 2006). And Congress has indeed been actively pursuing various legislative measures aimed at reducing trade deficit. In 2005, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) co-sponsored a bill that would impose a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese imports unless Beijing appreciates its allegedly undervalued currency, which is believed to be partly responsible for the huge trade deficit (see MacLeod 2006; Marquand 2006). In the House, representatives from the manufacturing belt like Tim Ryan (D-OH), Mike Rogers (R-MI), and Phil English (R-PA) also introduced similar bills.

Congress and U.S.–China trade Even before the two countries had diplomatic relations, bilateral trade was on the mind of a handful of members of Congress. As early as 1973, Senator Thomas J. McIntyre (D-NH) sponsored a joint resolution requiring Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce to report on proposed grain sales to China, including the possible effects of such sales on U.S. domestic grain market, consumers, and farmers. In 1974, Senator Mike Mansfield (D-MT) introduced a bill calling on the president to grant Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status to China.3 In the following year, Senator Richard Stone (D-FL) introduced a resolution calling for conclusion of trade agreements between the two countries. In 1977, Congressman Les Aucoin (D-OR) sponsored four bills authorizing the Export–Import Bank to extend credit to China. No sooner had the two countries exchanged diplomatic recognition than Congress began to consider legislation on trade with China. On December 13 1979, the House Ways and Means Committee, by a 24–8 vote, approved a three-year trade agreement negotiated between the Carter administration and the Chinese government. The full House approved the agreement by a 294–88 vote on January 24 1980, and the Senate approved it the same day with a 74–8 vote. In addition to granting China MFN, the trade agreement also encouraged business relations between the two countries (including the establishment of consulates and the promotion of visits by business groups),

64

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations

committed each country to protect the patents, trademarks, and copyrights of the other country, and provided for timely consultations to resolve issues like market disruptions caused by imports (CQ Almanac 1980: 356–357; CQ Almanac 1979: 160). In the decade after normalization of relations, Congress appeared to be uninterested in regulating bilateral trade, conceding most initiatives to the executive branch and the business community. The handful of bills and amendments (five in total) introduced during this period were mostly aimed at accelerating the flow of goods across the Pacific. In 1981, Representative Sam Gibbons (D-FL) introduced a bill permitting the importation of Chinese fur, and Representative Ralph Regula (R-OH) introduced in 1984 an amendment designating China as a friendly country in a program that sells dairy products acquired by the Commodity Credit Corporation. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) sponsored an amendment in 1985 that urged Commerce and State to increase U.S.–China trade, with a view toward creating more American jobs and increasing the American share of the Chinese import market. The exceptions were two bills—introduced by Representatives Richard Schulze (R-PA) and Philip Crane (R-IL) respectively in 1982 and 1983—that disapproved of presidential renewal of China’s MFN status. Just as U.S.–China trade was heading into a period of unprecedented growth, the Tiananmen Incident took place. Outrage against Beijing plus frustration with President Bush’s policy of “business as usual” prompted Congress to reexamine its trade policy toward China. If Congress had the authority to approve MFN for China, then it apparently had the authority to disapprove it or to attach conditions to its renewal. What ensued was a tenyear battle between the White House and Congress over MFN renewal in particular and China policy in general that, as President Clinton lamented, “divided our foreign policy and weakened our approach over China” (Public Papers of the Presidents 1993: 770). Amidst the annual ritual of congressional-executive skirmish over MFN, the U.S. and China signed an agreement on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November 15 1999. Failure to reach a trade agreement with the U.S.—due to a host of issues such as market access, IPR, and export subsidy—had been the major barrier to China’s efforts to rejoin the WTO.4 Things started to speed up when the Chinese premier Zhu Rongji visited Washington in April 1999 and offered an attractive package of concessions. However, against the backdrop of Republican-led investigations of alleged Chinese theft of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets and illegal Chinese campaign contributions, President Clinton turned down Zhu’s offer (CQ Almanac 1999: 23: 3–7; Mufson and Blustein 1999). But the barrage of criticism from supporters of Clinton’s engagement policy, in particular the pro-trade moderates in Congress and the business community, coupled with the administration’s concern about sending China’s preeminent reformer home empty-handed, forced Clinton to reverse his initial decision and to

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations

65

pledge quick resumption of the WTO talks (Blustein 1999a, 1999b). Tough negotiations resumed, but it was not until November 15 that the two countries reached the landmark agreement. Now it was up to Congress to approve the trade agreement. More specifically, Congress needed to remove China from the Jackson–Vanik Amendment and grant it permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) if the two countries wanted to reap the full benefits of China’s WTO membership.5 The House approved China’s PNTR by a narrow vote of 237–197 on May 24 2000, with better than one-third of Democrats (73–138) voting alongside nearly three-quarters of Republicans (164–57).6 The bill encountered much less opposition in the Senate, and attempts by the bill’s opponents to amend the bill failed. The full chamber approved it 83–15 on September 19 (Republican 46–8, Democrat 37–7) (CQ Almanac 2000: 20: 3–24).

Legislative battle over PNTR This brief review of congressional involvement in U.S.–China trade relations raises an important question: Why did some members support trade with China while others oppose it? To answer this question, I examine the 2000 House vote on PNTR. It is arguably the only China-related House vote that dealt with issues primarily concerning U.S.–China trade relations such as tariffs, market access, and special import protection. HR 4444 originally contained certain provisions concerning monitoring human rights in China, Taiwan’s accession to the WTO, and Chinese forced labor products, but none of these provisions were enacted into law (see CQ Almanac 2000: 20: 12). The Senate also voted on PNTR, but the vote was too lopsided (83–15) to be suitable for statistical analysis. Apart from the PNTR vote, there were dozens of votes on the renewal of China’s MFN status. However, one can argue that these votes were primarily concerned with China’s human rights and only secondarily with U.S.–China trade. Since it had first approved MFN for China in 1980, Congress had never objected to presidential renewal until 1990, one year after the Chinese crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators on the Tiananmen Square. Outraged by Beijing’s actions and frustrated by the Bush administration’s China policy (e.g., the two secret missions to reestablish relationship with Beijing immediately after the Tiananmen Incident), Congress turned to MFN renewal in an attempt to bring about Chinese human rights progress in particular and to shape U.S.–China policy in general (see Harding 1992; Lilley and Willkie 1994; Mann 1999; Yang 2000). Thus the whole MFN debate should be viewed in the context of congressional attempts to change China’s human rights practices in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident. Moreover, as Nokken (2003) forcefully argued, the MFN votes and the PNTR vote were probably different because the rules and procedures governing them were different. Under the rules governing MFN, presidential success is virtually guaranteed from the outset, since a joint resolution to disapprove

66

Congress and U.S.–China trade relations

of presidential renewal must be passed in both chambers and—even if passed—is subject to presidential veto. Faced with such an institutional structure, members nonetheless scheduled these recorded votes because these votes “provided them with the opportunity to secure publicity for their cause [especially human rights] and to garner ‘position-taking’ points with voters back home” (ibid.: 155). What resulted was a coalition of ideological ends voting against the middle, or what he called EATM voting. The PNTR, he argued, is a normal piece of legislation that requires majority approval in Congress as well as White House support to be enacted into law. Nokken found that when it came up for a vote, many members changed positions, with Republicans switching to support and Democrats to opposition. The result was less EATM distribution on the vote. Nokken thus concluded, “When the outcome was uncertain, and when the matter facing the House was a straightforward policy vote that would be dealt with by the Senate and president, the EATM distribution subsides noticeably” (ibid.: 165). Excluding these MFN votes, there were merely six House votes on trade issues relating to China. Three of them were unanimous.7 The other three votes (all in 1997) were contested votes, but a close look indicates that they were not pure trade votes. The first of the three votes was on an amendment that directed the Export–Import Bank to give preferences to U.S. companies in China that had voluntarily adopted a code of conduct consistent with international human rights. The remaining two votes appeared to be parliamentary tactics, as both of them were on motions to table the appeal of the ruling of the Chair of the Ways and Means that a motion to recommit was irrelevant.8 As a result of these considerations, I treat the MFN votes as votes on human rights and analyze them in Chapter 6. In this chapter, I examine only the PNTR vote. Hypotheses After the two countries signed the trade agreement on China’s accession to the WTO in late 1999, the Clinton White House immediately started a wellorganized and high profile campaign for its approval by Congress (CQWR 2000: 1121; Smith 2000). “China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products. It is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom,” said the president (quoted in CQWR 2000: 552). He appointed Commerce Secretary William M. Daley and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Steve Ricchetti to launch an all-out campaign. Clinton’s campaign on Capitol Hill focused on House Democrats who appeared to be reluctant to support a trade deal opposed by labor unions. In order to woo wavering members, Clinton also arranged trips to China so that these members could see with their own eyes the positive changes that had occurred in that country since 1989 (Smith 2000). Two weeks before the scheduled House vote, Clinton arranged a star-studded ceremony to tout the benefits of

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U.S.–China trade. The guests included former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Minnesota’s Independent governor Jesse Ventura (CQWR 2000: 1121). Hypothesis 1: Because of pressure from President Clinton, Democrats will be more likely to vote for PNTR than Republicans, other things being equal. Since constituency interests are arguably most clearly defined on trade issues, I expect significant constituency influence on the PNTR vote. In particular, the interests of farmers, big retailers and wholesalers, and labor unions are expected to have significant impact on the vote. The U.S. has been the world’s leading exporter of agricultural products. In the early 1980s, it alone accounted for nearly one-third (32 percent to be exact) of the world’s agricultural export market, and its share in 1999 was 18 percent (Economic Research Service 2001b: 1). In the same year, the overall export share of U.S. agricultural production was 15 percent (Economic Research Service 2000: 1). In 2000, the U.S. exported $51.6 billion worth of agricultural products, which generated 740,000 full-time civilian jobs (including 444,000 jobs in non-farm sectors), and a third of U.S. cropland went into export channels (Economic Research Service 2001a). China has been a leading market for American farmers since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1979. It was the seventh largest foreign market for U.S. farm products between 1997 and 2001; if Hong Kong is included, then China became the fourth largest (Becker and Hanrahan 2002: 1). The U.S. is the largest supplier of agricultural products to China, accounting for an average of 24 percent of China’s agricultural import market between 1997 and 1999. In 1999, U.S. share of China’s imports of soybean, soy oil, hides, and poultry meat was 58 percent, 39 percent, 44 percent, and 64 percent respectively (Foreign Agricultural Service 2001: 14). With significantly reduced tariffs—hence more market access for American farmers—once it was admitted into the WTO, China was expected to import more U.S. agricultural products, raising average U.S. farm prices from 0.5 percent to 3 percent over the 2002–2009 baseline. And U.S. exports and net farm income could increase by US$900 million and US$800 million, respectively, by 2009 (Becker and Hanrahan 2002: 2). Given the high stakes American farmers have in U.S.–China trade, it is not surprising that members from farm districts seemed to be particularly supportive of PNTR. For example, Greg Walden (R-OR) supported PNTR because the Oregon Potato Commission estimated that Chinese imports of frozen French fries would increase from 15,000 metric tons in 1997 to 250,000 metric tons in 2005 (U.S. Congress 2001c: 13). Fully aware of the importance of Chinese consumers for Iowa soybean growers, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also championed China’s WTO membership (Congressional Record 2000: S791).

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Congress and U.S.–China trade relations Hypothesis 2: Support for PNTR will be positively associated with farm employment in a congressional district.

In addition to agriculture, other export-competitive industries have also benefited from the China market. The Boeing Company is an illuminating case. By the end of the first quarter of 2006, 61 percent of China’s passenger aircrafts were Boeing-made. And the China market is still growing, as an estimated 2,600 new passenger aircrafts worth US$213 billion will be needed for the next two decades (Boeing Company 2006). Other big companies like GE and Microsoft have also reaped enormous profits from the China market. Thus, generally speaking, the more a district exports to China, the more likely its representative is expected to vote for PNTR. Hypothesis 3: The magnitude of a district’s exports to China will be positively associated with support for PNTR, holding other variables constant. American retailers and wholesalers also have enormous stakes in U.S.–China trade. According to Zakaria (2005), Wal-Mart—the largest retailer in the world—alone imports US$18 billion worth of goods from China annually. Eighty percent of Wal-Mart’s suppliers—6,000 in total—are located in China. Cheap Chinese products like footwear, toys, and apparel (see Table 4.2) have saved American consumers more than US$600 billion in the past decade (ibid.: 29). In his testimony before Congress, Robert Hall, Vice President of the National Retail Association, cited estimates from the Trade Partnership that “U.S. imports of consumer goods alone from China in 1996 supported more than 2.4 million American jobs in such high-paying sectors as manufacturing (cash registers and trucks to transport the goods to store), finance and insurance, transportation, wholesaling, and retailing” (U.S. Congress 1997c: 185). Admittedly, what is good for retailers and wholesalers may not be good for their employees. For example, criticism of Wal-Mart’s alleged exploitation of workers—low wages, no health benefits, etc.—attests to conflicting interests between employers and employees. Nonetheless, employment in retail/wholesale industries is a relatively good, indirect measure of the political influence of retail/wholesale industries in a particular congressional district. Hypothesis 4: Employment in retail/wholesale industries will be positively associated with support for PNTR, controlling for other factors. While American farmers and retailers/wholesalers have generally benefited from trade with China, labor unions seemed to have been most adversely affected by it and hence were most vocal in their opposition to PNTR (Connolly 2000; CQWR 2000: 907–11; Greenhouse 2000; Kahn 2000b). According to one estimate, nearly 1.5 million jobs were eliminated due to U.S.

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trade with China in 1989–2003 and many of these lost jobs were in the heavily unionized manufacturing industry (Scott 2005: 4). The plight of the textile and apparel industry perhaps best illustrates the adverse impact of Chinese imports on American jobs. In 2004, Chinese textile and apparel exports to the U.S. were valued at about $17 billion, or about 20 percent of all American clothing imports (Barboza 2005). Between 1989 and 2003, 59,577 textile jobs and 91,617 apparel jobs were allegedly lost due to Chinese imports; they accounted for 13.4 percent of all manufacturing jobs lost to China trade (Scott 2005: 15). In the first three months of 2005, Chinese exports increased by more than 63 percent over a year ago, largely due to the abolition of the global textile quota in January 2005. As a result, an additional 17,000 jobs were reportedly displaced in the first three months of 2005 due to the closure of 11 textile and apparel plants (Barboza 2005; Iritani and Lee 2005). Consequently, labor union leaders were steadfastly opposed to PNTR. The top three union leaders—John J. Sweeney of A.F.L.-C.I.O, Jay Mazur of United, and Lenore Miller of Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union—resigned from a presidential panel on PNTR out of frustration with the administration’s China trade policy (Kahn 2000a). John Sweeney called it “disgustingly hypocritical for the White House to posture for workers’ rights in the global economy at the same time it prostrates itself for a deal with China that treats human rights as a disposable nuisance” (quoted in Kaiser 1999).9 Labor unions organized massive grassroots campaigns and brought nearly 13,000 members to Capitol Hill in April 2000 to put pressure on Congress (CQWR 2000: 907–11).10 Some union leaders even threatened to campaign against Democrats who voted for the trade bill (Jordan 2000). For some Democrats, the threat was not a bluff but a real one, as labor PACs significantly reduced campaign contributions to Democrats who voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 (Engel and Jackson 1998). Hypothesis 5: The higher the percentage of unionized labor in a district, the more likely a member from that district is to vote against PNTR, other things being equal. Moreover, the Democratic Party is expected to be more responsive to the interests of labor unions than the Republican Party.11 Given the high stakes of constituency interests involved in trade policy, the two parties have traditionally adopted rather distinct positions roughly corresponding to the broad interests of their respective electoral bases. Republicans tend to be more attentive to business interests and more supportive of free trade, whereas Democrats are more inclined to support labor unions and hence protectionist policies (Gartzke and Wrighton 1998; Gibson 2000; O’Halloran 1994). This is what Bailey and Brady (1998: 528) called “interparty heterogeneity of electoral strategies.” Thus, in the final analysis, partisanship can be

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viewed as “constituency differences translated into issues” (Davidson and Oleszek 1990: 130). Hypothesis 6: Since Democrats are expected to be more likely to oppose PNTR due to pressure from labor unions, the coefficient for the interaction term Democrat × Union Strength should be significant and negative. Also, it should be noted that both parties had a hard time forming a unified front on PNTR. On the Democratic side, opponents of PNTR were mostly human rights activists and environmentalists from the liberal wing of the party, and on the Republican side, social conservatives and defense hawks from the conservative wing of the GOP (CQWR 2000: 89; CQ Almanac 1998: 23: 3). As a result, pro-trade Republicans and Democrats found themselves in opposition to the ideological wings of both parties on the PNTR debate. A CQ Weekly Report staff writer vividly captured the political scene: In any other context, it might have seemed surreal, as long-time political enemies from the political left and right chatted amiably. Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., who is best known for his anti-abortion activism, complimented his frequent opponent on that issue but ally against the China bill, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif . . . But all had a belief in common: that their adversaries would sell out America’s moral standing—its desire to export basic freedoms, decent working conditions and environmental protection—to make a buck. (CQWR 2000: 910) Hypothesis 7: The ideological wings of both parties will be more likely to vote against PNTR than moderates, controlling for other factors. Finally, it is worth noting that many members opposed PNTR because they believed that the annual review of MFN gave Congress crucial leverage on human rights in China. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a strong critic of China’s human rights, argued that “the annual debate and the possibility of MFN revocation are arguably the most important leverage the U.S. still has to influence human rights situation in China” and that “the permanent surrender of our MFN leverage ought to be unthinkable at this point” (U.S. Congress 2000b: 3, 2001c: 24). Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) also felt “uncomfortable with just taking away a process that is in place, that does provide some pressure on China, and leaving nothing to replace it” (CQWR 2000: 850). David Bonior (D-MI) said, “If you reward China with permanent trade status, you lose all leverage” (quoted in Shesgreen 2000).

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Data and methodology Due to the lack of district-level data, I use state-level data for two variables: Union Strength and Exports to China. Union Strength is the percentage of unionized workers, and Exports to China is the proportion of exports to China out of a state’s total exports. Data for the other two constituency variables are district-level and come from the 2000 census. Farm Employment is the total number of farmers and farmer managers divided by civilian labor force. Similarly, Retail/Wholesale Employment is the percentage of retail and wholesale workers in civilian labor force. President’s Party is coded 1 if a member belongs to the president’s party and 0 otherwise. To test the hypothesis that the ideological wings of both parties are more likely to vote against PNTR than pro-trade moderates, I use the absolute value of the commonly used DW-NOMINATE score (hereafter referred to as DW score) (Poole and Rosenthal 1997). Since the original value of DW score almost always ranges from −1 to 1, its absolute value ranges from 0 to 1. Because both liberals (negative scores) and conservatives (positive scores) are expected to vote against pro-trade moderates, high absolute DW scores should be positively associated with nay votes. In other words, the absolute value of DW score is expected to have a negative sign. Given the usually high correlation between party and ideology, on the one hand, and constituency variables, on the other hand, including both in the same regression may dampen the effects of one or the other.12 Thus I first run a regression with only Union Strength, Farm Employment, and Retail/ Wholesale Employment. Then I add party and ideology, the interaction term, and Exports to China sequentially. I treat Exports to China differently from the other three constituency variables because data on state exports are available only after 1999, which means that when I analyze roll call votes on U.S.– Japan trade in the 1980s in Chapter 7, I will not be able to include state exports to Japan. Yet it is essential to have the same set of variables if I want to compare congressional roll voting on trade across different countries. On the other hand, it is also important that I use the best available data to explain roll call behavior. As a result, I include Exports to China here, but only after I have run regressions with the other three constituency variables that will be included in regression analyses in later chapters. Data sources are contained in the Appendix. Since the dependent variable is a dichotomous variable that takes on only binary values (1 or 0), I use logit regression. The coefficients of a logit regression represent logarithm of odds, not probabilities. To convert them into probabilities, I use the SPost module in STATA developed by Long and Freese (2003). More specifically, I use the post-estimation command “prchange” to arrive at the changes in probabilities when the value of an independent variable increases by one standard deviation, holding other variables at their means. This is the method that will be used in later chapters too.

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Statistical findings Table 4.3 reports the coefficients of logit regression and Table 4.4 reports probabilities converted from these coefficients. Model 1 is the basic model with three constituency variables. Members from farm districts seemed to be aware of the potential benefits of an even more open China market for their constituents, as the probability of voting for PNTR increases by 0.122 if a district’s farming employment increases by one standard deviation, holding other variables at their means. However, neither Union Strength nor Retail/Wholesale Employment is statistically significant, even though both of them are in the hypothesized direction. This is a rather surprising finding, particularly in light of strong labor pressure on members of Congress. State-level data might be responsible for the poor performance of Union Strength. More important, perhaps, is the possibility that many Democrats—those who believed that China did not deserve PNTR due to its human rights and environmental problems and that free trade would do more harm than good to America—would have voted against PNTR without pressure from labor unions. Also notice that the explanatory power of Model 1 is rather weak, as indicated by the low pseudo R2 (0.043). This suggests that constituency interests as measured by the three variables did not have much impact on the PNTR vote. Party and ideology are added to Model 2. The first thing to notice is that with the addition of these two variables, pseudo R2 increases considerably to Table 4.3 Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 4444 Independent variables

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Union strength

−.024 (.017) .083 (.065) .244** (.068)

−.023 (.018) −.098 (.077) .165* (.068) −1.914** (.244) −3.342** (.765)

.013 (.028) −.091 (.077) .162* (.068) −1.001 (.578) −2.910** (.804) −.066 (.039)

−286.082 .043 434

−244.223 .179 432

−242.740 .184 432

.013 (.028) −.096 (.077) .156* (.069) −1.051 (.584) −3.039** (.812) −.067 (.039) .247* (.110) −240.065 .193 432

Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment President’s party (Democrat) Absolute DW score Democrat × union strength Exports to China Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at 0.01; * Significant at 0.05.

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Table 4.4 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 4444) Independent variables Union strength Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment President’s party (Democrat) Absolute DW score Democrat × union strength Exports to China

Model 1

Model 2

.122

.083 −.440 −.126

Model 3

Model 4

.081

.078

−.110

−.114 .067

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported.

0.179, as opposed to 0.043 in Model 1. It appears that party and ideology, not constituency interests, exerted the primary influence on members’ votes. Contrary to my expectation, the president’s party has a negative sign. This means that being a Democrat actually decreases the probability of voting for PNTR by a hefty 0.44, when other variables are held at their means. The enormous pressure from labor unions might have caused the defection of nearly two-thirds of Democrats despite an all-out campaign by their president. Yet this explanation is problematic because Union Strength is controlled for and is not statistically significant in either Model 1 or Model 2. Also, the correlation between Union Strength and President’s Party is merely 0.172 (significant at 0.01), which rules out the possibility that high correlation between the two variables washed out the effects of Union Strength. Furthermore, Bailey and Brady (1998) reported evidence that controlling for ideology and other variables, Senate Democrats were more likely than Republicans to vote for NAFTA and GATT under the Clinton presidency. They argued that this finding “might reflect efforts by President Clinton to either persuade or move Democrats on trade votes” (ibid.: 534). Gartzke and Wrighton also found that House Democrats were more likely to vote for GATT than Republicans, controlling for ideology and constituency interests. They thus wrote: Democrats were more interested in bolstering the legislative record of a president from their own party than they were in maintaining a traditional opposition to free trade agreements. Republicans tended to oppose legislation from the opposition, rather than supporting a bill advancing long-held principles.13 (1998: 47) So why did House Democrats support Clinton on GATT but abandon him on PNTR? Two factors appear to be responsible for the Democrats’ different positions on the two votes. First, the House voted on GATT in the immediate aftermath of Democratic loss to Republicans in the 1994 mid-term election.

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Foreseeing Republican challenges to their president, who was just two years into his first term, many Democrats may have decided to rally around Clinton by voting for GATT. By contrast, the PNTR vote took place in 2000, the last year of Clinton’s presidency. Thus there was less urgency for Democrats to rally around their president. Second, the GATT deals with international trade in general, whereas the PNTR bill addresses U.S. trade with one particular country. By 2000, U.S. trade deficit with China had grown to US$83.8 billion from US$29.5 billion in 1994 and China had replaced Japan as the largest deficit-trading partner of the U.S. The high salience of China—the astronomical U.S. trade deficit plus human rights, weapons proliferation, etc.—may have induced many House Democrats to vote against a bill championed by Clinton. Absolute DW score is highly significant and has the correct sign. If it increases by one standard deviation, that is, as a member becomes more liberal or conservative, the probability of voting for PNTR decreases by about 0.13, holding other variables at their means. This evidence suggests that the ideological wings of both parties were indeed united in their opposition to PNTR, while the pro-trade moderates of each party joined hands in their support for the trade deal. As in Model 1, Farm Employment is statistically significant. One standard deviation increase in farm employment is associated with an increase of 0.08 in the probability of voting for PNTR, holding other variables at their means. Model 3 tests the hypothesis of inter-party heterogeneity in electoral strategies. The interaction term Democrat × Union Strength is not statistically significant, nor is party. On the one hand, this should not be a surprising finding, given that interaction terms are usually highly correlated with the original variables. In my case, the correlation between party and the interaction term is 0.864 and significant at 0.01. On the other hand, this is a surprising finding because it is inconsistent with evidence produced by Bailey and Brady (1998). One explanation for this discrepancy, which was discussed above, is that many Democrats would have voted against PNTR without labor pressure. This explanation has two further implications. First, inter-party heterogeneity in electoral strategies may exist, but only on general trade policy, not on country-specific trade legislation, as Bailey and Brady (1998) analyzed votes on GATT and NAFTA. Alternatively, such electoral heterogeneity may exist on trade policy toward some countries, but not on trade policy toward China—a country against which many Democrats seemed to have a number of grievances: human rights, forced labor, environmental problems, etc. Another explanation is simply that Bailey and Brady (1998) analyzed Senate votes. In other words, it is possible that inter-party electoral heterogeneity exists in the Senate, but not in the House, which suggests inter-chamber difference in foreign trade voting. With the addition of the interaction term, only Farm Employment and Absolute DW Score are statistically significant, and they both have the

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hypothesized sign. More specifically, one standard deviation increase in the former increases the probability of voting for PNTR by 0.08, but a similar increase in the latter decreases the probability by 0.11, holding other variables at their means. Model 4 includes an additional constituency variable, namely, Exports to China, which turns out to be statistically significant and in the hypothesized direction. One standard deviation increase in Exports to China leads to an increase of 0.067 in the probability of voting for PNTR. Again, Farming employment and Absolute DW are both statistically significant and have the correct sign. Discussion My analysis adduced evidence that party was the most important determinant of the PNTR vote. Republicans tended to be much more supportive of PNTR than Democrats. On the one hand, this finding is consistent with many previous studies that have examined the relationship between party affiliation and support for free trade (e.g., Baldwin 1985; Coughlin 1985; McArthur and Marks 1988; Tosini and Tower 1987; Wink et al. 1996). On the other hand, it is inconsistent with my expectation that Democrats—out of loyalty to and pressure from Clinton—would be more likely to vote for PNTR than Republicans (or more likely to vote for it than if they faced a Republican president). Moreover, a few scholars have adduced evidence that Democrats were more likely to support free trade agreements during the Clinton years (Bailey and Brady 1998; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998). These seemingly conflicting findings suggest that the relationship between party affiliation and support for free trade is not fixed but varies according to the political and electoral context as well as the particular country that is involved in a trade bill. As far as ideology is concerned, the absolute value of DW score is consistently significant and—except in Model 2—has the largest impact. Thus liberals and conservatives, instead of voting against each other as they normally do, were closely united in opposition against pro-trade moderates on the PNTR vote. My findings thus provide further support for Nokken’s (2003) thesis of EATM voting. My study does not provide support for Bailey and Brady’s (1998) theory of inter-party heterogeneity of electoral strategies, as the interaction term Democrat × Union Strength is not statistically significant in any of the models. This is a rather surprising finding in light of the electoral ties between labor unions and the Democratic Party in general and intense lobbying of Democrats by labor groups before the vote. The high correlation between party and the interaction term may be partly responsible for this finding. It is also possible that inter-party heterogeneity of electoral strategies exists in the Senate, but not in the House, as all the five votes (two on NAFTA and three on GATT) analyzed by Bailey and Brady were Senate votes. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that many Democrats would

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have voted against PNTR because of other considerations, regardless of whether labor unions launched massive campaign against it. These Democrats may have subscribed to the view that China does not deserve PNTR because of its poor human rights record and environmental problems, that trade with China was responsible for the loss of American jobs, or that free trade in general has done more harm than good to America. That Union Strength does not have any significant impact in any of the regressions seems to support this explanation. To be sure, state-level data could have resulted in the poor performance of this variable, but scholars have usually relied on state-level data due to the lack of district-level data and they have reported evidence that Union Strength had significant negative impact on support for free trade (e.g., Bailey and Brady 1998; Conley 1999; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998). In a word, that neither Union Strength nor the interaction term is statistically significant strongly suggests that many Democrats opposed PNTR because of their own preferences. Of the three basic constituency variables, Farm Employment is the only one that is statistically significant in all four regressions. This is strong evidence that members of Congress were especially responsive to the economic interests of American farmers. Since the U.S. is the largest supplier of agricultural products to China and since China’s WTO membership promises an even bigger and more lucrative China market, it is no wonder that the electoral connection appears to be particularly strong in the vote. The fourth constituency variable, that is, Exports to China, also has significant impact on members’ votes. Together these findings suggest that members of Congress were particularly responsive to export interests. Also notice that Retail/Wholesale Employment does not reach statistical significance in any of the four models. Moreover, except in Model 1, it has a negative sign. What this suggests is that controlling for party and ideology, retail and wholesale workers are actually more likely to oppose PNTR. In other words, Retail/Wholesale Employment should probably be viewed as a measure of constituency opposition to—not support for—trade with China. Though I did not analyze the Senate vote on PNTR, its lopsided nature indicates that there was a strong consensus among Senators on the desirability of free trade with China. In fact, “passage [of PNTR] by the more internationalist Senate was never in doubt, and both sides expected an expeditious vote there” (CQ Almanac 2000: 20). That the Senate passed PNTR by landslide margins, compared with the narrow margin of victory in the House, illustrates sharp inter-chamber difference on trade policy toward China. Moreover, recall that a few years before the PNTR vote, the Senate also easily passed two important trade bills: NAFTA (61–38) and GATT (76–24). The relative ease with which the three important trade bills sailed through the Senate and the intense opposition they encountered in the House strongly suggest that the upper chamber is in general more pro-trade than the lower chamber. Just as the House has become increasingly opposed to free trade agreements and renewal of fast track authority (Bailey 2001; Conley

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1999; Gibson 2000), the Senate has transformed itself into a bastion of free trade.14 The Senate’s distinct pro-trade stance can be attributed to several factors. First, Senators usually come from much larger and hence more heterogeneous districts than House members. The need to serve a greater number and variety of constituency interests makes them less likely to be swayed by narrow interests. In other words, a House member may be more responsive to the immediate concerns of his/her constituents adversely affected by free trade and vote against it, but a Senator may decide that his/her constituency in the whole—exporters, importers, labor unions, and blue-collar workers, etc.—will in the long run benefit from free trade and hence vote for it. Second, the longer tenure of Senators enables them to be somewhat temporarily insulated from constituent pressure, whereas House members are perennially on a short leash because of their two-year term. Third, Senators may be more acquiescent to presidential initiatives in foreign trade than House members. This is so because, with multiple committee assignments, larger number of constituents, and sometimes the pursuit of the presidency, Senators have much less time to acquire policy expertise than House members and hence are “more dependent on executive guidance” (Kernell 1973: 341, see also Pressman 1966). Last but not least, the Senate may have been more pro-trade than the House simply because there were more Republicans than Democrats.15 Republicans have been strong supporters of free trade and they have been the majority in the Senate since 1994. Finally, the passage of PNTR merely means that Congress cleared a major hurdle to unfettered trade between the two countries. It does not mean that Congress henceforth would wash its hands of matters relating to bilateral trade. Since 2003, some members have been pressuring Beijing to appreciate its currency in the hope of slowing down the growth of U.S. trade deficit with China. The Schumer–Graham iniative in 2005 is a case in point. Because of the enormous stakes of constituency interests in U.S.–China trade, on the one hand, and the strength of the electoral connection on trade issues, on the other, more congressional initiatives on U.S.–China trade should be expected. Moreover, even without the astronomical trade deficit, many members of Congress still have a variety of reasons to oppose trade with China: human rights, weapons proliferation, environmental issues, Taiwan, religious freedom, abortion, etc. In a word, due to a number of factors, trade with China will remain a highly controversial topic on Capitol Hill. The good news for those promoting U.S.–China trade is that they can almost always count on the White House and—to a lesser extent—the Senate to neutralize attempts to set roadblocks in the development of one of the world’s most bilateral trade relationships.

5

Congress and Taiwan

It seems to me that our administration . . . merits criticism for continuing an unprincipled and spineless policy towards our friends on Taiwan. I think it is long overdue that we stop kowtowing to the Communist butchers in Beijing, and to stand on our own principles. (Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) Congressional Record 1995: H4451) I ask that the President take every measure necessary to ensure that the pursuit of democracy and democratic practices [in Taiwan] are not fettered by Chinese intimidation and aggression. (Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID), Congressional Record 1996: S2626) The upper chamber, with its tradition of careful deliberation more insulated from the winds of populist enthusiasm, should conclude that, yes, Americans love Taiwan, but this legislation [HR 1838] needlessly stirs up trouble. The House has had its fun, but to continue this dangerous game would be counterproductive. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2000)

The U.S.–Taiwan relationship is not only a unique relationship, but also one of the most controversial relationships in the world today. It is unique because perhaps for the first time in the history of modern foreign affairs, a state had broken relations with another, only to create a new legal arrangement [the Taiwan Relations Act] so as to maintain virtually all the relationships that had existed before. (Myers 1989: 13) It is controversial because the relationship has been a constant source of disputes and conflicts in the Washington–Taipei–Beijing triangle. Moreover, the relationship is an emotional one that is “unlike U.S. relations with most other countries,” wrote Feldman (1989: 42). “Only the U.S. relationship with Israel contains as much emotional resonance.”

Congress and Taiwan 79 Despite the unofficial nature of the relationship, U.S.–Taiwan economic, cultural, political, and military ties are extremely extensive and strong. Taiwan is the eighth largest trading partner of the U.S., and the latter is the top trading partner of Taiwan. In 2006, total bilateral trade was US$61.2 billion, of which U.S. imports were US$38.2 billion and exports US$23 billion (U.S. Census Bureau 2007). In 2004/2005, Taiwan was ranked sixth with 25,914 students studying in U.S. institutions of higher learning (Institute of International Education 2006). Taiwan has established sister state relationship with 42 U.S. states (Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council). The U.S. has been Taiwan’s most important political and military ally, supporting its membership in international organizations, repeatedly reaffirming U.S. commitment to its security, and providing it with advanced weapons on an annual basis. The U.S.–Taiwan relationship has its origin in the Chinese civil war in the 1940s when the U.S. supported the Nationalists against the Chinese Communists. In late 1949, the defeated Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan and established a political regime. Plagued by corruption, inefficiency, and cronyism, the Nationalist regime was not expected to last long, nor did the Truman administration intend to continue its support of Chiang.1 Yet just as Chiang’s fate seemed to be sealed and the U.S. relationship with the Chinese Communists would likely have embarked on a different course, the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel.2 In response, the U.S. interposed the seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. Since then, Taiwan has remained an entity separate from China and has developed strong political and military ties with the U.S., as embodied in the U.S.–Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, the Formosa Resolution, and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of Congress’s Taiwan policy. The first section offers a brief review of congressional involvement in Taiwan policy, and the second section analyzes two House roll call votes related to U.S.–Taiwan relations. Despite congressional activism and influence in U.S.– Taiwan relations, it is rather surprising that no study to my knowledge has examined roll call voting on Taiwan. That the overwhelming majority of Taiwan votes were lop-sided or unanimous is perhaps the most important disincentive. Yet there were indeed a few contested votes, and quantitative analysis of them may shed important light on why members voted as they did on Taiwan policy.

Historical ties between Congress and Taiwan Congress has been the most powerful and most active supporter of Taiwan. In fact, it is not too much exaggeration to say that any study of U.S.–Taiwan relations is essentially incomplete without considering the crucial role Congress has played in the formulation and implementation of U.S.–Taiwan policy. And to study Congress’s role in Taiwan policy, it is necessary to

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examine Congress’s China policy before the Nationalists fled to the island, since Congress’s support for Taiwan stemmed largely from its support for the Nationalist regime on Mainland China prior to 1949. For starters, there was the World War II alliance between the U.S and China (Feis 1953; Schaller 1979; Tsou 1963; Tuchman 1970). Regardless of Chiang’s actual contribution to the Pacific Theatre, the alliance and Chiang himself enjoyed immense popularity on Capitol Hill. Congressman Mike Mansfield (D-MT) proclaimed in 1945: Chiang is the one man who can make Chinese unity and independence a reality. His faults can be understood when the complexities of the Chinese puzzle are studied and they are no more uncommon than the faults of other leaders of the United Nations. We are committed to Chiang and we will help him to the best of our ability. He alone can untangle the present situation because in spite of the things he has done, he is China. (quoted in Purifoy 1976: 13) Second, Madame Chiang, the Wellesley-educated wife of Chiang Kai-shek and the symbol of China’s heroic sacrifices in the war, was extremely popular and influential on Capitol Hill. On 18 February 1943, she became the first Chinese and the second woman to address a joint session of Congress. Her address “electrified Washington, winning billions of dollars in aid” (Faison 2003). Third, a number of congressmen, Representative Walter Judd (R-MN) being one of the notables, had prior experiences (missionary or otherwise) in China that enhanced the personal and emotional ties between Congress and China (see Bachrack 1976; Edwards 1990). Last but not least, Chiang had been fighting the Chinese Communists since 1927. His flawless record of anti-Communism proved pivotal in securing congressional support for the Nationalists in the Chinese civil war that resumed immediately after the defeat of Japan. The Truman administration’s approach to the Chinese civil war, however, diverged from that of Congress, particularly after the failure of the Marshall Mission and the beginning of the Nationalist debacle (see Finkelstein 1993; Grasso 1987; Purifoy 1976; Tsou 1963). Basically, the administration perceived Chiang’s cause to be hopeless and intended to gradually detach the U.S. from the Chinese civil war, with an eye toward eventually having accommodation with the Chinese Communists. The China bloc in Congress, a group composed mostly of right-wing Republicans, launched bitter attacks on Truman’s China policy and insisted on an all-out effort to save Chiang (Kraft 1991; Rourke 1983; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983).3 Since the China bloc had the potential to hold hostage the administration’s European programs (i.e., the Marshall Plan), President Truman compromised by submitting a China aid program, hence the China Aid Act of 1948 (see Tucker 1983; Westerfield 1955: 262–266). The flow of economic and military aid could not prevent the total collapse

Congress and Taiwan 81 of Chiang, however. Keenly aware of the political fallout of Chiang’s defeat, the State Department published the China White Paper, a chronological collection of official documents aimed at exonerating the administration from the defeat of Chiang. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared in the letter of transmittal, “The unfortunate but inescapable fact is that the ominous result of the civil war in China was beyond the control of the United States” (U.S. Department of State 1967: xvi). Instead of warding off domestic criticism, the China White Paper inadvertently provided ammunition to the China bloc for the rancorous debate about “who lost China,” a debate that effectively made it impossible for the Truman administration (Bachrack 1976; Finkelstein 1993; Koen 1974; Tucker 1983) and his successors (Bueler 1971; Kraft 1991; Rourke 1983) to initiate a new China policy until 1971. In the meantime, Congress remained steadfast in its support of Chiang and the regime he established on Taiwan. In 1955, Congress ratified the U.S.–Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty and passed the Formosa Resolution, thus formally establishing a military alliance with Taiwan. When President Carter decided to sever ties with Taiwan in order to normalize relations with Beijing, Congress—angered by Carter’s secret diplomacy and determined not to abandon a long-time ally—responded by enacting the TRA (Copper 1992; Crabb 1985; Javits 1981; Kraft 1991; Sutter 1983; Tan 1992). As Congressman Thomas Manton (D-NY) noted, the TRA “gives the Congress a well-defined statutory role in conducting United States foreign policy toward Taiwan” (quoted in Yang 2000: 63). “By revising the Taiwan legislation submitted by the executive [Congress] established its role as a China policymaker,” wrote Tan (1992: 25). In a word, the TRA establishes Congress as a legitimate and important guardian of Taiwan’s interests from either administration negligence or Chinese intimidation. The decade following the passage of the TRA witnessed a relatively inactive Congress in Taiwan policy, but congressional inaction turned out to be short-lived. As Mann (2001: 201) wrote, “One of the most distinctive phenomena of American China policy in the 1990s has been the renewed strength and importance of congressional support for Taiwan.” Congress forcefully reasserted itself in Taiwan policy by attempting to strengthen U.S. political and military ties with Taiwan, endorsing Taiwan’s membership in international organizations, urging high-level official visits, and pushing for sales of advanced weapons (e.g., Bush 2001; Mann 2001). The number of Taiwan bills introduced in Congress testifies to congressional activism in Taiwan policy (see Figure 5.1). As mentioned in Chapter 2, a total of 247 Taiwan bills (including amendments) were introduced in Congress between 1973 and 2006, with 167 in the House and 80 in the Senate. That amounts to an annual average of 4.9 and 2.4 bills respectively in each chamber. Of the 247 bills, only 11—all introduced by liberal Democrats in the early 1980s—were critical of Taiwan, that is, its human rights problems.4 The other bills invariably declared U.S. support for Taiwan or attempted to strengthen U.S.–Taiwan military and political ties.

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Congress and Taiwan

Figure 5.1 Time trend of Taiwan bills introduced in each chamber, 1973–2006.

Congressional attempts to enhance U.S.–Taiwan relations Why has Congress been so supportive of Taiwan? To answer this question, I analyze two House votes related to U.S.–Taiwan relations. I could not exercise much discretion in selecting which votes to analyze because they were the only non-unanimous, substantive votes between 1980 and 2006. The Senate did have two more contested Taiwan votes during the same period (both in the mid-1980s). Since data on many variables are not available until the late 1990s, I decide against analyzing the two Senate votes. The same data problem prevents me from examining some contested votes on Taiwan policy that occurred before 1980, such as votes on the TRA in both chambers. The first vote was on passage of the U.S.–Taiwan Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Cooperation Act in 1997. The purpose of the bill, which passed 301– 117 on 6 November, was to consider developing an anti-ballistic missile defense system to protect Taiwan from potential missile attacks by Beijing. The second vote was on passage of HR 1838, or the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, sponsored by House Majority leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) in 1999. The bill requires, among other things, the Secretary of Defense to establish direct military communication with Taiwan’s military forces and to increase the number of Taiwanese military officials trained at U.S.

Congress and Taiwan

83

military academies (CQ Almanac 2000: H-4). It passed the House 341–70 on February 1 2000. In addition to the two substantive votes, there were two contested procedural votes in the House. The first was on Doug Bereuter’s (R-NE) motion to table the Frank Pallone (D-NJ) motion to reconsider the vote on HR 2386.5 Pallone’s motion was tabled 245–175. The second was on David Bonior’s (DMI) motion to recommit HR 4444—the bill that grants PNTR to China—to the House Ways and Means and International Relations with instructions to add language revoking China’s PNTR if China invades, blockades, or attacks Taiwan.6 The motion was defeated 176–258 on May 24 2000. Admittedly, the distinction between procedural and substantive votes is more conceptual than practical, as most votes involve both procedural and substantive questions. Even a motion to adjourn, for example, can be a substantive maneuver if it is intended to delay action on a bill. And recommittal motions are “almost wholly substantive in intent” (Froman and Ripley 1965: 57). In fact, “[o]nly at the extremes are issues either purely procedural or purely and identifiably substantive” (ibid.: 56). The same can be said of these two procedural votes, which could have substantive policy implications.7 However, according to the idea of parties as procedural coalitions, parties are monoliths when it comes to procedural votes, hence high party unity in most procedural votes (Froman and Ripley 1965: Table V; Jones 1964: 5; Schickler and Rich 1997: Table 1).8 Indeed, controlling for other factors, party has decisive impact on the two votes.9 Since procedural votes amount to nothing but a show of party discipline, I exclude them. Hypotheses Hypothesis 1: Other things being equal, a Republican is more likely than a Democrat to support strong U.S.–Taiwan relations. Scholars who studied U.S.–China relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s usually single out partisanship as the most important factor behind congressional support for China (and Taiwan after Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat in 1949) and criticism of Truman’s China policy.10 Exiled from the White House since 1932, the Republicans desperately needed a campaign issue to beat the seemingly unbeatable Democrats. Moreover, the 1946 mid-term election put Republicans in control of Congress, greatly boosting their confidence in defeating Truman in the upcoming 1948 election. Tucker (1983: 162–163) wrote, “The largest number in Congress participated in the China controversy for partisan reasons.” These Republicans “lacked genuine interest in China but needed a campaign issue to defeat the seemingly unbeatable Democrats who had monopolized the White House since 1932,” added Tucker (1994: 31). However, Truman scored a surprise win at the polls. Truman’s reelection coincided with the beginning of Chiang’s debacle and congressional

84

Congress and Taiwan

Republicans “increasingly saw the deteriorating China situation as a potential issue and arena of attack of Truman’s foreign policy” (Rourke 1983: 74). By 1949, the China bloc “consisted largely of Republicans for whom the China question was primarily a matter of party politics [and who adopted a] gloves-off approach and promoted the Nationalist cause for their own political purposes” (Borg 1980: 174).11 Nearly three decades later, partisan passions flared up again, and this time the center of contention was the TRA.12 The Republicans in general were more vociferous than Democrats in their criticism of Carter’s decision to abrogate the U.S.–Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty (see CQ Almanac 1979: 112–113; Sutter 1983).13 Senator Jake Garn (R-UT) (1979: 20) called it “constitutionally and morally objectionable” to abandon “a staunch and faithful ally,” denouncing Carter’s decision as “an ignominious act.” Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (1979: 23) condemned Carter’s normalization announcement as “a short speech . . . which history may well record as ten minutes that lived in infamy.” Goldwater even filed a case in a federal court, claiming that Carter’s unilateral decision to abrogate the defense treaty was unconstitutional (CQ Almanac 1979: 100). Just have a glance at party line-up on the 22 roll call votes, and one can tell the extent to which the two parties were divided on the details, if not the fundamentals, of the TRA (see Table 5.1 and Table 5.2). Eleven of the thirteen votes in the House and six of the nine votes in the Senate were party votes, that is, votes in which the majority of the two parties voted against each other. Furthermore, the intensity of party division was extraordinary. In the House, seven of the eleven party votes witnessed at least 75 percent of one party voting against at least 75 percent of the other party; in the Senate, four of the six party votes were so divided. Notice that all but one partisan vote were on amendments or motions that were sponsored mainly by Republicans and which contained language that would have restored U.S.–Taiwan military alliance under the Mutual Defense Treaty. Such language would almost certainly have delayed normalization because of Beijing’s objection. In a word, despite the broad bipartisan consensus on the desirability of continuing U.S.–Taiwan relations, as reflected in the smooth passage of the TRA in both chambers, the two parties disagreed sharply over the exact nature of future U.S. relations with Taiwan. In the decade after normalization, Republicans largely deferred to the White House on Taiwan policy. For President Reagan did not need to be prodded by Congress to be a staunch supporter of Taiwan (see Butterfield 1980; MacDonald and Kaiser 1980).14 President George H. W. Bush also encountered little pressure from Congress on Taiwan.15 However, Republicans became much more active in Taiwan policy during the Clinton years. In July 1993, Senator Frank MurKowski (R-AK) introduced an amendment to the annual Foreign Relations Authorization Act, declaring that the TRA should supersede the 1982 Shanghai Communiqué on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan (Congressional Record 1994: S 2943–2944, S 5024). Despite the

120

113

135

100

124

14

98 134

118

144

104 105

169–197

172–181

171–239

146–256

179–225

204–193

110–295 182–221

141–264

226–174

345–55 339–50

41 37

4

32

51 16

132

21

44

14

13

14

27

Source: CQ Almanac (1979).

107

241 234

82

23

12 48

190

55

46

36

59

49

42

14 13

170

232

244 205

61

204

212

225

168

183

194

Nay

Yea

Yea

Nay

Democrats

Republicans

149–221

Vote count

Yea Yea

Nay

Nay Nay

Nay

Nay

Nay

Nay

Nay

Nay

Passed Adopted

Adopted

Rejected

Rejected Rejected

Agreed

Rejected

Rejected

Rejected

Rejected

Rejected

Rejected

President’s Vote position outcome

Table 5.1 House roll call votes on the Taiwan Relations Act

Kramer amendment to retain language from the 1955 mutual defense treaty with Taiwan regarding U.S. response to hostile action toward Taiwan. Lagomarsino amendment to state that the U.S. would consider withdrawing recognition of China if it were to attack Taiwan. Quayle amendment to conduct relations with Taiwan through a government “liaison office,” rather than through the unofficial American Institute on Taiwan. Ashbrook amendment to make employees of the American Institute on Taiwan employees of the U.S. government. Edwards amendment to add the islands of Quemoy and Matsu to the definition of Taiwan. Solomon amendment to establish relations with Taiwan on a consular basis. Zablocki motion to end all debate on the bill at 5 p.m. in an attempt to cut off further amendments. Bauman motion to strike the enacting clause (thus killing the bill) Dannemeyer amendment to conduct relations with Taiwan through a quasi-governmental agency entitled “U.S. Commission in Taiwan.” Edwards amendment to require approval by both houses before the president could notify Taiwan that a treaty or agreement with Taiwan would be terminated. Ashbrook amendment to require the authorization and appropriation by Congress of any U.S. government funds for the American Institute on Taiwan. Passage of the bill. Adoption of the conference report.

Bill summary

10

1

35

30

7

22

34 33

57–38

45–49

42–50

49–36

54–38

74–21

90–6 85–4

5 2

18

32

7

5

39

30

12

Source: CQ Almanac (1979).

28

56 52

52

47

19

7

44

47

5

Yea

Yea

Nay

Democrats

Republicans

33–62

Vote count

1 2

3

6

29

45

10

8

50

Nay

Yea Yea

Yea

Yea

Nay

Nay

Yea

Yea

Nay

President’s position

Table 5.2 Senate roll call votes on the Taiwan Relations Act

Passed Adopted

Agreed

Agreed

Agreed

Rejected

Rejected

Agreed

Rejected

Vote outcome

Dole amendment to provide for unofficial United States relations with “Taiwan” rather than with the “people of Taiwan,” which was the phrasing sought by President Carter. Glenn motion to table the Humphrey amendment to conduct U.S. relations with Taiwan through a governmental “liaison office.” Bryd motion to table the Percy amendment to declare that hostile action against Taiwan would be a threat to the “security interests of the United States.” Percy amendment to declare that hostile action against Taiwan would be a threat to the “security interests of the United States.” Morgan motion to table the Church amendment to Boren amendment allowing Taiwan to have embassy (Church’s amendment would have allowed the courts to resolve the issue). Biden motion to table the Dole amendment to require Senate confirmation of the director of the American Institute on Taiwan. Church motion to table the Humphrey amendment to make the effective date of the bill contingent on written assurances from China that it would not attack Taiwan. Passage of the TRA Adoption of the conference report of TRA.

Bill summary

Congress and Taiwan 87 administration’s objection, a watered-down version of the amendment was passed by the conference committee and signed into law by Clinton in April 1994 (Yang 2000: 189–190). Republicans became even more assertive in Taiwan policy after the 1994 mid-term election. By threatening mandatory legislation, the new Republican majority in 1995 successfully forced President Clinton to grant a visa to Lee Teng-Hui for his visit to Cornell University (Mann 1999: Chapter 17; Mann 2001; Yang 2000: Chapter 6). A close look at Figure 5.1 also suggests that Congress’s Taiwan policy was influenced by partisan politics. While there were only a few Taiwan bills during the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a conspicuous and sudden rise in the number of Taiwan bills since the mid-1990s. And this surge was simultaneous with the inauguration of the new Republican majority. Also, by my count, during the Reagan and Bush years there was no recorded vote on Taiwan in the House and only two votes in the Senate, yet the House voted twelve times and the Senate four times on Taiwan policy during the Clinton years. Hypothesis 2: Liberals and conservatives will be more supportive of Taiwan than moderates, other things being equal. Nokken’s (2003) study and my findings in Chapter 4 adduced strong evidence that a coalition of ideological wings existed in roll call voting on trade with China. This seemingly strange coalition could also exist on Taiwan policy. Before the 1990s, the most vocal supporters of Chiang and Taiwan were generally conservatives such as members of the China bloc in the Truman years and Goldwater-type Republicans during Carter’s presidency. Liberals, by contrast, were far more critical of the authoritarian regime on Taiwan. Since the mid-1970s, liberals began to scrutinize Taiwan’s human rights record. When the TRA was under floor debate, Congressmen James Leach (R-IA), Donald Pease (D-OH), and Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) managed to insert language on human rights into the TRA, which gives Congress the statutory power to oversee human rights progress in Taiwan (Bush 2004: Chapter 6; U.S. Congress 1987).16 The 1980s witnessed the peak of liberal criticism of and pressure on Taiwan’s authoritarian regime, led by Steve Solarz (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific from 1981–1992 (see Bush 2004: Chapter 6). In 1986, Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Claiborne Pell (D-RI), Carl Levin (D-MI) and congressmen Steve Solarz (DNY) and Jim Leach (R-IA) formed the Committee for Democracy on Taiwan (Congressional Record 1987: S9935). Partly because of congressional pressure, Taiwan began to implement political reform in the late 1980s. By the mid-1990s, Taiwan had successfully transformed itself from an authoritarian regime into a burgeoning democracy. In 1996, Taiwan held its first competitive, multi-party presidential election. Since many liberals were personally involved in Taiwan’s political reforms, they had added incentives to support Taiwan when it became a fledgling

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democracy. Indeed, liberals almost always cited Taiwan’s democracy as a key reason for their support. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) supported Taiwan’s admission to the United Nations because Taiwan “has made significant progress in developing democratic representative institutions” (Congressional Record 1992: S13655). “That Taiwan has come so far [in political reform] in such a short time is truly impressive and is a great compliment to the people of Taiwan and to their current leaders,” said Senator Pell (D-RI) (Congressional Record 1996: S11422). During congressional debate over Lee’s 1995 visit to Cornell, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pointedly asked, “Why . . . the President, the democratically elected President of Taiwan . . . is not allowed to come?” (Congressional Record 1995: H4452). Conservatives also touted political reform in Taiwan. “Taiwan is a democracy, yet its President cannot visit our Nation,” said an outraged Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) (Congressional Record 1995: H4451). Gerald Solomon (R-NY) denounced Clinton’s refusal to permit Lee’s visit as “an assault against his [Lee’s] dignity and our morality [and] a blatant contradiction of our efforts to promote democracy around the world.” He added, “Here is one important instance in which American interests and American morality go hand in hand” (ibid.: H4451–52). After the House passed the resolution regarding Lee’s visit, Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) observed: Today we are extending a hand of friendship to President Lee of the Republic of China . . . because his government on Taiwan has liberalized, has reached out to the opposition and permitted rights [that] we as Americans believe should be the rights of citizens of everywhere. (ibid.: H4452) Frank Murkowski (1996), an unwavering supporter of Taiwan, declared, “Congress should congratulate the people of Taiwan for their continued steps to democracy.” Tom DeLay also praised Taiwan as “a shining example of freedom and democracy in a part of the world sorely in need of role models” (Congressional Record 1998: H5888). These remarks by liberals and conservatives suggest that they were united in their support for Taiwan because of the latter’s democratic transition. By contrast, the business-minded moderates adopted a more cautious approach lest disputes with Beijing over Taiwan would disrupt U.S.–China economic ties. Doug Bereuter (R-NE), then chairman of the House International Relations Asia and Pacific Subcommittee, mounted serious opposition to HR 1838 and succeeded in securing some concessions on the bill (see CQWR 1999: 2605–2606). Hypothesis 3: Controlling for other factors, hawks will be more likely to vote for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations than doves. Previous scholars have adduced strong evidence that hawkishness has

Congress and Taiwan 89 significant impact on foreign policy voting (e.g., Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Cobb 1969). Cobb (1969: 360–361) defined hawkishness as a “jingoism scale” that reflects “components of compulsive ‘anti-Kommunism [sic],’ aggressiveness and belligerency, and a willingness to intervene in the affairs of other nations.” In general, hawks tend to be more supportive of a militant foreign policy than doves. In the case of Taiwan policy, hawks are expected to be more supportive of strong U.S.–Taiwan relations than doves. Hypothesis 4: The more dependent a district is on the military-industrial complex, the more likely its representative will cast a pro-Taiwan vote, other things being equal. Past research on foreign policy voting almost exclusively focuses on the influence of a particular constituency, namely, the military-industrial complex. As Patrick Morgan (quoted in Ray 1981: 439) pointed out, a huge military establishment “inevitably breeds . . . civilian institutions and numerous citizens [who] prosper on the manna of massive defense expenditures,” which in turn “produces a political component—a corps of local, regional, and national politicians whose political self-interests now dictate promotion of or at least acquiesce in such spending on behalf of constituents.” In a word, the militaryindustrial complex model leads to the expectation that a positive relationship exists between constituency dependence on the military-industrial complex and support for military spending (or hawkish foreign policy for that matter). The military-industrial complex has important economic stakes in U.S.– Taiwan relations because Taiwan has been a leading market for U.S. weapons manufactures (see Table 5.3). Moreover, defense contractors and their Table 5.3 U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Taiwan’s ranking among U.S. arms sales to foreign countries Year

Value (millions of dollars)

Ranking

1950–1990 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

4,939 455 549 711 816 845 1,347 834 2,555 1,487 2,526 923

7 4 4 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 4

Source: U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

90

Congress and Taiwan

subcontractors are usually among the largest employers in local communities.17 Consequently, one shouldn’t be surprised to see local residents and their representatives in Congress push for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan because of the jobs and profits at stake. That the Texas delegation was actively lobbying for the sales of 150 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan on the eve of the 1992 election illuminates the intimate connections between defense contractors (General Dynamics), constituency interests (an estimated 6,000 jobs), and Taiwan policy (Bush 2001; Bush 2004; Friedman 1992; Mann 1999; Schmitt 1992). Hypothesis 5: Exports to China will be negatively associated with the likelihood of casting a pro-Taiwan vote, controlling for other factors. It is crucial to bear in mind that in the Washington–Taipei–Beijing triangle, U.S. policy toward Taiwan is inevitably and intimately connected with its policy toward China. That is, congressional (in)action in one policy area will almost certainly have some repercussions in the other. If Congress had voted to restore official relations with Taiwan, for example, Beijing would most certainly have terminated its diplomatic ties with Washington. On the other hand, if Congress had repealed the TRA, then China would in all likelihood have pursued a more aggressive policy of reunification. Thus members of Congress are expected to balance the consequences of alternative policies regarding Taiwan and Beijing. It is possible that those whose constituencies have huge stakes in U.S.–China relations—particularly in bilateral trade— will be less willing to antagonize Beijing by voting for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations. For example, since China has been a crucial market for Boeing, members from the state of Washington should be less likely to vote for pro-Taiwan bills, other things being equal. Hypothesis 6: Exports to Taiwan will be positively associated with the likelihood of casting a pro-Taiwan vote, when other factors are controlled for. Last but not least, though U.S.–Taiwan relations are primarily strategic and political in nature, there are also significant constituency economic interests at stake. To begin with, Taiwan is the eighth largest trading partner of the U.S. and the latter is the top trading partner of Taiwan. Though U.S.–Taiwan trade is only about one-fifth of U.S.–China trade today, back in the 1980s the former was much larger than the latter.18 Only after 1994 did U.S.–China trade surpass U.S.–Taiwan trade. Moreover, Taiwan has been an important export market for U.S. companies, and American exports to Taiwan were larger than its exports to China until 2001. Even after 2001, American exports to China have been only slightly bigger. Thus many members may have incentives to support U.S.–Taiwan relations out of pure constituency economic interests.19

Congress and Taiwan 91 Data and methodology I use voting scores compiled by the Center for Security Policy (CSP) to operationalize hawkishness.20 The CSP’s mission is to “promote international peace through American strength.” As such, it selects votes on critical defense and foreign policy issues. The higher the score, the more pro-national security and hence more hawkish a member is. Because the CSP combines the votes for 1998–2000, I use this aggregate voting score for the 2000 vote.21 CSP compiles a separate voting index for 1997 and that is used for the 1997 vote. To test the hypothesis that both liberals and conservatives tend to vote for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations, I use the absolute value of the DWNOMINATE score, as I did in Chapter 4. Also, I expect the coefficient for the absolute value of DW score to be statistically significant and positive. That is, high absolute value of DW score will be associated with pro-Taiwan votes, since both liberals (negative scores) and conservatives (positive scores) are expected to cast such votes. Constituency dependence on the military-industrial complex is operationalized as the amount of military awards for supplies, services, and construction with a net value of over US $25,000 within each state in a fiscal year.22 I use state-level data because there is no district-level breakdown of military awards. Granted that oftentimes a state in which a prime contractor is located is not the same state where subcontract work is done, this measure is still a good indicator of the economic importance of defense contracts to a particular state. For without such awards, the prime contractors would probably shut down. Constituency interests in U.S.–China (Taiwan) trade are the percentages of exports to China (Taiwan) out of total state exports. I use the 1999 data for the 1997 vote because that it is the earliest year for which state export data is available. In addition to these constituency variables, I also include three basic constituency variables, namely, Union Strength, Farm Employment, and Retail/Wholesale Employment. For the two votes, a yea vote is treated as a pro-Taiwan vote and coded 1, and a nay vote is coded 0. For each vote, I first run a regression with the three basic constituency variables, and then add party and absolute DW score. Subsequently, I add exports to China, exports to Taiwan, and military awards, followed by hawkishness. Statistical findings Logit regression results for the vote on HR 2386 are presented in Table 5.4, and the probabilities calculated from logit coefficients are presented in Table 5.5. Surprisingly, none of the three variables in Model 1 is statistically significant, suggesting that constituency interests measured by these variables did not have any impact on the vote. In Model 2, the three constituency variables still fail to reach statistical significance, but the two added variables are highly significant. Consistent with my expectation, being a Republican increases the

92

Congress and Taiwan

Table 5.4 Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 2386 Independent variables

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Union strength

−.023 (.014) .018 (.045) .068 (.052)

.007 (.018) −.004 (.060) .088 (.066) 3.874** (.425) −4.188** (.941)

.027 (.019) −.067 (.060) .088 (.069) 4.352** (.490) −4.863** (1.030) −.408* (.187) .157 (.164) −.000 (.000)

−244.792 .012 418

−158.904 .359 418

−144.251 .394 395

.062** (.022) −.063 (.067) .139 (.076) 1.116 (.654) −2.249* (1.1.5) −.513** (.188) .259 (.183) −.000 (.000) .066** (.012) −126.999 .467 395

Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment Republican Absolute DW score Exports to China Exports to Taiwan Military awards Hawkishness Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at 0.01; * significant at 0.05.

Table 5.5 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 2386) Independent variables Union strength Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment Republican Absolute DW score Exports to China Exports to Taiwan Military awards Hawkishness

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4 .057

.549 −.082

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported.

.597 −.093 −.050

−.040 −.058 .238

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probability of voting for HR 2386 by a remarkable 0.549, holding other variables at their means. Contrary to my expectation, however, Absolute DW Score has a negative sign. As one becomes ideologically more extreme, one is less likely to support strong U.S.–Taiwan relations. To be exact, if Absolute DW Score increases by one standard deviation, the probability of voting for HR 2386 decreases by 0.082. My explanation for this surprising finding about Absolute DW Score is that controlling for other factors and in spite of a pro-Taiwan consensus across the ideological spectrum, liberals were still less likely than conservatives to support a bill that aimed to strengthen U.S.–Taiwan military relations. In other words, increase in Absolute DW Score leads to more nay votes among liberals than among conservatives. To find out if this is indeed the case, I compare vote distribution among liberals and conservatives. I define liberals loosely as those whose raw DW scores are above 0, and conservatives below 0. Of the 222 conservatives, only 7 voted against the bill. By contrast, of the 199 liberals, 110 voted against the bill. The vote distribution strongly suggests that liberal opposition was responsible for the negative sign of Absolute DW Score. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that 80 liberals voted for the bill. If only a handful of liberals had done so, then Absolute DW Score would not be statistically significant because high scores would be associated with both yea and nay votes. Model 3 includes three more constituency variables, but only Exports to China is statistically significant and has the hypothesized sign. With one standard deviation increase in a state’s exports to China, the probability of casting a yea vote decreases by 0.050. Republican and Absolute DW Score remain highly significant and have the same sign as in Model 2. Moreover, the magnitude of their respective impact is largely the same as that in Model 3. Model 4 includes the other measure of ideology—hawkishness. Notice that with the addition of hawkishess, party is no longer statistically significant. The high correlation between the two variables (r = 0.853 and significant at 0.01) must have dampened the estimated effects of party.23 Also, Union Strength now reaches statistical significance. That is, controlling for hawkishness and other variables, a member is more likely to support strong U.S.–Taiwan relations if the percentage of unionized workers increases in his district. The inclusion of hawkishness does not affect Exports to China, which remains highly significant and has about the same impact as it does in Model 3. Hawkishness itself is statistically significant and has the correct sign. One standard deviation increase in hawkishness is associated with an increase of a solid 0.238 in the probability of voting for HR 2386, holding other variables at their means. Since the dovish–hawkish continuum generally overlaps with the liberal–conservative spectrum, that is, liberals tend to be dovish and conservatives hawkish, this finding suggests that controlling for party and other variables, liberals were less supportive of the bill than conservatives.24 Thus it provides further support for my explanation for the negative sign of Absolute DW Score.

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Finally, it should be noted that the inclusion of party and Absolute DW Score in Model 2 increase pseudo R2 by an enormous 0.347, and the inclusion of hawkishness in Model 4 by 0.073. By contrast, the addition of three more constituency variables in Model 3 increases pseudo R2 by merely 0.035. Thus party and ideology—not constituency interests—appear to be the most important determinants of the vote. Moreover, a comparison of Model 2 and Model 3 suggests that party has much bigger impact than ideology. Table 5.6 and Table 5.7 present the results for the vote on HR 1838. Though Union Strength and Retail/Wholesale Employment are statistically significant in Model 1, neither of them is statistically significant in the other three models where party, ideology, and other constituency variables are controlled for. Besides, the overall explanatory power of Model 1 is rather weak, as indicated by the rather small pseudo R2 (0.052). With the addition of party and Absolute DW score in Model 2, pseudo R2 increases markedly to 0.205. Being a Republican increases the probability of casting a yea vote by 0.253, whereas one standard deviation increase in Absolute DW Score decreases the probability by 0.060. As in the case of HR 2386, Table 5.6 Logit analysis of the House vote on HR 1838 Independent variables

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Union strength

−.049* (.023) .268** (.086) −.117 (.061)

−.037 (.026) .071 (.096) −.231** (.080) 2.378** (.406) −3.973** (1.039)

−.050 (.028) .105 (.104) −.240** (.086) 2.277** (.417) −3.659** (1.133) .503* (.236) −.221 (.149) .000 (.000)

−177.718 .052 411

−147.660 .205 410

−140.896 .211 389

−.048 (.029) .023 (.105) −.219* (.092) .098 (.572) −1.211 (1.210) .598* (.258) −.173 (.157) −.000 (.000) .053** (.011) −127.897 .284 389

Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment Republican Absolute DW score Exports to China Exports to Taiwan Military awards Hawkishness Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at 0.01; * significant at 0.05.

Congress and Taiwan 95 Table 5.7 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (HR 1838) Independent variables

Model 1

Union strength Retail/wholesale employment Farm employment Republican Absolute DW score Exports to China Exports to Taiwan Military awards Hawkishness

−.040 .056

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4 .057

−.044 .252 −.060

−.047 .236 −.055 .056

−.037 .057 .120

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported.

liberal opposition seems to be responsible for the negative sign of Absolute DW Score. Following my loose definition of liberals and conservatives, I find that 202 out of 211 conservatives voted for the bill, while 138 liberals out of a total of 198 did so. In a word, even though support for HR 1838 was generally strong across the ideological spectrum, liberals were still less supportive of it than conservatives. After controlling for party and the absolute DW score, Farm Employment reaches statistical significance, and if it increases by one standard deviation, the probability of voting for HR 1838 decreases by 0.044. Members from farm districts appear to be unwilling to support a bill that would likely disrupt access to a leading market for American farmers. The inclusion of three more constituency variables in Model 3 increases pseudo R2 only marginally from 0.205 to 0.212. As in Model 2, Republican, Absolute DW Score, and Farm Employment are all statistically significant and have the same sign. Moreover, their respective impact is nearly identical to that in Model 2. Surprisingly, Exports to China now has a positive sign, and it continues to have a positive sign in Model 4. That is, members whose constituencies were more dependent on the China market were actually more supportive of a bill that, if enacted into law, almost certainly would antagonize Beijing and disrupt American access to the China market. One might think that districts relatively dependent on exports to China also tend to elect conservative or Republican members who are usually strong supporters of Taiwan.25 But this explanation becomes problematic in light of the fact that Exports to China consistently has a negative sign in the vote on HR 2386. Three factors appear to be responsible for this puzzling finding. First, since the bill was introduced against the backdrop of U.S.–China negotiations for the latter’s accession to the WTO, many pro-trade members were determined to delay its passage lest Beijing retaliated by refusing to sign the WTO deal.

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Doug Bereuter (R-NE), chairman of the House Asia and Pacific Subcommittee of the International Relations Committee (CQWR 1999: 2607) said: I did everything I could to delay this legislation [because] I did not want to give the Chinese an excuse for not reviving an agreement with the U.S. on WTO accession, or give Clinton a reason for striking a WTO deal. As a result of stiff opposition from pro-trade members, the bill was stripped of its most controversial language, including authorization to sell Taiwan advanced weapons such as missile defense systems, air-to-air missiles, and diesel-powered submarines. Thus members from states with large exports to China may have hoped that the passage of a largely innocuous bill would appease Taiwan supporters and induce them to vote for the trade deal with China. In other words, for these members a vote for HR 1838 was actually a strategic vote for PNTR. By the same token, the vote could be “an empty gesture, designed to protect Republicans from attacks by party conservatives who see China as a military threat” (CQWR 2000: 262). That is, many Republicans may have treated the vote as one on which to stake out their pro-Taiwan position. “We’ve had our vote here,” said House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA). “Now let’s get on to dealing with permanent [normal trade relations], which is the important thing” (ibid.). Furthermore, strong opposition from the Senate to the original bill and its watered-down version, plus Clinton’s threat of veto, doomed the bill from the outset. This provides further incentives for members to view the vote as a position-taking vote. In a word, the various factors could have induced many members—including those whose constituents were heavily dependent on the China market—to vote for HR 1838, hence the positive sign of Exports to China. Finally, the high correlation between party and hawkishness (r = 0.748 and significant at 0.01) must have dampened the estimated effects of party, which is no longer statistically significant in Model 4. Farm Employment remains significant. With the inclusion of hawkishness, pseudo R2 increases considerably from 0.212 to 0.284. Discussion Since no Senate votes on U.S.–Taiwan relations could be analyzed, I cannot explore inter-chamber similarities and differences in roll call voting on Taiwan. Moreover, the lack of data for many variables prior to the 1990s makes it impossible to find out whether there has been any change over time in Taiwan policy voting. Finally, since both votes took place under divided government, it is hard to know whether members would have voted differently under unified government. These shortcomings aside, my analysis still sheds some important light on roll call voting on U.S. Taiwan policy in particular, and foreign policy voting in general.

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The military-industrial complex has no impact at all. Previous studies have similarly reported little or no relationship between constituency dependence on military spending and members’ votes on foreign/defense policy (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985).26 Thus it seems that “constituency constraint [on foreign policy] is quite loose” (Lindsay 1990: 956). Several reasons may be responsible for the minimal impact of constituency interests on roll call voting. Since many foreign policy issues are not salient to most Americans (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996), legislators enjoy a significant degree of freedom in roll call voting. Also, people tend to be more deferential to politicians when national interests are invoked than when parochial, domestic interests are involved. Moreover, “When members agree with their constituents on most issues but disagree with them on some,” wrote Lindsay (1990: 951), “a vote contrary to constituent opinion often does not pose great costs.” Last but not least, since a legislator’s reelection constituency can be different from the geographic constituency (see Fenno 1978; Kingdon 1973; Wright 1989), he/she may more actively shape and reflect the preferences of the former but not the preferences of the latter. This can lead to non-significant findings about the influence of geographic constituency. Meanwhile, two constituency variables perform relatively better. Exports to China and Farm Employment are negatively associated with support for HR 2386 and HR 1838 respectively. Thus some members of Congress appeared to be mindful of the possible negative repercussions of a pro-Taiwan policy for U.S.–China relations, in particular U.S.–China trade. If so, as economic ties between the U.S. and China continue to grow, more members will perhaps be more cautious in their approach to U.S.–Taiwan relations. However, this electoral connection should not be blown out of proportion. It does not mean that members will sacrifice Taiwan’s security on the altar of U.S.–China economic ties. Moreover the potential threat to Taiwan from China’s growing military power will in all likelihood reinforce lawmakers’ determination to safeguard Taiwan’s security. Above all, Taiwan’s democratic transition has changed its bond with Congress, from one based on anti-Communism in the Cold War to one underpinned by shared democratic values and institutions. A China hand at the State Department observed, As Taiwan’s economic prosperity has advanced and its democratization has proceeded, it has had an easier and easier task of selling itself in the United States, since it has, in fact, become increasingly admirable as a society, and its natural affinities with Americans have grown, rather than diminished. (quoted in Tucker 2001: 399) The former director of the American Institute on Taiwan, Nat Bellocchi, also said, “[They] are a democracy, and they have turned their human rights thing

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around so completely, so they have a very broad spectrum of support up on the Hill” (quoted in Bush 2004: 479). As Bush (2004: 223) predicted, “This new consensus in favor of Taiwan as a fellow democracy would become a significant factor in future policy debate.” In a word, regardless of growing economic interdependence between Beijing and Washington, there will probably be strong, bipartisan support for Taiwan in the foreseeable future. I will conclude this chapter by saying a few words about the legendary China lobby and its successor, the Taiwan lobby. Scholarly studies of U.S.– China relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s generally agree that the China lobby, which included the powerful China bloc in Congress, significantly shaped U.S.–China policy, as evidenced by the China Aid Act of 1948 and vehement congressional opposition to the recognition of China and its admission to the United Nations (Bachrack 1976; Koen 1974; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1980, 1983, 1994).27 As Tucker (1994: 3) wrote, “The Nationalists might not have practiced democracy at home but found it expedient and rewarding to exploit Washington’s division of powers and sensitivity to public opinion.” Since Taiwan was expelled from the UN in 1971 and particularly after the dust had settled over normalization and the TRA, the China lobby gradually faded from public attention. In the 1990s, the Taiwan lobby, as opposed to the old China lobby, attracted extensive attention, as it was widely believed to be the driving force behind the sudden surge of congressional support for Taiwan on a wide range of issues, notably Lee’s visit to Cornell in 1995 (Pomfret 2002; Sciolino 1996; Shenon 2000). According to one former Foreign Service official involved in China policy, “They [Taiwan] have by far the most professional and skilled congressional-relations staff of any foreign regime represented here” (quoted in Tucker 2001: 338). Mann’s (2001) study also revealed the “sophistication, strong message, and long history” of the Taiwan lobby. Thus a critical question arises: To what extent has the Taiwan lobby influenced congressional support for Taiwan since the 1990s? It appears that the influence of the Taiwan lobby on Capitol Hill derives primarily from Taiwan’s democratic transition, and only secondarily from Congress’s historical ties with China and Chiang Kai-shek (i.e., the old China lobby). To put it in a different way, being a democracy itself is the necessary condition for the Taiwan lobby’s political clout. Nancy Tucker (quoted in Landay 1997) made this point crystal clear: “What [mainland Chinese] don’t understand about the success that Taiwan has had with lobbying is that Taiwan’s lobbying became much more successful as Taiwan’s political system changed.” Remarks by officials involved in the executive-legislative skirmish over Lee’s 1995 visit appear to corroborate Tucker’s claim. “I don’t think they [Taiwan lobbyists] would be making a dent if Taiwan were not such a success story,” one senior administration official observed (quoted in Mann 2001: 209). Stanley Roth, who was then on the National Security Council, rejected the argument that Cassidy, a Washington lobby firm hired by Taiwan, played

Congress and Taiwan 99 a major role in drumming up congressional support for Lee’s visit. “Taiwan had enormous support in the U.S. Congress to begin with,” he asserted. “The nature of the event, combined with the perception of Taiwan as good, as a role model, I think was more than enough to shore up congressional support, and I would say Cassidy’s role in the Congress was marginal” (quoted in ibid.). In a word, an undemocratic Taiwan would probably not have enjoyed so much support on Capitol Hill since the 1990s regardless of how powerful its lobbies were. Nevertheless, the Taiwan lobby should not be dismissed as politically insignificant. It helps Taiwan’s cause by bringing Taiwan-related issues to the attention of members of Congress. There are myriad issues crying for a member’s attention. In most cases, it is incumbent upon alert interest groups to bring a particular issue—such as arms sales to Taiwan or Lee’s visit—to his attention. In some cases a member may keep a close eye on an issue due to strong personal or policy interest (see Sutter 2001).28 Moreover, a member’s attention often shifts to another issue once certain legislative action—hearing, resolution, or bill—has been taken. In order to make the issue constantly salient to the member, he/she has to be reminded of the issue from time to time. The Taiwan lobby has performed the two tasks extremely well through institutionalized lobbying, as embodied in endowed professorships, donations to universities, Taiwan-related research institutes, and sister-city networks. These institutions ensure that Taiwan policy will remain a topic in American academic and political discourse and a salient one if circumstances require.

6

Congress and China’s human rights

If the United States refusal to recognize the PRC after 1949 was one of the great blunders of our time, so too must be the exemption of China from the international human rights standards applicable to other nations. (Roberta Cohen 1987: 451) In practical terms, conditioning MFN is like putting a hair trigger on an economic nuclear bomb. When it goes off, it will vaporize not only commerce but also our leverage with China on security, the environment, and human rights. (Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) 1994a)

Had it not been for Congress, the advancement of human rights would not have become a top priority in U.S. foreign policy. The human rights movement originated in the early 1970s, when Congress was frustrated by an imperial president in the Vietnam War and a defiant Secretary of State practicing realpolitik in Chile (Cohen 1979; Fraser 1979; Hehir 1992). Since the power of the purse is “the surest way for Congress to gain a point of leverage in the foreign policy process” (Hehir 1992: 237), Congress’s central strategy was to pass legislation that linked human rights to the provision of U.S. economic and/or military assistance (Fraser 1979: 248–250; Forsythe 1988: Chapters 4 and 5). President Jimmy Carter took the human rights mantle from Congress and made it a central tenet of his foreign policy. Since then, human rights has remained an integral and important element of U.S. foreign policy. In a word, Congress fundamentally transformed U.S. foreign policy by incorporating the promotion of human rights. In so far as China is concerned, two aspects of Congress’s human rights policy stand out. First, the Tiananmen Incident is the dividing line. Before Tiananmen, China’s human rights record was largely exempt from congressional scrutiny (Cohen 1987; Shirk 1977). Tiananmen abruptly ended congressional silence and since then Congress has become the most outspoken critic of China’s human rights practices. Second, while Congress enacted some general and country-specific human rights laws in the 1970s (see Forsythe

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1988: Chapters 3–5), it has not been able to pass any similar laws respecting China. Thus Congress’s human rights policy toward China appears to be more bark than bite. In this chapter, I analyze Congress’s human rights policy toward China. In the process I attempt to answer three questions. First, why had Congress, in its worldwide campaign for human rights, largely neglected China up until 1989? Second, why has Congress been extremely active in promoting human rights in China since 1989? Third, what factors have influenced roll call votes on legislation targeting China’s human rights? I argue that the international environment holds the key to the first question. U.S. weakness vis-à-vis the former Soviet Union and hence the need to form a strategic alliance with China necessarily constrained Congress from scrutinizing China’s human rights prior to 1989. As to the second question, the Tiananmen Incident certainly spurred Congress into action, but it alone was insufficient to explain sustained congressional activism in China’s human rights since 1989. The other two important factors are the international environment and partisan politics. The end of the Cold War reduced China’s strategic importance and enabled members of Congress to criticize its human rights practices without fearing strategic consequences. The Democratic majority in Congress used China’s human rights to club a Republican president who was determined to salvage U.S.–China relations from the deadly blow of Tiananmen. To answer the third question, I analyze roll call votes on a set of bills that aimed to punish China’s human rights violations by revoking its Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status.

Before Tiananmen: China as the exception If there was any U.S. human rights policy toward China in the years before 1989, it was the glaring exemption of China from the otherwise strict human rights standards that the U.S. applied to many other countries. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Nixon, refused to discuss human rights even when Chinese officials brought up the topic, asserting that they were “China’s internal affairs” (Kissinger 1994: 750–751). Despite the Carter administration’s high-profile human rights campaign, it treated China gingerly. Richard Holbrooke, Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, later told Congress, “We could not, and did not, raise Western concepts such as due process of law in . . . the People’s Republic of China” (U.S. Congress 1983a: 12). When officials from the Bureau of Human Rights gave unflattering testimonies about China’s human rights, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte and Holbrooke rushed to China’s defense (Cohen 1987: 478, fn. 122; U.S. Congress 1981: 37–38, 43). The Reagan administration pursued the same policy of exemption. “We don’t necessarily see a great advantage in banging them [Chinese] over the head with it [human rights], they are very sensitive people,” said James Lilley, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs,

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in a 1985 congressional hearing on political developments and human rights in China (U.S. Congress 1986: 179). Congress was no more assertive than the executive branch. It was not until 1977—four years after Congress started its worldwide human rights campaign—that the first resolution on China’s human rights (H.Con.Res.395) was introduced. Sponsored by Representative Dawson Mathis (D-GA), the resolution denounced the Chinese government’s suppression of the expression of political thought and its violation of the rights of the individual, and urged the president to take effective measures. At a series of congressional hearings on human rights and U.S. foreign policy held in 1979, members paid particular attention to human rights in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka, but mentioned China only in passing (U.S. Congress 1979). One year later, Congress held its first hearing on human rights in China (U.S. Congress 1981). In the same year, Congress began to require the State Department to submit an annual human rights report on China. Two more rounds of hearings were held in 1982 and 1985 respectively, but there was no harsh condemnation of Chinese human rights nor discussion of specific legislation targeting China (U.S. Congress 1983a, 1986). Executive and legislative inaction on China’s human rights did not escape the attention of scholars and journalists. “Hardly a word has been said about China in recent discussions of human rights and American foreign policy,” deplored Shirk (1977: 109) on the eve of normalization. “Despite a strong stand promoting human rights globally, the administration has been exceptionally reserved about criticizing the Chinese,” lamented the Washington Post (1978b). “The defense of human rights was one of the signature elements in the Carter administration’s foreign policy elsewhere in the world, but not when it came to China,” noted Mann (1999: 100). “Indeed, Carter and his aides gave China virtually a blanket exemption from the human rights policies that they so readily applied everywhere.” Another scholar arrived at a similar conclusion: “Human rights concerns were seen as only one element in American policy toward China, and a subsidiary one at that” (Harding 1992: 200). A number of factors contributed to Congress’s glaring silence on Chinese human rights, but two of them stand out as arguably the most significant.1 The first has something to do with Congress’s strategy to promote human rights. Since “[h]uman rights initiatives are assumed to depend on diplomatic leverage and the amount of foreign assistance available” (Cohen 1987: 472), Congress paid most attention to human rights in countries that were recipients of U.S. military and/or economic aid. It enacted several laws prohibiting such aid to countries engaged in consistent patterns of human rights violations (Forsythe 1988: Chapter 3). Congress also adopted legislation targeting specific countries (ibid.: Chapters 4 and 5; Fraser 1979).2 However, this strategy becomes problematic in the case of China, which was not a recipient of U.S. military or economic aid. In fact, the two countries did not have diplomatic ties until 1979. Because Congress did not have

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any economic or political leverage over China, it largely left out China in its worldwide human rights campaign. Donald Fraser (D-OH), one of the architects of Congress’s human rights policy, openly admitted this dilemma: “We don’t really have leverage on countries such as those in the Communist World because we rarely have any relationships which give us leverage” (U.S. Congress 1979: 304). The second and perhaps most important constraint on congressional activism in Chinese human rights appears to be the international environment. On the one hand, bogged down in Vietnam and faced with the Soviet offensive around the world, the U.S. found itself in an increasingly unfavorable strategic position. On the other hand, the sharp deterioration in Sino–Soviet relations in the 1960s—as evidenced by a series of border clashes in 1969— provided the U.S. with a golden opportunity to form an alliance with China against the former Soviet Union (e.g., Ross 1986, 1995). Confronted with the new international strategic environment, Washington began to adjust its foreign policy by reaching out to China. Nixon’s landmark visit to Beijing represented the beginning of a temporary strategic alliance between two countries that had heretofore been avowed enemies. Because the U.S.–China relationship was premised almost exclusively on strategic cooperation, there was little room for non-strategic concerns such as human rights. “Where human rights policy conflicts with incontrovertibly more compelling security interests, the human rights policy must give way,” editorialized the International Herald Tribune (1980). “China is pivotal in the world power balance . . . the People’s Republic is, de facto, the most important single ally of the United States,” the editorial continued, implying that China’s strategic importance should override all other concerns, human rights included. Even though U.S.–China relations witnessed rapid development after Nixon’s visit, “policy makers, mindful of the fragility of U.S. relations with the leadership of the People’s Republic, are loath to raise issues [like human rights] that might jeopardize the progress made in the last six years” (Shirk 1977: 109). Particularly during the Carter administration, the desire for normalization “put on ice any impulse to protest China’s human rights violations” (Cohen 1987: 461). Now that the U.S. and China were strategic allies, Congress adjusted its China policy accordingly. Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) best illustrates Congress’s human rights policy toward China in the new strategic environment. A “staunch anti-Communist and leading proponent of human rights,” the Senator was best known for the Jackson–Vanik amendment that establishes annual review of MFN status for Communist countries (Willkie 1994: 121). Because of the amendment, the former Soviet Union was never granted MFN status.3 Yet when it came to China, Jackson adopted a completely different standard. As early as November 1969, he was calling for full normalization of relations with China. He visited the country four times between 1971 and 1983, which “deepened his commitment to the realization of a dynamic and

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prosperous China with close ties to the United States” (ibid.: 125). He was instrumental in the passage of the Carter administration’s trade agreement with China that includes, among other things, the extension of MFN. Jackson thus explained why he opposed MFN for the former Soviet Union but supported MFN for China: China and the Soviet Union are two very different countries at different stages of development, with different interests and ambitions, different associates and allies, and different relations with this country. They should be treated on separate tracks and, in our own national interest, they cannot be treated alike.4 (quoted in ibid.: 126) Nonetheless, not every member of Congress was ready to buy the strategic argument and to turn a blind eye to China’s human rights. “Why is there this tolerant attitude toward the obvious defects of the PRC? Why is it that they seem to enjoy tolerance from academics as well as diplomatic and journalistic sources on their many defects?” asked an exasperated congressman Edward Derwinski (R-IL) (U.S. Congress 1981: 149). “If we don’t apply some human rights standards to China, even if . . . it will perhaps have a marginal, negligible effect, or no effect at all—it makes us hypocritical when we apply pressure to any place else in the world,” warned Robert Dornan (R-CA) (U.S. Congress 1983a: 360). Some members denounced the unwarranted sensitivities to Chinese culture and traditions. “We are so much more careful and thoughtful and sensitive when we deal with the subject of human rights in China than we are with other countries in Asia who also have traditions and customs,” said Representative Joel Pritchard (R-WA) (U.S. Congress 1983a: 344).5 These few dissenting voices aside, most members of Congress remained silent on Chinese human rights. A more specific indicator of congressional reticence is the number of bills respecting human rights in China that were introduced in Congress prior to 1989. By my count, in the 16 years between 1973 and 1988, a total of only 35 such bills were introduced. Of these bills, 19 were about generic human rights topics such as political dissent and religious freedom, 8 about human rights in Tibet, 8 about China’s family planning policy and U.S. funding to the UNPF. This number is only a small fraction of the 289 human rights bills (including generic human rights, UNPF, MFN, Tiananmen, and human rights in Tibet) introduced in the 16 years between 1989 and 2006.

Tiananmen: the dividing line The Tiananmen Incident in the summer of 1989 fundamentally changed U.S.–China relations. “The optimistic decade of the 1980s in U.S.–China relations ended in one of the most dramatic crises in China’s history, a crisis

Congress and China’s human rights 105 that produced equally sharp repercussions for Chinese-American understanding,” observed a senior foreign service official (quoted in Tucker 2001). A close observer of Congress wrote, “A carefully staged process of improving relations between the United States and China, built during the last two decades, has been frozen and may have been permanently damaged by the Chinese government’s brutal repression of mass dissent” (CQWR 1989: 1411). Winston Lord, ambassador to China from November 1985 through April 1989, later observed: For two decades, through five administrations, the United States enjoyed broad bipartisan consensus on dealing with China, that important complex nation, but the slaughter of innocent patriots in Beijing last spring and the subsequent repression have led to the first heated debate on China since the early 1970s. (quoted in U.S. Congress 1990: 7) Perhaps nowhere was the impact of Tiananmen more keenly felt than in the halls of Congress. The Tiananmen Incident destroyed the reservoir of good feelings toward China that had been accumulating among members of Congress, particularly since the beginning of China’s economic reform in 1978 and after Deng’s popular visit to the Capitol Hill in 1979. Congress’s reaction was swift and emotional. “The American honeymoon and love fest with China started in 1971 by Richard Nixon is over,” declared Congressman Bill Richardson (D-NM) (Congressional Record 1989: 10787). “No dangling of strategic advantage, or effort to invoke geopolitical calculations will deter the Government of this country from expressing its revulsion at their [Chinese] actions,” said an outraged Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) (ibid.). A deeply disappointed Les AuCoin (D-OR), who was proud of having taken “a constructive approach to China,” was on the first trade delegation to China, and was opposed to two-China policy, said that China “has disgraced itself” (Congressional Record 1989: 10804). Congressman Dave McCurdy (D-OK) denounced the violence against students as “an act of desperation by tyrants out of touch with reality,” and Leon Panetta (D-CA) called it “an offense against humanity” (ibid.: 10805). Congressional outrage naturally found its outlet in legislative actions. On June 6 1989, each chamber unanimously adopted a resolution—H.Con.Res.136 and S.Res.142 respectively—to condemn the crackdown. Frustrated by Bush’s slow and cautious approach, the House unanimously voted on June 29 for sanctions against China that were more stringent than those already announced by the president (CQWR 1989: 1642, 1800). “Someone in this government—and today it’s the House—must take a more forceful action,” said House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) after the vote (quoted in Phillips 1989). The Tiananmen Incident also spurred congressional scrutiny of a plethora of human rights problems in China that otherwise had been ignored or downplayed in the past, such as forced abortion

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(e.g., U.S. Congress 1995, 2005b) and prison labor (e.g., U.S. Congress 1992, 1994, 1998a). Figure 6.1 illustrates legislative activism in human rights policy in the aftermath of Tiananmen. As I mentioned above, only 35 human rights bills were introduced between 1973 and 1988. In 1989 alone, 33 bills directly related to Tiananmen (e.g., condemning the crackdown or proposing sanctions) were introduced in Congress. But after 1989, Tiananmen disappeared from the radar screen of Congress, as only 11 bills relating to the Incident were introduced between 1990 and 2006. Meanwhile, generic human rights, human rights in Tibet, and funding to the UNPF became the prime targets of legislative actions, and the total number of bills for each issue is 118, 41, and 11 respectively. Moreover, the various NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which had been quiescent about China’s human rights prior to 1989, now became extremely active. They began to keep close track of human rights violations in China, publish regular reports, and testify frequently at congressional hearings (e.g., Human Rights Watch 1993; Amnesty International USA 1990). Joining these NGOs were Chinese human rights lobbies in the U.S. that were formed after Tiananmen. They became immensely

Figure 6.1 Bills concerning China’s human rights, 1989–2006.

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influential on Capitol Hill. For example, the National Committee on Chinese Students Affairs, led by Zhao Haiching, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, was instrumental in devising the strategy to link human rights with MFN (Mann 1999: 229–233).6 These NGOs and Chinese human rights lobbies have played an important role in sustaining Congress’s interest in China’s human rights even when the images of Tiananmen are no longer on the front pages. Nevertheless, the impact of Tiananmen should not be overestimated. It certainly triggered off congressional activism, but it is merely one of the several factors that are responsible for congressional activism. Another crucial factor is the international environment. Tiananmen took place against the backdrop of political turmoil in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the former Soviet Union in 1991. In the new international environment the U.S. no longer needed the China card against the Soviet Bloc. As a result, Congress could be tough on China’s human rights without worrying about the strategic consequences of such criticism. Remarks by some members indicate that they were keenly aware of the implications of the Soviet demise for China policy. Senator DeConcini (D-AZ) said that President Bush would be “sadly mistaken” if he intended to play the China card in the new world order (Congressional Record 1992: S 3847). Senator Harris Wofford (D-PA) voiced similar sentiment: “The collapse of the Soviet Union rendered the ‘China Card,’ the notion that we need to support China as a balance to the Soviet Union, obsolete” (ibid.: 7495). “Now, in the 1990s when we turn over the China card, it is a deuce,” asserted representative Edward Markey (D-MA) (Congressional Record 1990: H 10507). While conceding that the U.S. had played the China card in the Cold War, Gerald Solomon (R-NY) contended that the China card was over. “Now it is time to stand up to this rogue regime in Beijing and let them know that we are not going to take it anymore,” he urged (Congressional Record 1997: H 4245). “We no longer need ‘the China Card’ as leverage against a belligerent Communist enemy in the Soviet Union,” declared representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) (Congressional Record 1993: E 2005). Another factor that contributed to congressional activism in China’s human rights was partisan politics, especially during the Bush years when Democrats controlled both chambers. Knowing that the president was determined to continue normal relations with China in spite of what happened in Tiananmen Square, the Democratic majority persistently pushed human rights to the frontlines, with the aim of making the president look bad before the public. The three failed congressional attempts to override Bush’s three vetoes, for example, illuminate the likely partisan motives behind Democratic activism in human rights. “The Democratic leadership relished the veto fights; even if its side lost legislatively, it might win big politically,” wrote Richard Bush (1995: 151). “This was a victory for President Bush and the Chinese leadership that was responsible for Tiananmen Square,” said a bitter Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) after Bush’s veto of HR 2712, the

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Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act. “It was a defeat for human rights” (quoted in Friedman 1990). Senator Alan Dixon (D-IL) said he hoped the vote “will be discussed” in the 1990 mid-term election (CQWR 1990: 245). As Mann pointed out: China was an issue where the Democrats in Congress could oppose the Republican administration and know, with certainty, that they had public opinion on their side . . . If George Bush wasn’t going to convey the country’s outrage over Chinese repression, then the Democrats in Congress would happily volunteer. (1999: 199) To sum up, the shock of Tiananmen, China’s reduced strategic importance in the post-Cold War world, the activities of human rights groups, and partisan politics have all combined to contribute to congressional activism since 1989. More specifically, Tiananmen triggered off congressional activism, but Congress would almost certainly have been active in China’s human rights without the shock of Tiananmen. For the demise of the former Soviet Union removed the strategic straitjacket that had prevented most members of Congress—and human rights groups to a lesser extent—from openly criticizing China’s human rights. Nonetheless, the intensity and timing of congressional activism would probably have been different if Tiananmen had not happened. Meanwhile, partisan politics under a divided government gave the Democrats added incentives to be actively involved in human rights policy toward China, in the hope that they could weaken Bush by portraying him as being soft on human rights. Finally, Tiananmen also brought about unprecedented and sustained involvement of human rights groups in Chinese human rights, which helps keep China as a salient issue on Capitol Hill.

MFN renewal and congressional efforts to change human rights in China Renewal of China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status lies at the heart of Congress’s human rights policy toward China since 1989. Since China was not a recipient of U.S. economic or military assistance that could be suspended or terminated, Congress had to devise a new strategy to deal with China’s human rights. Among the tools available, the Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Act appears to be the most effective. The amendment prohibits a president from granting MFN to a Communist country unless he waives a requirement that denies MFN to any Communist country that restricts free emigration.7 Congress can pass a joint resolution to disapprove of MFN renewal, subject to presidential veto. While the Jackson– Vanik Amendment ostensibly sets free emigration as the only condition for MFN renewal, Congress has adopted a broader interpretation of the law to include human rights in general.

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Executive-legislative skirmishes over China’s MFN Figure 6.2 illustrates congressional activism in China’s MFN. Between 1973 and 1988, only four bills relating to China’s MFN were introduced. By contrast, the 16 years after 1989 witnessed a total of 75 such bills, with 46 in the House and 29 in the Senate. Not surprisingly, the two years after Tiananmen witnessed the largest number of such bills—18 and 16 respectively. As Tiananmen gradually faded from public and congressional debate, the number of bills also decreased markedly. Since 1995, on average about two MFN bills were introduced annually. Of these bills, Congress voted on more than one-third of them (27 to be exact). For example, each year between 1990 and 2001, the House voted on a joint resolution to disapprove of MFN renewal and, with three exceptions, the resolutions were all defeated (see Table 6.1). The White House wanted to engage China in spite of the Tiananmen Incident and therefore opposed revocation of or conditional MFN. As President George H. W. Bush argued in his veto message attached to the U.S.– China Act of 1992, engagement with China “through democratic, economic, and educational institutions instead of confrontation offers the best hope for reform in China” and “MFN is the foundation we need to engage the Chinese” (quoted in CQ Almanac 1992: 159). While sharing the goals of conditional MFN—“to see greater Chinese adherence to international standards of human rights, free and fair trade practices, and international non-proliferation norms”—President Bush nonetheless believed that “adding broad conditions to China’s MFN renewal would not lead to faster progress

Figure 6.2 Time trend of bills relating to China’s MFN status, 1973–2006.

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Table 6.1 House roll call votes on joint resolutions to disapprove of China’s MFN, 1990–2001 Bill

Totalsa

Democrats

H.J.R.467, October 18 1990 Yea Nay

247 174

166 84

81 90

H.J.R.263, July 10 1991 Yea Nay

223 204

171 92

51 112

H.J.R.502, July 21 1992 Yea Nay

258 135

181 56

76 79

H.J.R.208, July 21 1993 Yea Nay

105 318

41 210

63 108

H.J.R.373, August 9 1994 Yea Nay

75 356

38 215

36 141

To Table H.J.R.96, July 20 1995b Yea Nay

321 107

143 54

178 52

H.J.R.182, June 27 1996 Yea Nay

141 286

75 119

65 167

H.J.R.79, July 3 1997 Yea Nay

173 259

93 112

79 147

166 264

87 115

78 149

170 260

98 110

71 150

147 281

91 117

54 164

169 259

105 102

62 157

H.J.R.121, July 22 1998 Yea Nay H.J.R.57, July 27 1999 Yea Nay H.J.R.103, July 18 2000 Yea Nay H.J.R.50, July 19 2001 Yea Nay

Republicans

Notes: a: Totals included Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Virgil Goode (I-VA in 2000). b: A yea vote is a vote in support of MFN renewal. Source: CQ Almanac.

Congress and China’s human rights 111 in advancing our goals,” but instead “would severely damage the Westernoriented, modernizing elements in China, weaken Hong Kong, and strengthen opposition to democratic and economic reform” (quoted in ibid.: 158). Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric accusing Bush of kowtowing to Beijing and his 1993 executive order linking MFN renewal to human rights progress, President Clinton largely continued his predecessor’s policy. “Revoking MFN and, in effect, severing our economic ties to China, would drive us back into a period of mutual isolation and recrimination that would harm America’s interests, not advance them,” he said. “MFN renewal is not a referendum on all China’s policies, it is a vote for America’s interests” (Public Papers of the Presidents 1996: 778). For both Bush and Clinton, then, trade is the primary vehicle of engagement, “a force for change in China, exposing China to our ideas and our ideals and integrating China into the global economy” (Public Papers of the Presidents 1998: 871). Many members of Congress from both parties were strongly opposed to unconditional MFN because they wanted to punish Beijing for its human rights violations. Representative Richard Schulze (R-PA) best characterized the prevailing mood in Congress: “I want the outrage that is ringing throughout the world to ring through the halls of Congress” (CQWR 1990: 2570). Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) denounced Bush’s decision to renew MFN as “a hideously wrong message to send to the world” (ibid.: 1686). Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) characterized unconditional MFN as “a base hunger for cheap electronics and inexpensive consumer goods” at the price of “America’s historic thirst for liberty and justice” (U.S. Congress 1997c: 22). For some members, antipathy toward Communism reinforced their moral outrage against Beijing and their determination to oppose unconditional MFN. Gerald Solomon (R-NY) regarded the policy of “unlinked granting of MFN” as tantamount to “appeasement to Communist China” (CQWR 1990: 9). Frank Wolf (R-VA) opposed MFN renewal because “They [China] are the evil empire” (CQ Almanac 1999: 23: 7). Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) characterized Clinton’s China policy as “painstaking efforts . . . to cater to Red China’s every whim and wish” (CQWR 1999: 2605). From the opponents’ perspective, revoking or putting conditions on China’s MFN status seemed to be the easiest and most effective unilateral punishment of China. Without MFN, Chinese exports to the U.S. would be subject to much higher tariffs and hence would decrease precipitously. The average tariff on Chinese products would rise from 3.5 percent to an average of nearly 40 percent. The 6 percent tariff on apparel and footwear would jump to 60 percent and 35 percent respectively (CQWR 1990: 1775; CQWR 1994: 1055). Considering that the U.S. is the destination of nearly one-third of Chinese exports, revocation of MFN would have had a disastrous impact on the Chinese economy. Other members supported MFN for a variety of reasons. First, some of

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them shared the opponents’ concerns about China’s human rights, but believed that engagement through trade was the best way to influence Chinese behavior and to help the democratic forces in China. “The more trade, the more democratization,” asserted Congressman Robert T. Matsui (D-CA), a leading pro-trade Democrat (CQWR 1990: 2571). To these members, the alternative would be an isolated China with ill will toward the U.S. “The choice is clear,” said Representative Tim Roemer (D-IN). “Are we going to have a constructive engagement policy with China or a new evil empire?” (CQWR 1999: 1898). Second, many members were worried that revocation of MFN would hurt American businesses, particularly the big exporters and importers. Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) made it crystal clear in 1990: “The Chinese consume about 20% of wheat exports—a commodity in which I and many other senators have a special interest” (CQWR 1996: 1232).8 In 1991, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), along with five Democratic senators from farm states, signed a letter to President Bush urging him to take actions in other areas so as to lessen congressional pressure on MFN (CQWR 1991: 1737; Gugliotta 1991). If MFN were cut off, China would probably retaliate by stopping its purchase of wheat—the major export of these states—and the price of wheat would collapse. Finally, some members simply didn’t believe that the various conditions attached to MFN were attainable. “We will end up with a bill that will be popular in the U.S. Congress but will harden the Chinese government’s resolve,” warned Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) (CQWR 1991: 1739). Each year since 1990, the president and Congress locked horns over China’s MFN. Initially, Congress attempted outright revocation, which requires approval by both chambers of a joint resolution denying presidential renewal. The threat of presidential veto and Senate reluctance to take action forced House advocates of outright revocation to change their tactics and adopted conditional MFN. As Nancy Pelosi (1994) put it, “Conditioning MFN for China provides the US with the best leverage to improve human rights because preferential access to the US market is critical to China’s authoritarian regime.” Besides, conditional MFN could win “support from those in Congress who might be afraid of the consequences of outright revocation, but who wanted to do something about repression in China” (Mann 1999: 232). However, the unintended but inevitable consequence of such an approach is that “almost every group and organization with an interest in China policy wanted to be part of the action in drafting the specific MFN conditions” (Mann 1999: 232). In addition to human rights, which was initially the primary concern of MFN opponents, other issues such as weapons proliferation, Taiwan, Tibet, intellectual property rights (IPR), and unfair trade practices were also added, making MFN renewal the “institutionalized vehicle by which China policy, in all of its dimensions, was discussed each year” (Lampton 1994: 15). As Representative Sam Gibbons (D-FL), then

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chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, said of the Pelosi bill (HR 2212), “I guess Pelosi is just becoming a garbage truck. Everybody throws in everything they can think of” (CQWR 1991: 1739). Allied with the White House were big exporters and importers such as Boeing and Wal-Mart that had reaped huge profits from the China market (Zakaria 2005; Zeng 2004: 96–114). Joining congressional critics of China were labor unions, religious groups, human rights groups, and environmentalists (CQWR 1997: 1390; CQWR 2000: 90). Labor unions opposed MFN because of the thousands of jobs allegedly displaced by Chinese imports (Shorrock 1994, 1996; U.S. Congress 1997c: 186–189; Behr 1994). Religious groups had grievances against China’s family planning policy and the lack of religious freedom (CQWR 1997: 1206, 1390; Devroy 1997). The MFN debate, Gilbert (1997) wrote, created “a peculiar political stew of labor unions, protectionists, religious activists, some liberals, some conservatives . . . fighting an uphill battle” against a coalition of exporters, retailers, pro-trade members of Congress, and the White House.9 House votes to disapprove of MFN In this section, I conduct quantitative analysis of the determinants of the ten House votes between 1990 and 1999 on joint resolutions to disapprove of presidential renewal of MFN (see Table 6.1). The two votes in 2000 and 2001 are excluded because they took place after the House had voted to remove China from annual review of MFN. There are three major reasons why I decided on the ten votes.10 First, all the supposedly pure human rights votes were almost always unanimous.11 These bills usually condemned the Chinese government for its gross violation of human rights, urged the executive branch to raise human rights issues with Chinese officials, or called on the Chinese government to release individuals. While unsuitable for statistical analysis, these lopsided votes nonetheless constitute convincing evidence that members of Congress had little disagreement over whether to promote human rights in China. Second, Congress’s human rights policy has essentially been a linkage policy whereby it uses U.S. economic, military, or diplomatic leverage to bring about human rights progress in a particular country. In the case of China, withdrawing MFN or putting conditions on its renewal appeared to be the most effective leverage Congress had, given that China was not a recipient of U.S. military or economic aid. Moreover, votes on these joint resolutions turned out to be highly contested, suggesting that members disagreed with each other on how to promote human rights in China. Finally, I will analyze the same type of votes related to other countries in Chapter 7. Congress also voted on the extension of MFN to Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam. This provides a good opportunity to find out if the causal factors underlying roll call voting on China’s MFN are unique or represent a general pattern of roll call voting on MFN extension.

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Hypotheses Since the hypotheses to be tested were already alluded to in the various sections of this chapter or earlier chapters, I simply list them here: Hypothesis 1: Members of the president’s party should be more likely to oppose revocation of MFN than members of the opposition party, other things being equal. Hypothesis 2: Since both liberals and conservatives should be more likely to vote for MFN revocation, the absolute value of DW score should have a positive sign. Hypothesis 3: Employment in farming and retail/wholesale should be negatively associated with support for MFN revocation, controlling for other factors. Hypothesis 4: The strength of labor unions will be positively correlated with support for MFN revocation, other things being equal. Statistical findings Since the ten votes took place under two presidents, I present the results separately for the three votes under President Bush and the seven votes under President Clinton. For each vote I first run a model with Union Strength, Farm Employment, and Retail/Wholesale Employment. After that, I add party and Absolute DW Score. Table 6.2 presents logit coefficients for the three votes under President Bush, and the probabilities calculated from these coefficients are presented in Table 6.3. Despite intense campaigns by labor unions against MFN renewal, Union Strength is not statistically significant in any of the regressions. The other two constituency variables are consistently significant and have the correct sign in all models. If Farm Employment increases by one standard deviation, the probability of voting for MFN revocation decreases considerably by about 0.12 across the six models, holding other variables at their means. Similarly, such an increase in Retail/Wholesale Employment leads to a decrease of roughly 0.09 in the probability of supporting MFN revocation. Being a Republican is consistently and negatively associated with support for MFN revocation. To be exact, being a member of the president’s party decreases the probability of casting a yea vote (i.e., a vote in support of revoking MFN) by a solid 0.165 in 1990, a remarkable 0.333 in 1991, and an impressive 0.252 in 1992. These numbers constitute strong evidence of party loyalty. However, as I cautioned in Chapter 1, it is hard to clearly distinguish loyalty to one’s president from electorally-induced inter-party difference on

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Table 6.2 Logit analysis of House votes to disapprove of China’s MFN under President Bush Independent variables

1990 Model 1

Union strength

1991 Model 2

.009 (.013) −.144** (.038) −.151** (.049)

.009 (.013) Farm employment −.122** (.039) −.135** Retail/wholesale employment (.051) Republican −.684** (.215) Absolute DW score .988 (.651) Log likelihood −270.091 −264.584 Pseudo R2 .053 .073 N 421 421

Model 1

1992 Model 2

−.000 (.013) −.225** (.045) −.171** (.049)

−.002 (.014) −.185** (.047) −.161** (.054) −1.386** (.230) 2.695** (.702) −272.190 −246.694 .079 .163 427 426

Model 1

Model 2

−.026 (.014) −.184** (.041) −.216** (.056)

−.027 (.015) −.156** (.042) −.215** (.061) −1.142** (.239) 2.155** (.753) −232.974 −218.453 .078 .134 393 392

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parenthesis are standard errors. ** Significant at 0.01; * significant at 0.05.

Table 6.3 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes under Bush) Independent variables

1990 Model 1

Union strength Farm employment −.102 Retail/wholesale −.082 employment Republican Absolute DW score

1991

1992

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

−.086 −.073

−.163 −.094

−.134 −.089

−.120 −.104

−.100 −.102

−.165

−.333 .114

−.252 .078

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported.

trade, because for many Republicans, a vote in support of Bush was also a vote consistent with their traditional pro-trade stance. Notice that the estimated impact of party was at its lowest in the 1990 vote. The vote took place one year after the Tiananmen Incident, and many Republicans (81 out of a total of 171) may have decided to vote for the bill (hence against Bush) because their outrage against Beijing had not subsided. The vote outcomes of two China bills in 1990 provide further indication

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about the prevailing sentiment among Republicans. On January 24, the House voted 390–25 to override President Bush’s veto of the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act. Only 25 Republicans voted against the override. By a 384–30 vote, the House passed HR 4939 on October 18, a bill that set strict conditions for MFN renewal for 1991. Only 19 Republicans voted again the bill. Absolute DW Score is statistically significant and has the hypothesized sign in two votes. If it increases by one standard deviation, then the probability of voting for MFN revocation increases by 0.114 in 1991 and 0.078 in 1992. For these two votes at least, there was indeed a coalition of the ideological ends against the middle. However, Absolute DW Score appears to have no impact on the 1990 vote. My explanation is similar to the one I offered above about the reduced impact of party. That is, because passions about the Tiananmen Incident were probably still running high when members cast their votes in 1990, many moderates also decided to support the bill in spite of their general inclination to oppose such bills. Table 6.4 and Table 6.5 present results for the seven votes under President Clinton. As in the case of the three votes under Bush, Union Strength is not statistically significant in any of the regression. Of the other two constituency variables, Farm Employment consistently has the correct sign, but it is not statistically significant in the two votes in 1997 and 1998. Also, when party and ideology are controlled for, it loses statistical significance in the 1995 vote and the 1999 vote. Even though Farm Employment does not perform as well as it did in the three votes under Bush, the findings nonetheless indicate that members of Congress were generally opposed to any bill that would affect access to China, a leading market for American agricultural products. To be exact, on average, one standard deviation increase in Farm Employment is associated with a decrease of about 0.07 in the probability of voting for MFN revocation. Retail/Wholesale Employment performs rather poorly, as it reaches statistical significance only in Model 2 of the 1998 vote. Party is statistically significant in the 1993 vote and has the correct sign. That is, being a member of the president’s party decreases the probability of casting a yea note (hence a vote against Clinton’s position) by a solid 0.137. Recall that under President Bush, being a Democratic actually increased the likelihood of casting such a vote. That House Democrats voted differently on the same issue under Bush and Clinton is a strong indication that they used MFN renewal as a political issue to beat Bush. Once Bush was out of office and a president of the same party was elected, Democrats immediately changed their votes so as not to embarrass their own president who was opposed to MFN revocation. Nevertheless, Democratic loyalty to their president did not extend beyond 1993, as party does not have any significant impact on the three votes in 1994, 1995, and 1996. Furthermore, in 1997 and 1999, House Democrats were actually more likely to vote against their president than Republicans, controlling for other factors. To be exact, being a Democrat increases the probability of

−247.78 .002 423

−.005 (.014) −.218** (.069) −.040 (.045) −.681** (.231) −1.322 (.704) −240.641 .045 422

−.008 (.014) −.185** (.064) −.010 (.041)

Model 2

−.013 (.017) −.172* (.082) −.026 (.051) −.365 (.273) 1.994* (.838) −.195.69 −189.65 .018 .040 431 430

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

−.009 (.016) −.180* (.080) −.017 (.049)

1994

1993 Model 2

−.028 (.015) −.109 (.064) −.023 (.043) .352 (.248) 3.745** (.775) −236.40 −221.88 .018 .073 428 427

−.026 (.014) −.133* (.063) −.035 (.044)

Model 1

1995 Model 2

.000 (.014) −.118* (.059) −.057 (.043) .429 (.227) 3.364** (.720) −264.08 −249.91 .025 .073 427 426

.000 (.013) −.143* (.058) −.078 (.044)

Model 1

1996

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at .01; * significant at .05.

Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

Absolute DW score

Retail and wholesale Democrat

Farm employment

Union strength

Independent variables Model 2

−.014 (.013) −.083 (.050) −.083 (.044) .503* (.210) 3.462** (.713) −288.28 −272.85 .011 .061 432 431

−.011 (.012) −.080 (.047) −.063 (.041)

Model 1

1997

Table 6.4 Logit analysis of House votes to disapprove of China’s MFN under President Clinton

Model 2

−.013 (.013) −.091 (.052) −.010* (.046) .468* (.213) 3.640** (.722) −282.78 −266.52 .014 .068 430 429

−.010 (.013) −.085 (.049) −.076 (.043)

Model 1

1998

Model 2 −.016 (.013) −.096 (.050) −.077 (.045) .836** (.220) 4.189** (.732) −284.75 −260.69 .013 .094 430 429

−.010 (.012) −.098* (.049) −.058 (.042)

Model 1

1999

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

−.087

−.137

−.101

−.059

.043

−.054

−.058

.106

−.073

.115

−.059

.120 .126

.109 .130

−.063

−.055

.195 .154

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

1993

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported.

Union strength Farm employment Retail and wholesale Democrat Absolute DW score

Independent variables

Table 6.5 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes under Clinton)

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casting a yea vote by 0.120, 0.109, and 0.195 respectively for the three years. Accusations of illegal Chinese campaign donations in the 1996 presidential election, Clinton’s alleged relaxing of satellite export license in exchange for Chinese donations, and investigations of alleged Chinese thefts of U.S. nuclear secrets, among other things, were probably responsible for the positive sign that party has in the three votes between 1997 and 1999. Even though Republicans initiated these allegations and investigations, they probably had converted many Democrats into opponents of Clinton’s engagement policy, for which unconditional MFN was the foundation. Finally, Absolute DW Score is consistently significant and has the correct sign in all but one vote. Clinton’s executive order linking MFN and human rights probably reduced the incentives for the ideological wings of both parties to form a coalition on the 1993 vote. After Clinton repealed the executive order in 1994 and became a supporter of unconditional MFN, the ideological wings banded together again. As a result, increase in Absolute DW score is associated with increased probability of supporting MFN revocation in all votes but the 1993 vote. What is most striking is that the effects of Absolute DW Score were on a steady rise during this seven-year period, from a marginal 0.043 in 1994 to a solid 0.154 in 1999. In other words, the strength of what Nokken (2003) called EATM voting (i.e., the ideological ends against the middle) actually increased over time. Recall that in the 2000 vote on HR 4444 that removed China from annual review of MFN and granted it permanent normal trade relations (PNTR), Absolute DW Score has a negative sign. If it increases by one standard deviation increase, the probability of voting for PNTR decreases by 0.126 (see Table 4.4, Model 2). It seems that the strength of EATM voting slightly decreased between the 1999 vote on MFN renewal and the 2000 vote on PNTR. This finding of decreasing EATM appears to support Nokken’s (2003) argument that rules and procedures affect legislative behavior. Because of the special rules governing MFN renewal, policy outcome (i.e., MFN renewal) became certain. Consequently, legislators treated these votes as opportunities to garner position-taking points with voters at home, which in turn led to strong EATM voting. Once these special rules were removed in the PNTR vote, policy outcome became uncertain and legislators were more likely to vote sincerely than to stake positions, hence decreased EATM voting. On the other hand, increasing EATM voting between 1994 and 1999 also seems to support my contention that the source of this seemingly strange ideological coalition lies in the peculiar nature of China policy, not in the different rules governing the two types of votes. Over the years, China’s human rights problems, its rapidly growing economic and military power and hence the potential threat to U.S. interests in Asia (e.g., Taiwan), the soaring U.S. trade deficit with China, and Beijing’s alleged proliferation of missile technology have provided increasing ammunition to critics from both ends of the ideological spectrum.

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Discussion Since the early 1970s, a central question facing U.S. policy-makers has been how to balance human rights with other foreign policy goals. As Richard Solomon, Assistant Secretary of State under Bush senior, pointed out, U.S. foreign policy has been an effort to “balance the competing demands of hardnosed national interests and our national values, aspirations and ideals” (U.S. Congress 1990: 225). Don Bonker (D-WA), former chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Organizations, commented, “I really find it very frustrating in trying to implement the human rights policy in view of its fundamental conflict with our other national security and foreign policy values” (ibid.: 30). Bill Clinton aptly summarized this challenge in China policy: “I believe the question, therefore, is not whether we continue to support human rights in China, but how we can best support human rights in China and advance our other very significant issues and interests (quoted in Lampton 1994: 603). In the struggle to promote human right and simultaneously advance other foreign policy goals, the U.S. has been accused of adopting a double standard. The case of China aptly illustrates the double standard. During the latter part of the Cold War, because of the U.S.–China strategic alliance against the former Soviet Union, the U.S. largely exempted China from the otherwise strict human rights standards applied to the Soviet bloc. In the aftermath of Tiananmen and after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. did not push hard for human rights progress in China either, partly because of the latter’s economic importance. This is what Neier (1996) called “the new double standard,” as opposed to the old double standard in the Cold War. In the clash between economic interests and human rights, the former usually prevailed, prompting some critics to assert that U.S. China policy has “reached the point . . . where the most ardent defenders of Chinese communism are U.S. capitalists” (U.S. Congress 1997c: 148). Yet due to the electoral connection, it is utterly unrealistic to expect many members of Congress to sacrifice constituency economic interests on the altar of human rights. Indeed, my analysis of the ten votes on joint resolutions to disapprove of MFN produced evidence that many members voted against MFN revocation partly because of constituency influence, particularly influence from farmers, retailers, and wholesalers. This should not come as a surprise, because China has been a leading destination for American agricultural products and the major source of cheap products for American retailers and wholesalers. However, had Congress indeed revoked China’s MFN, it would have faced another dilemma, that is, it would have no leverage to extract human rights concessions from China. On the other hand, if Congress has the leverage but never uses it, then it is not leverage any more. Thus Congress is caught in a Catch-22 situation. As Holly Burkhalter of Asia Watch noted, “Unless the Congress really means it and has the votes then to deprive China of MFN

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and accept all of those consequences at such as they [sic]—were not to have met your conditions, then it is a bluff” (U.S. Congress 1990: 106). Beijing didn’t have a chance to call Congress’s bluff because Congress never passed a law conditioning MFN on human rights, but it did call Clinton’s bluff in 1994, and Clinton retreated from his 1993 executive order linking MFN with human rights. There is one more problem with Congress’s linkage policy. Even if the U.S. is prepared for the economic consequences of trade sanctions against China, the sanctions themselves, in order to be effective, have to be almost universally enforced. Otherwise, as Dittmer (2001: 433–434) pointed out, “the sacrifices endured by the enforcer become profits to be enjoyed by nonobservers of the sanctions (‘free riders,’ who may endorse sanctions rhetorically), while the deviant suffers only the minor inconvenience of shifting trade partners.” Steve Solarz (D-NY) admitted, “The prospect of any other country joining us are probably somewhere between nil and negligible” (U.S. Congress 1990: 120). Winston Lord agreed: “One of our biggest problems in China is that our friends in Europe and Japan hold our coats while we take on the Chinese and they gobble up the contracts” (U.S. Congress 1997c: 64). Indeed, fully aware of the non-enforceability of U.S. trade sanction, China has not hesitated to use market access and purchase orders to play one country off against another. For example, China has manipulated the competition between Airbus and Boeing to its advantage, attempting to silence European and American critics. “China has been able to turn the tables: It now uses economic pressure against those who venture to criticize hits human rights practices,” said an outraged Neier (1996: 97). In the end, using a double-edged weapon such as trade sanctions to promote human rights has largely failed in the case of China.12 And, in 2000, Congress ultimately decided to give up such a policy by voting to grant China permanent normal trade relations. Dittmer summarized the lesson for U.S. policy-makers: Whereas realist means [trade sanctions] can be used in support of realist ends (such as trade or, in the case of the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, security issues), the use of such means in support of idealist ends is logically contradictory and inherently self-defeating. Paradoxically, the free play of domestic interests makes pluralist systems perhaps least able to enforce human rights effectively. When mutually beneficial material interests are fully engaged, only idealist means [such as moral condemnation or international forums] may be employed to implement idealist ends. (2001: 459)

7

Beyond the case of China

Congress’s approach to foreign affairs is heavily colored by local and domestic considerations vis-à-vis a commitment to the national interest. (Cecil Crabb and Pat Holt 1984: 249) Like a vast picture thronged with figures of equal prominence and crowded with elaborate and obtrusive details, Congress is hard to see satisfactorily and appreciatively at a single view and from a single stand-point. (Woodrow Wilson 2006: 57)

So far, I have presented a comprehensive analysis of Congress’s China policy. I examined not only the impact of legislative rules and procedures on policy outcomes, but also the determinants of roll call voting on U.S.–China trade relations, U.S.–Taiwan relations, and China’s human rights. The various findings shed some important light on the dynamics underlying congressional policy toward China. Nevertheless, some readers may not be satisfied because as important as the case of China may be, they would contend it does not sufficiently illuminate congressional foreign policy-making in general. In other words, since my study examines only the case of China, it is hard to ascertain whether the same dynamics that help explain congressional policy-making on China-related issues also explains congressional policy-making toward other countries generally. Without a relevant set of comparison cases, I cannot answer this question; instead I can only make statements about what factors are relevant for the U.S.–China case. This chapter addresses this challenge. I analyze roll call votes on two issues involving six countries similar to China in relevant aspects, and compare findings from these six countries with those findings from China. Such a comparative analysis marks the first step in building a general theory of roll call voting on different countries. It should be noted that scholarly research on foreign policy voting tends to neglect country-specific legislation and instead focuses on general legislation such as GATT (e.g., Bailey and Brady 1998; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998), renewal of fast track authority (e.g., Conley 1999), and human rights

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(e.g., Avery and Forsythe 1979). This scholarly neglect is understandable because regardless of how important a piece of country-specific legislation is, the findings may not be generalized to other countries. But with a sufficient number of cases, studying such legislation can help us go beyond countryspecific variables and identify systematic patterns in congressional policymaking. After all, Congress routinely legislates on similar issues involving many countries, and these countries differ from each other in many respects: political regime, relations with the U.S., economic strength, and strategic importance, etc. Thus it would be both theoretically and empirically desirable to find out whether there is systematic variation in congressional policymaking across different countries on similar issues.

Selection of cases Which cases are selected partly depends on the specific issues that I intend to examine. I have examined roll call voting on three issues: trade, Taiwan, and human rights. Because of the highly unusual nature of U.S.–Taiwan relationship, I decide not to pursue any comparative analysis of it. First, even though the U.S. and Taiwan do not have diplomatic relations, their relationship constitutes a de facto diplomatic relationship. Second, since 1949, China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province over which it claims sovereignty, and this claim of sovereignty is almost universally recognized. No country or entity in the world today has such a relationship with the U.S. In so far as U.S.–China trade is concerned, two characteristics stand out as forming the primary criteria for case selection. First, the two countries have extremely extensive trade relations. Second, bilateral trade is extremely unbalanced, as U.S. imports from China are much larger than its exports to China (see Table 4.1). Only Canada, Mexico, and Japan are somewhat similar to China in terms of the two characteristics. Each of the three countries has been a top trade partner of the U.S. and each of them has been running a huge trade surplus with the U.S. (see Table 7.1). My analysis of Congress’s human rights policy toward China focused exclusively on congressional attempts to revoke China’s MFN trade status. Consequently, it is most appropriate to focus on MFN in comparative analysis. Because the Jackson–Vanik Amendment applies to all Communist countries, Congress also voted on the MFN status of many other countries like Albania and Mongolia. Frequently Congress inserted in a general trade bill provisions respecting MFN status for some countries. For example, the Trade and Development Act of 2000 (HR 434) contained provisions authorizing the president to extend MFN to Albania and Kyrgyzstan, and the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 1999 (HR 435) authorized the president to grant MFN to Mongolia by proclamation (Pregelj 2000). I decided not to analyze votes on these general bills because it is hard to ascertain whether a member’s vote on these bills was affected by MFN provisions or non-MFN provisions. On a few occasions, Congress did consider

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Table 7.1 Total U.S. trade and deficit with Japan, Canada, and Mexico, 1985–2006 (billions of dollars) Japan

Canada

Mexico

Year

Total

Balance

Total

Balance

Total

Balance

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

91.4 108.8 112.8 127.2 138.0 138.3 139.6 145.2 155.1 172.6 187.8 182.8 187.2 179.7 188.3 211.4 183.9 172.9 170.0 184.0 193.5 207.7

−46.2 −55.0 −56.3 −51.8 −49.1 −41.1 −43.4 −49.6 −59.4 −65.7 −59.1 −47.6 −56.1 −64.0 −73.4 −81.6 −69.0 −70.0 −66.0 −75.6 −82.5 −88.4

116.3 113.6 130.9 153.0 −166.8 175.1 176.2 189.2 211.7 242.8 271.6 290.1 319.0 329.9 365.3 409.8 379.7 370.0 391.5 446.2 502.3 534.0

−21.8 −22.9 −11.3 −9.8 −9.1 −7.7 −5.9 −8.0 −10.8 −14.0 −17.1 −21.7 −15.5 −16.7 −32.1 −51.9 −52.8 −48.2 −51.7 −66.5 −78.5 −72.8

32.8 29.7 34.9 43.9 52.1 58.4 64.4 75.8 81.5 100.3 108.4 131.1 157.3 173.4 196.6 247.3 232.6 232.1 235.5 266.7 290.5 332.4

−5.5 −4.9 −5.7 −2.6 −2.2 −1.9 2.1 5.4 1.7 1.3 −15.8 −17.5 −14.5 −15.9 −22.8 −24.6 −30.0 −37.1 −40.6 −45.1 −49.7 −64.1

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

free-standing legislation targeting a particular country’s MFN status. To my knowledge, Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam are the only three countries whose MFN status was considered under free-standing legislation.1 Hence they are selected for comparison with China. Trade Japan While the U.S. trade deficit with China dominates headlines and political debates these days (see Chapter 4), U.S. trade deficit with Japan was on the front burner from the late 1970s through the 1980s (e.g., Cohen 1985; U.S. Congress 1980a, 1980b, 1982, 1983b) (Figure 7.1). Then as now, the largest component of U.S. deficit with Japan involves automotive products. Table 7.2 depicts total U.S. deficit with Japan in automotive trade and its share of total U.S.–world deficit and U.S.–Japan trade deficit between 1986 and 2006. The numbers are quite astonishing. Total U.S. automotive deficit with Japan

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Figure 7.1 U.S. trade deficit with Japan, 1962–2006 (billions of dollars) Source: 1962–1984, available from http://comtrade.un.org/db/; 1985–2006, U.S. Census Bureau, available from www.census.gov.

averaged US$37.7 billion per year during the 21-year period, accounting for on average 60.8 percent of total U.S. trade deficit with Japan. Notice that even though total U.S. automotive deficit has increased from US$32.6 billion in 1986 to US$56.8 billion in 2006, its share of total U.S.–world deficit has undergone a sharp decline from the record-high of 47.6 percent in 1991 to 6.9 percent in 2006. The rise of China as a leading international exporter, which replaced Japan as the largest deficit-trading partner of the U.S. in 2000, was almost certainly a major factor behind the precipitous decline of U.S.– Japan automotive deficit’s share of total U.S.–world trade deficit because Chinese automotive exports were largely negligible during this period. Under increasing pressure from the Big Three and United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Congress began to take a series of legislative actions to curb auto imports from Japan. On December 15 1980, by a vote of 317–57 the House passed H.J.R. 598 authorizing the president to negotiate an agreement limiting sales of foreign (chiefly Japanese) cars and trucks in the U.S. But the measure didn’t go anywhere because the Senate did not take any action on it (CQ Almanac 1980: 303–304). Two years later, the House passed HR 5133 on a 215–188 vote. The bill would have set domestic content ratios for foreign automakers based on their sales in the U.S. For example, Toyota and Nissan would have been required to have 70–75 percent domestic content in their cars by 1985 (CQ Almanac 1982: 55–56). The following year, the House passed a similar bill (HR 1234) by a vote of 219–199. The bill would have set

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Beyond the case of China

Table 7.2 U.S.–Japan trade and automotive deficit, 1986–2006 (billions of dollars) Year

Total U.S.– World trade deficit

Total U.S.– Japan trade deficit

U.S.–Japan automotive deficit

Share of total Share of U.S.–World U.S.–Japan deficit (%) deficit (%)

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

138.2 152.1 118.7 109.4 101.7 66.7 84.5 115.6 150.6 158.8 170.2 180.5 229.8 330 434.3 411.4 468.3 532.4 650.8 766.8 818.1

58.6 59.8 51.8 49.1 41.1 43.4 49.6 59.4 65.7 59.1 47.6 56.1 64.1 73.9 81.3 69 70 66 75.2 82.5 88.4

32.6 33.3 32 32.4 30.8 31.8 31.2 33.4 36.8 32.9 29.6 31.5 33.8 39.9 44.2 42 46.2 43.9 46.4 50.2 56.8

23.60 21.90 26.90 29.60 30.30 47.60 37.00 28.90 24.40 20.70 17.40 17.40 14.70 12.10 10.20 10.20 9.90 8.20 7.10 6.50 6.90

55.60 55.70 61.70 66.00 75.00 73.20 63.00 56.30 56.00 55.60 62.20 56.10 52.80 54.00 54.30 61.00 66.10 66.50 61.70 60.80 64.20

Source: Office of Aerospace and Automotive Industries, U.S. Department of Commerce.

a maximum of 90 percent domestic content on companies selling more than 900,000 autos in 1987 and beyond. The House approved the bill despite an announcement by the Japanese that they would voluntarily restrict U.S. exports to 1.85 million cars for the year beginning in April 1984 (CQ Almanac 1983: 257–259). Canada Canada has been the largest trading partner of the U.S. for at least two decades. Yet unlike Japan, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada has generally been much smaller. The annual U.S. trade deficit with Japan in 1985–2006 was on average 3.35 times larger than its deficit with Canada. For the seven years between 1987 and 1993, the average ratio was as high as 5.72. Because of the much smaller deficit, U.S.–Canada trade has rarely generated as much controversy as U.S. trade with China or Japan. When Congress voted on U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988, for example, there was little objection in either chamber. The bill passed 366–40 in the House and 83–9 in the Senate. One of the rare occasions on which Congress debated U.S.–Canada trade

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involved the Automotive Products Trade Act of 1965 (HR 9042) that was designed to implement an agreement signed by President Lyndon Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson on January 16 1965. The agreement called for the removal of U.S. and Canadian tariff duties on cars and car parts. As a corollary of the agreement, U.S. car manufacturers promised to increase their production in Canada, which in turn promised to eliminate its tariffs on U.S. cars. The bill had the support of U.S. automakers and the UAW, but was opposed by many independent parts manufacturers who argued that that the bill would encourage U.S. automakers to shift production—hence jobs—to Canada. Despite a heated debate in both chambers, particularly in the Senate, the bill won House approval on June 21 by a vote of 280–113, and it passed the Senate on September 27 by a 54–18 vote (CQ Almanac 1965: 509–512). Mexico Before the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect in 1994, U.S.–Mexico trade was significantly smaller than U.S. trade with Canada or Japan. Between 1985 and 1993, total U.S.–Mexico trade was on average about one-third of U.S. trade with Canada and half of U.S.–Japan trade. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was even smaller, averaging about one-fourth of its deficit with Canada and one-sixteenth of its deficit with Japan between 1985 and 1990. For the three years between 1991 and 1994, the U.S. actually ran a small surplus with Mexico. Since 1995, the U.S. has been running a growing deficit with Mexico, which appears to be catching up with its deficit with Canada and Japan. Because of the much smaller volume of U.S. trade and deficit with Mexico prior to NAFTA, Congress did not act on any trade measure concerning that country. But the enactment of NAFTA put Mexico on the front burner. Because the U.S. had already signed a free trade agreement with Canada in 1988, the whole controversy surrounding NAFTA focused primarily on U.S. trade with Mexico and only secondarily on U.S.–Canada trade. Labor groups were most vocal and persistent in their opposition to NAFTA because they feared the influx of cheap Mexican products, coupled with probable relocation of many American companies to Mexico to take advantage of cheap Mexican labor, would displace thousands of American jobs. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to detail the legislative battle about NAFTA, suffice it to say that it was one of the most controversial debates about America’s trade policy in the twentieth century. In the end, Congress narrowly approved the trade agreement (i.e., HR 3450) on November 18 1993. The vote was 234–200 in the House and 61–38 in the Senate.

128 Beyond the case of China Human rights Romania MFN status was first granted to Romania in 1975 and had been renewed by the president without congressional objection until 1979. In that year, the House voted on a resolution (H.Res.317) to disapprove of it. Representative Richard Schulze (R-PA), sponsor of the resolution, accused Romania of repeatedly violating the requirements of the Jackson–Vanik Amendment by abusing the Hungarian minority within its borders, running labor camps for political dissidents and religious activists, restricting emigration to Israel, and erecting new barriers to emigration. Opponents of the resolution, on the other hand, argued that MFN had brought about more emigration and that continuing MFN would encourage Romania to be more independent from the former Soviet Union. The full House rejected the resolution on July 25 by a 126–271 vote (CQ Almanac 1979: 161). The House voted twice more on Romania’s MFN status.2 In 1986, Philip Crane (R-IL) introduced H.Res.475 opposing President Reagan’s decision to continue MFN for Romania, but the resolution was not reported out of Ways and Means. Crane filed a motion to discharge it from Ways and Means, but a motion by Sam Gibbons (D-FL) to table Crane’s discharge motion passed on a 216–190 vote, thus killing Crane’s attempt to overturn Reagan’s decision. Crane and others opposed MFN renewal on the ground that Romania was guilty of human rights violations, including restrictive emigration practices (CQ Almanac 1986: 350–351). In 1987, Frank Wolf (R-WV) introduced an amendment to the Omnibus Trade Bill (HR 3) to deny MFN status to Romania for six months and to require a review of Romania’s compliance with the Jackson–Vanik Amendment every six months. The amendment was adopted 232–183 (CQ Almanac 1987: 642). Hungary Congress voted twice on Hungary’s MFN status in 1989. In response to President George H.W. Bush’s decision to extend MFN status to Hungary for five years, Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) filed a motion to approve the president’s decision under suspension of rules. His motion was defeated on June 27 by a 242–172 vote (a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required for passage under suspension of rules). In the end, by a 221–169 vote the House passed HR 1594 granting three years of MFN to Hungary (CQ Almanac 1989: 40-H, 74-H). Vietnam The U.S. did not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam until 1995. Three years later, President Clinton issued an executive order extending MFN

Beyond the case of China

129

status to Vietnam (U.S. Congress 2001a). Congress first acted on Vietnam’s MFN status in 1999, when the House failed by a 130–297 vote to pass H.J.R.58 to disapprove of Clinton’s decision to renew it. In 2000, the lower chamber again failed to pass a similar resolution (H.J.R.99) by a vote of 91–331. In 2006, the House failed by a 228–161 vote to pass—under suspension of rules—HR 5602 to authorize one more year of MFN for Vietnam.

Theoretical expectations Without theoretical guidance, comparing China with six countries on two distinct issues could be a confusing process full of ad hoc explanations. Instead, I seek a clearly defined analytical approach that can facilitate systematic explanations with broad applicability. In this section, I propose three broad theoretical expectations that will guide my analysis. Hypothesis 1: Constituency interests will generally have a bigger impact on trade votes involving Japan, Canada, and Mexico than on those involving China, because the former are democratic countries and allies of the U.S. Even though Japan, Canada, and Mexico are quite similar to China in terms of their extensive economic ties with the U.S., they differ from China in two key aspects, that is, they are all democratic countries as well as allies of the U.S. As a result, congressional debates about trade with these countries are expected to focus almost exclusively on the economic dimension, particularly the potential gain or loss of American jobs resulting from trade with these countries. China, by contrast, is an authoritarian regime under Communist control. The Tiananmen Incident, which is arguably the single most important event in bilateral relations since Nixon’s 1972 visit, has reinforced antipathy toward China among many members of Congress. Besides, China is not an ally of the U.S. Rather, due to its rising economic and military power, China is widely perceived to be a potential threat to the U.S. Consequently, anti-Communism, human rights, and strategic concerns are all likely to affect voting on trade with China, which in turn may dampen the potential impact of constituency interests. Hypothesis 2: In roll call voting on granting MFN status to Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam, constituency interests should have smaller impact, compared with roll call voting on the extension of MFN to China, because the former are not economic powers and do not have extensive economic relations with the U.S. Like China, Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam used to be or still are under Communist rule. Yet unlike China, none of them is—or has ever been—an economic power, nor does any one of them have as extensive economic

130

Beyond the case of China

relations with the U.S. as China does. This helps explain why MFN renewal for these three countries never caused much stir on Capitol Hill. Table 7.3 shows total trade and deficit between the three countries and the U.S. In 2006, U.S. trade with Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam totaled US$3.8 billion, US$1.7 billion, and US$9.7 billion respectively, and the U.S. deficit with them was US$1.4 billion, US$.57 billion, and US$7.5 billion respectively. By contrast, the U.S. trade deficit with China stood at US$232 billion in 2006. In terms of trade relations with the U.S., these countries are dwarfs compared to the China giant. Because constituency economic interests in U.S. relations with these three countries are quite small, they are not expected to have much impact on roll call voting. Hypothesis 3: The ideological ends will not form a coalition against moderates in votes involving the six countries. In other words, the absolute value of DW score will not be a significant predictor of roll call votes. Japan, Canada, and Mexico are all democratic countries and U.S. allies. Thus the ideological factors of human rights, anti-Communism, and strategic Table 7.3 Total U.S. trade and deficit with Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam (millions of dollars) Hungary

Romania

Vietnam

Year

Total

Balance

Total

Balance

Total

Balance

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

312.8 323.2 374.1 369.1 449.8 504 623.3 642 835.3 779.5 842.2 1006.8 1564.2 2049.2 2396.6 3284.4 3650.2 3325.5 3634 3715.2 3584.5 3769.3

−123.8 −127 −183.7 −216.9 −206.6 −191.2 −110.7 −52 34.3 −161.3 −251.8 −345.2 −593.6 −1084 −1388.6 −2145.8 −2279 −1949.5 −1767.4 −1430 −1537.9 −1392.9

– – – – – – – 335.7 392.7 534.3 475.5 514.2 657.8 729.9 618.5 705.5 894.2 943.4 1097.1 1378.4 1816.5 1669

– – – – – – – 160.9 254.3 144.9 30.9 17 −141.8 −56.5 −266.3 −239.9 −145.6 −447 −363.3 −327.6 −598.7 −568.8

– – – – – – – 4.6 7 223.4 451.3 948.4 675.1 828 899.9 1188.8 1513.6 2974.8 5878.6 6439.6 7824.4 9666.5

– – – – – – – 4.6 7 122.4 53.3 284.8 −101.7 −280.2 −316.9 −453.8 −592.8 −1814.8 −3231 −4111 −5438 −7466.1

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Beyond the case of China

131

concerns, which are so important with China, are expected to be largely absent from a member’s calculus when he or she votes on U.S. trade relations with these three countries. When it comes to Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam, none of them was or is a geopolitical power, nor has any one of them had close economic ties with the U.S. Consequently, strategic concerns and economic considerations are expected to have little impact on members’ votes on MFN extension to these countries. Instead, only ideological and human rights concerns are expected to impact members’ votes. In a word, congressional voting on these six countries is expected to focus primarily on one dimension—jobs in the case of trade and anti-Communism (or human rights) in the case of MFN extension. In a one-dimensional world, liberals and conservatives are not expected to be bedfellows. China, by contrast, has a laundry list of issues that attract criticism from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Its poor human rights record and environmental problems have energized hard-core liberals, while its one-child policy and restrictions on religious freedom have been a constant source of complaints among conservatives. Meanwhile, the soaring trade deficit has made China a primary target for some liberals with close ties with labor unions, and its growing military capabilities have unsettled many conservatives. Thus liberals and conservatives have many reasons to unite on issues involving China. Table 7.4 lists the House votes that will be used to test the three hypotheses. All these votes were mentioned earlier in my brief discussion of each case. Here I explain why some votes were excluded. Congress voted on the U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988, but that vote was too lopsided (366–40) to be suitable for statistical analysis. For the same reason, I exclude the 2000 vote on H.J.R.99 to disapprove of MFN for Vietnam (91–331). I exclude the 1986 vote on Gibbons’ motion to table Crane’s motion to discharge from the Ways and Means H.Res.475, because discharge motions as parliamentary tactics are routinely defeated. Of the two votes on Hungary’s MFN status, the first vote was on Rostenkowski’s motion to pass HR 1594 (which granted five years of MFN) under suspension of rules and the second vote was on passage of the final version of HR 1594 that granted only three years of MFN. I select the second vote on passage of the final version of the bill. As in the previous three chapters, I run two logit regressions for each vote. The first regression has only three constituency variables: Union Strength, Farm Employment, and Retail/Wholesale Employment. The second regression includes President’s Party and Absolute DW Score. This method allows me to compare voting across issues and different countries. All the variables are coded exactly the same way they were in the previous three chapters. Findings The first thing to notice in Table 7.5 and Table 7.6 is that Union Strength performs quite well, as it is statistically significant and in the correct direction

1989 1999 2006

Source: CQ Almanac.

Hungary Vietnam

1987

1979

MFN Romania

Bill summary

215–188 Require automakers to use set percentages of U.S. labor and parts in automobiles they sell in the United States 219–199 Require fixed levels of U.S. labor and parts in automobiles sold in the U.S.; phase in domestic content levels beginning in 1985 and reaching maximum levels in 1987 280–113 Remove tariff duties on Canadian automobiles and parts for original equipment 234–200 Approve the North American Free Trade Agreement and make the necessary changes to U.S. statutory law to implement it

Count

H.Res.317 126–271 Disapprove the president’s request to extent for 12 months a waiver of the Jackon–Vanik Amendment with respect to Romania HR 3 232–283 Frank Wolf amendment to deny to Romania MFN status for six months and to require review of its compliance with Jackson–Vanik Amendment every six months HR 1594 221–169 Approve for three years most-favored-nation status to the products of Hungary H.J.R.58 130–297 Disapprove presidential waiver of the Jackson–Vanik Amendment for Vietnam HR 5602 228–161 Suspend the rules and pass the bill to authorize the extension of MFN to Vietnam.

HR 9042 HR 3450

HR 1234

1983

1965 1993

HR 5133

Bill

1982

Canada Mexico

Trade Japan

Year

Table 7.4 House roll call votes on trade and MFN extension for selected countries

−251.318 .097 403

.054** (.011) −10.599** (3.184) −8.233 (4.691)

.095** (.015) −7.978* (3.701) −8.616 (5.461) −2.735** (.296) −.538 (.751) −191.959 .309 402 −249.103 .155 426

6.707** (1.398) −25.772** (5.021) −18.747** (5.300)

Model 1

Model 1

Model 2

Japan 1983

Japan 1982

10.508** (1.802) −20.800** (5.638) −18.128** (6.331) −2.796** (.297) 1.104 (.797) −189.482 .357 426

Model 2

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at .01; * significant at .05.

Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

Absolute DW

Retail/wholesale employment President’s party

Farm employment

Union strength

Independent variables

.008 (.013) −2.241 (2.331) 6.360 (5.596) 1.121** (.243) −1.119 (.779) −220.810 .056 393

−.008 (.011) −3.816 (2.212) 3.966 (5.371)

−232.071 .008 393

Model 2

Model 1

Canada 1965

Table 7.5 Logit analysis of House roll call votes on trade with Japan, Canada, and Mexico

−287.073 .041 434

−3.841** (1.263) 9.431* (4.675) 7.515 (4.161)

Model 1

Mexico 1993

−4.258** (1.367) 8.346 (4.879) 2.207 (4.099) −1.613** (.229) −1.348* (.666) −257.694 .137 433

Model 2

.133 −.103 −.594

.232 −.077

.136 −.183 −.103

Model 1

Model 1

Model 2

Japan 1983

Japan 1982

Note: Only significant coefficients are reported here.

Union strength Farm employment Retail/wholesale employment President’s party Absolute DW

Independent variables

−.601

.210 −.148 −.099

Model 2

Model 1

Canada

.235

Model 2

−.086

−.078 .055

−.373 −.055

Model 2

Model 1

Mexico

Table 7.6 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes on Japan, Canada, and Mexico)

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in all but the Canada vote.3 One standard deviation increase in Union Strength increases the probability of voting for the two bills on automobile domestic content by 0.133 and 0.136 respectively in Model 1. Once party and ideology are controlled for in Model 2, the magnitude of Union Strength actually increases to 0.232 in the 1982 vote and 0.210 in the 1983 vote. A similar increase in Union Strength decreases the probability of voting for NAFTA by 0.078 in Model 1 and 0.086 in Model 2, controlling for other variables. Moreover, except in one regression (Model 1 of the 1983 vote on Japan), Union Strength has the second largest impact. Farm Employment performs fairly well. If it increases by one standard deviation, the probability of voting for the two domestic auto content bills decreases by 0.103 and 0.183 respectively in Model 1. Once party and ideology are controlled for, the impact of Farm Employment decreases slightly. A similar increase in Farm Employment increases the probability of voting for NAFTA by 0.055 in Model 1. Retail/Wholesale Employment does not perform as well as the other two constituency variables, as it is statistically significant only in the 1983 Japan vote. One standard deviation increase leads to a decrease of 0.103 and 0.099 respectively in Model 1 and Model 2. All in all, constituency interests, particularly labor unions and farmers, had considerable influence on these four trade votes. Recall that in my analysis of the House vote on HR 4444 that granted permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China, neither Union Strength nor Retail/Wholesale Employment is statistically significant. A comparison of these findings seems to support my prediction that constituency interests will generally have a bigger impact on trade votes concerning Japan, Canada, and Mexico than on trade votes involving China. The above findings about Union Strength also call into question my original explanation about why it is not statistically significant in the vote on HR 4444. I suggested that state-level data might be responsible for the statistical insignificance of this variable. Now it seems that it is not so much state-level data as the nature of U.S. relations with a particular country that affects the performance of this variable. Members of Congress may focus mostly on economic issues when they vote on trade legislation involving countries that are U.S. allies and democratic countries, hence the much better performance of Union Strength, a variable that captures constituency interests in foreign trade. If a country is not an ally of the U.S. or a democratic one, then other considerations like human rights, national security, and ideology (e.g., antiCommunism) may also influence voting decisions and hence dampen the effects of Union Strength. One is tempted to argue that the varying intensity of labor opposition to U.S. trade with these countries also affects the performance of Union Strength. In other words, it is possible that labor unions were especially opposed to Japanese auto imports and NAFTA, but not to trade with China. This argument on its surface seems plausible, but a close examination of congressional documents, journalistic accounts, and scholarly research

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strongly indicates that it cannot hold water. As I described in some detail in Chapter 4, labor unions were vehemently opposed to PNTR and launched massive campaigns to defeat HR 4444. In the case of Japan, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union played a critical role in drafting and passing the two bills. In 1982, lobbyists for the UAW “lined the halls outside the House chamber throughout the debate.” The bill’s passage “could be attributed almost solely to the UAW, which had pushed tirelessly for the measure since 1981” (CQ Almanac 1982: 56). The 1983 bill was again “a creation” of the UAW, which lobbied heavily for its passage (CQ Almanac 1983: 258). Due to the constraint of space, I will not document labor opposition to NAFTA, but suffice it to say that labor unions were as much—if not more—opposed to NAFTA as to PNTR for China (e.g., Balz and Cooper 1993; Conley 1999; Engel and Jackson 1998; Mintz 1993; Vaillancourt 1993; Wink et al. 1996; U.S. Congress 1993). Thus the evidence does not appear to support the contention that the impact of Union Strength varies by the intensity of labor opposition to a particular trade bill. President’s Party is statistically significant in each of the four trade votes. Besides, it has the correct sign in all but one vote (the NAFTA vote). To be exact, being a Republican decreases the probability of voting for the two auto domestic content bills by 0.594 and 0.601 respectively, controlling for other factors. Given President Reagan’s opposition to the two bills and the general tendency to support free trade among Republicans, the remarkable impact of party does not seem surprising. Similarly, being a Democrat increases the likelihood of voting for the 1965 trade agreement by a solid 0.235. However, being a Democrat actually decreases the probability of voting for NAFTA by an impressive 0.372. Recall that in the case of China, being a Democrat is also negatively associated with support for PNTR. And these findings about party hold true even when Union Strength is controlled for. Thus Democrats appear to be generally much less supportive of free trade than Republicans. Finally, except for the NAFTA vote, Absolute DW Score is not statistically significant. This finding is highly consistent with my expectation that the ideological ends will not form a coalition on trade issues involving these countries. Still, the finding about NAFTA is puzzling. Why did the ideological ends unite on this particular vote? A paragraph from the CQ Almanac seems to provide the answer. The issue [NAFTA] scrambled political alliances in ways rarely seen. Perot joined with conservative Republican Pat Buchanan and liberal crusader Ralph Nader in opposing the agreement. Organized labor and some environmental groups, which rarely agreed on anything, opposed it as well. Farmers in the Midwest were avidly for it, but growers in Florida, California and North Dakota were against it. (CQ Almanac 1993: 172) Even though only outside forces involved in the NAFTA debate are depicted

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in the paragraph, it is reasonable to surmise, on the basis of the electoral connection, that similar alliances probably also existed within Congress, which in turn helps explain why Absolute DW Score is statistically significant and has a negative sign. It should be pointed out that the configuration of political forces in the NAFTA battle is quite similar to that in the legislative battle over China’s PNTR. This similarity raises a question: Should Mexico be viewed differently from Japan and Canada and, if so, on what ground? One might argue that Mexico has more in common with China than with Japan or Canada because both Mexico and China are developing countries that have many problems with environmental protection and labor standards. On the other hand, one might argue, as I did, that Mexico is quite different from China because it is a democratic country and a U.S. ally. Consequently, many issues (e.g., human rights and strategic concerns) that can potentially affect congressional policy-making toward China may not affect congressional policymaking toward Mexico. One way to answer this question is to examine roll call voting on U.S. trade with developing countries and compare it with roll call voting on trade with industrialized countries. If the absolute value of DW score has a statistically significant impact and a negative sign in the former but not in the latter, then Mexico should perhaps be viewed as similar to China. The results for the five votes on MFN extension are presented in Table 7.7 and Table 7.8. Neither Farm Employment nor Retail/Wholesale Employment is statistically significant in any of the regressions. Yet in the case of China’s MFN status, Farm Employment reaches statistical significance and has the correct sign in eight out of ten votes, and Retail/Wholesale Employment in four votes (see Table 6.2 through Table 6.5). Union Strength is not statistically significant in any of the ten votes on China’s MFN, but it is in the 1987 Romania vote and the 1989 Hungary vote. On balance, then, the findings provide some support for my prediction that constituency variables will generally have smaller impact on MFN votes involving these three countries. Though I did not expect a coalition of ideological ends against the middle (i.e., EATM) to emerge on any of these votes, it actually appeared on three of them. If Absolute DW Score increases by one standard deviation, the probability of supporting temporary suspension of Romania’s MFN status (i.e., the Wolf Amendment) actually decreases by 0.071. My explanation for this puzzling finding is that the ideological ends might have voted strategically on this vote. That is, they might have voted against the Wolf Amendment in order to propose a bill or amendment that would either permanently suspend Romania’s MFN or attach conditions to its renewal. The other puzzling finding concerns the two votes on Vietnam’s MFN status. While Absolute DW Score does not have any significant impact on the 1999 vote, it does on the 2006 vote. Increase in Absolute DW Score is actually positively associated with support for a three-year extension of MFN status to Hungary. Because the bill

−244.806 .013 397

−274.273 .039 416

−4.928** (1.295) 4.826 (3.698) 4.511 (4.676)

−.760 (1.417) 1.778 (3.262) 6.222 (5.853) −2.588** (.265) 1.286 (.789) −186.618 .248 397

.576 (1.163) 4.916 (2.679) 8.436 (4.903)

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1 −6.239** (1.485) −2.387 (4.038) −2.196 (5.248) 1.943** (.251) −1.763* (.709) −237.727 .167 416

Model 2

Romania 1987

Romania 1979

−262.369 .020 391

2.489 (1.311) −6.310 (3.713) −5.589 (4.770)

Model 1 4.198* (1.626) 1.463 (4.365) 4.946 (5.876) −2.682** (.273) 1.946* (.777) −199.902 .253 391

Model 2

Hungary 1989

Notes: Cell entries are logit coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. ** Significant at .01; * significant at .05.

Log likelihood Pseudo R2 N

DW Absolute

Retail/wholesale employment President’s party

Farm employment

Union strength

Independent variables

−261.897 .003 428

−1.149 (1.321) −3.646 (4.832) 2.777 (3.957)

Model 1

.006 (1.415) −8.130 (5.529) −2.117 (4.274) −1.415** (.249) 1.324 (.731) −238.842 .087 427

Model 2

Vietnam 1999

Table 7.7 Logit analysis of House votes on extension of MFN to Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam

−262.711 .004 389

.008 (.013) .070 (.052) −.023 (.039)

Model 1

.016 (.014) .064 (.054) −.032 (.040) 1.037** (.234) −2.078** (.669) −249.838 .050 388

Model 2

Vietnam 2006

−.125

−.099

−.527 .432 −.071

Model 2

Model 1

Model 1

Model 2

Romania 1987

Romania 1979

Notes: Only significant coefficients are reported here.

Union strength Farm employment Retail/wholesale employment President’s party DW Absolute

Independent variables Model 1

−.584 .079

.083

Model 2

Hungary 1989 Model 1

−.277

Model 2

Vietnam 1999

Model 1

.246 −.086

Model 2

Vietnam 2006

Table 7.8 Increases in probabilities associated with one standard deviation increase in independent variables (votes on MFN extension to Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam)

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granted only three years—as opposed to five years requested by President Bush—of MFN status to Hungary, a yea vote in this particular case can be viewed as a vote against MFN extension. Taken together, my findings about Absolute DW Score in the five votes appear to provide rather weak support for my expectation that it will not have any significant impact on MFN votes involving these countries. Party is consistently significant and has the largest impact in all five votes. Moreover, except for one vote (the 1987 vote on Romania), members of the president’s party are more likely to support their president’s position on MFN extension. Being a Democrat decreases the probability of voting for H.Res.317 (first Romania vote) and H.J.R.58 (Vietnam) by 0.527 and 0.277 respectively. Being a Republican decreases the probability by 0.584 on the Hungary vote but increases the probability by 0.217 on the 2006 Vietnam vote. As discussed shortly before, President George H. W. Bush originally asked for five years of MFN extension for Hungary, but the final version of HR 1594 granted only three years. Hence many Republicans may have voted against the final version of the bill out of loyalty to their president. In the second Romania vote (i.e., Wolf Amendment), however, being a Republican is actually positively associated with support for suspension of that country’s MFN status for six months. Many Republicans decided to oppose Reagan on this vote because of continuing human rights violations in Romania. That the amendment was introduced by a Republican (Frank Wolf) speaks much about the prevailing sentiment among some Republicans. In fact, another Republican, Philip Crane, tried in vain in 1986 to reverse Reagan’s decision to renew MFN status for Romania (CQ Almanac 1986: 350–351). By contrast, party has significant impact on seven of the ten China votes. Besides, members of the president’s party were actually more likely to vote against the president’s position on MFN in three China votes. Furthermore, only in the three years under Bush and the two years under Clinton (1993 and 1999) did party have the largest impact. However, the impact of party on these China votes is generally much smaller. Only in two China votes did the magnitude of party surpass 0.200 (in terms of probabilities), whereas the magnitude of party was bigger than 0.200 in all the five votes involving Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam. This comparison strongly suggests that party loyalty was stronger on MFN votes involving these three countries than on MFN votes involving China. To sum up, whereas the ideological ends were almost always united against the ideological middle when it comes to China, this coalition appeared less frequently in so far as the other six countries are concerned. Furthermore, constituency variables, particularly Union Strength, performed better in trade votes involving Japan, Canada, and Mexico than in those involving China. Finally, when it comes to extension of MFN, constituency variables— with the exception of Union Strength—often had much bigger impact on China votes than on votes involving Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam. Even

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though these findings provide only mixed support for my expectations, they nonetheless point to several key elements to be considered in a general theory of congressional policy-making. The first is the nature of political regime of a particular country. Being one of the oldest democracies in the world and having been arguably the most consistent and powerful promoter of democracy, the U.S. has always had a natural affinity with democratic countries, but often animosity toward nondemocratic ones. Congress, in particular, has often been regarded as the guardian of values-based U.S. foreign policy. Thus when members of Congress vote on trade legislation involving democratic countries (which often turn out to be U.S. allies), they are expected to focus almost exclusively on economic issues (e.g., jobs). By contrast, when a piece of trade legislation targets a non-democratic country, particularly if it is a Communist one like China, additional considerations like human rights and anti-Communism may enter into their voting decisions. Consequently, the impact of constituency variables may be dampened in the latter case. The second element is closely related to the first. When a single issuedimension (economic or otherwise) dominates voting decisions, liberals and conservatives are expected to vote in opposite ways, as predicted by the conventional model of spatial voting. However, as the number of issues increases, as in the case of China, the opportunities for liberals and conservatives to form a coalition against the middle also increase. The former may oppose trade with a foreign country on the ground of human rights or environmental concerns, and the latter on the ground of anti-Communism or national security. In a word, it seems that an increase in the number of issues in U.S. relations with a particular country will tend to increase the probability and intensity of what Nokken (2003) called EATM voting. Finally, the nature and number of issues involved in U.S. relations with another country can also affect the impact of party. Out of electoral considerations, members of the president’s party generally tend to be more supportive of his policy agenda than members of the opposition party, other things being equal. However, when a piece of legislation involves significant constituency interests and when a president’s preferences differ significantly from those of their constituents, members of Congress may be tempted to defect from their own president, as many Democrats did in the case of China. On the other hand, in the absence of clearly defined and immediate constituency interests, as in the case of MFN extension to Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam, members may be more likely to rally around their own president.

8

Conclusion

In every relationship between nations there is a horse and a rider, Bismarck once noted, and one should endeavor to be the rider. American policy toward China today almost guarantees that we will be the horse. (Robert Kagan 1996) Our separation of powers system, the powers that the Constitution confers on Congress, the campaign financing “system,” the existence of immigrant communities, and a variety of other factors guarantee that the legislative branch will play a role on any major foreign policy issue and a number of minor ones as well. (Richard Bush 2004: 220) It is convenient when writing about Congress to treat the institution as a monolith. Yet Congress does not speak with a single voice, for its every action testifies to the ideological, partisan, regional, and personal divisions within it. Thus . . . it is worth remembering that any significant foreign policy debate on Capitol Hill features the clash of myriad ideas, interests, and perspectives. Congress is truly a they not an it. (James Lindsay and Randall Ripley 1993: 18, italics original)

No scholar to my knowledge has applied the new institutionalism to the study of congressional policy-making toward China. Moreover, a few scholars have conducted analyses of roll call voting on U.S.–China relations, but the scope and depth of these studies are rather limited. Last but not least, instead of comparing roll call voting across different countries and issues, previous studies tend to focus on what I called “country-blind” general legislation. This book is an attempt to make significant contributions to the three aspects of research on congressional foreign policy-making.

Legislative institutions and their impact on China policy Legislators are rational actors who have goals and preferences. Policy outcomes depend not only on what their goals and preferences are, but also how

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these goals and preferences are aggregated into policy outcomes. I adduced ample evidence that as processes of preference aggregation, committee structure, bicameralism, and presidential veto have had profound impact on Congress’s China policy. Because of gatekeeping rights, committees become monopoly supplier of policy alternatives. That the vast majority of China bills died in committees attests to the latter’s power to set the legislative agenda. The combination of intense policy preferences and agenda-setting power enabled the chairmen of a number of committees and subcommittees—such as Craig Thomas, Benjamin Gilman, Max Baucus—to single-handedly decide the life-or-death of China bills. Since most China bills contained punitive actions targeting China, committees have served—at least from the perspective of those who are interested in promoting friendly relations between the two countries—the positive role of reducing potential disputes, conflicts, and confrontations in bilateral relations. Structural differences between the two chambers guarantee that they more often than not disagree with each. And under bicameralism, it takes only one chamber to stall or kill a piece of legislation. In particular, the founding fathers expected the Senate to be the counterweight to the more numerical and presumably more activist House. In the case of China policy, far more China bills were introduced and voted on in the House than in the Senate. Regardless of how active the lower chamber is, legislative productivity (e.g., more binding legislation regarding China) will not increase unless the upper chamber becomes equally active and simultaneously agrees with policy proposals initiated by it. The presidential veto poses another formidable obstacle to lawmaking. Fearful of the concentration of all powers within one branch, the constitutional framers set up a delicate system of separate branches sharing powers. To guarantee the institutional independence of each branch, they provided for presidential veto and congressional override. However, the supermajority requirement for congressional override determines that the president as a unitary actor will almost always prevail against a lawmaking body composed of two chambers and 535 members. That President Bush’s three vetoes in China policy were all sustained illuminates the impact of supermajority requirement on the legislative process. It should be noted that the findings about the impact of legislative institutions are not unique to China—a country about which many members of Congress have intense preferences—but represent the general patterns of congressional policy-making. That is, most bills are never reported out of committees; the House is legislatively more active than the Senate; and presidential vetoes are almost always sustained. While each of these three legislative institutions constitutes a formidable hurdle to lawmaking, they combine to make it extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, for legislators to transform their policy preferences (domestic or foreign) into desired policy outcomes. This is true even in the case of China, which provides fertile

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ground for legislative action due to the myriad issues like Tiananmen, human rights, weapons proliferations, and astronomical trade deficit.

The international environment and Congress’s China policy Even though the international environment—broadly defined to include both international balance of power at a particular moment and discrete international events—is not the focus of this study, it apparently had decisive impact on certain aspects of Congress’s China policy. During the latter part of the Cold War, the U.S. forged a temporary, strategic alliance with China against the former Soviet Union. Primarily out of strategic concerns, Congress largely exempted China from its worldwide campaign for human rights, despite widespread reports of human rights violations in that country. As Kagan (1996) put it: “In such a world, the strategic value of American rapprochement and then partnership with a Communist China seemed to outweigh the sacrifice of American ideals such a relationship required.” Two events fundamentally changed the strategic relationship between the U.S. and China. The first was the Tiananmen Incident, which plunged the relationship into an abyss. It dashed any hope members of Congress may have had about a politically reformed China. It also significantly reduced the strategic value of China to the U.S., because China now became a strategic liability in a world characterized by increasing democratization. Above all, it handed Congress a carte blanche to rewrite U.S. China policy, particularly human rights policy that had heretofore been subordinated to strategic considerations. The second event was the demise of the former Soviet Union, which deprived the U.S.–China relationship of its strategic rationale. “The collapse of the Soviet Union and its Communist empire swept away the original foundation on which the Sino-American rapprochement was built in the early 1970s,” declared Kagan (1996). For members of Congress, the end of the Cold War means that they no longer made China policy in a straitjacket and hence could legislate on a number of issues—human rights being the most prominent—that were otherwise ignored during the strategic marriage. The Cold War also affected U.S.–Taiwan policy. From the 1970s until the 1980s, when the strategic alliance with China was deemed crucial, Congress downplayed the military, political, and historical ties between the U.S. and Taiwan. When the U.S. decided to recognize China and to terminate its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, Congress did make earnest attempts to keep U.S.–Taiwan relationship intact, as evidenced by the Taiwan Relations Act (Javits 1981; Sutter 1983; Tierney 1979). Nonetheless, it is not a distortion of history to say that Congress opposed not so much U.S. recognition of China as the cost of recognition. And in the 1980s, Congress largely excluded itself from Taiwan policy, raising little objection to the 1982 arms sales communiqué. If the U.S.–China alliance against the Soviet Union necessitated setting

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aside the sentimental ties between the U.S. and Taiwan, the disappearance of the common enemy entailed readjustment of Taiwan policy. Bush’s decision to sell 150 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan in 1992 despite Beijing’s vehement opposition can be viewed as part of the readjustment. As Mann (1999: 269) observed, “It [sales of F-16] illustrated, more than any other event of the early 1990s, how the end of the Cold War had altered the relationship between the United States and China.” Meanwhile, Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian regime to a prosperous democracy also called for readjustment of U.S. policy. In so far as Congress is concerned, the readjustment is embodied, among other things, in the Murkowski Amendment, Lee Teng-hui’s visit to Cornell, the U.S.–Taiwan Anti-Ballistic Missile Mutual Defense Act, and the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (see Bush 2001, 2004; Mann 2001).

Determinants of roll call voting on foreign policy Partisanship Partisanship in Congress has two dimensions. On the one hand, partisanship means loyalty to the president of one’s own party, for the president is by default the leader of his party and his leadership extends to the legislative arena. Party loyalty entails supporting the president’s policy agenda regardless of one’s own preferences. On the other hand, partisanship also means electorally-induced inter-party differences. Because of electoral competition and historical circumstances, the two parties have developed relatively stable and usually distinct positions on a number of issues, and these party positions generally reflect the preferences of their respective electoral bases. When members take positions along party lines defined by electoral competition, it can also be viewed as partisanship. My analysis indicates that both dimensions of partisanship influenced Congress’s China policy. The three failed attempts to override Bush’s vetoes vividly illustrate Republican loyalty to President Bush. While Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the override, most Republicans voted against it despite their serious misgivings about Bush’s China policy (see CQWR 1990: 245; CQWR 1992: 1594; Friedman 1990; Yang 2000: 90–111). In fact, many Republicans first voted for the three bills that Bush later vetoed. I also reported evidence that Republicans were significantly more likely to vote against MFN revocation during the Bush years. Democrats rallied around Clinton during his first year in office. After that, they showed little loyalty to their president. Between 1997 and 1999, they were actually more likely to vote against their president on the MFN issue. In 2000, they were again more likely to vote against Clinton on the PNTR issue. On balance, then, party loyalty appeared to be stronger among Republicans than among Democrats. The flip side of rallying around one’s president is that the majority party has political incentives to embarrass the president of the minority party. I

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reported evidence that Democrats were significantly more likely to vote for MFN revocation under Bush. I also found that more China bills were introduced when a Republican majority in the House faced a Democratic President. Meanwhile, scholars who studied U.S.–China relations in the late 1940s adduced evidence that the Republican majority criticized President Truman’s China policy primarily because of partisan considerations (Grasso 1987; Rourke 1983: 74–76, 13–45; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983, 1994; Westerfield 1955: Chapter 12, Chapter 16). Thus for both Republicans and Democrats, pure partisanship appears to have influenced their approaches to China policy. When members voted in 2000 on the bill to grant China PNTR, inter-party difference in trade policy, not loyalty to one’s president, seemed to be the decisive factor, since Democrats were actually more likely to vote against the bill (hence against their own president) than Republicans. Yet a few years before the PNTR vote, Democrats in both chambers were more supportive of GATT than their Republican counterparts (Bailey and Brady 1998; Gartzke and Wrighton 1998). The context of the PNTR vote (i.e., the last year of the Clinton presidency) and the soaring trade deficit with China help explain why many Democrats decided to abandon their president and instead vote according to their party’s traditional stance on trade. It is hard to distinguish the two dimensions of partisanship in roll call votes on the two bills that aimed to strengthen U.S.–Taiwan relations. On the one hand, since the late 1940s, Republicans in general have been steadfast in their support for Taiwan. Democrats, by contrast, have generally been more cautious in their approach to U.S.–Taiwan relations. In fact, they were highly critical of Taiwan’s authoritarian regime and played an important role in bringing about political reform on the island in the 1980s. Even though Taiwan’s appeal to Democrats has increased considerably since it transformed itself into a fledgling democracy in the 1990s, Republicans still appear to be more supportive of the island. On the other hand, Republicans became extremely active in Taiwan policy after they secured majority party status in Congress in 1994. It seems likely that Republicans used the Taiwan issue as a political weapon to beat President Clinton. Ideology Because the commonly used measures of ideology (e.g., hawkishness or DWNOMINATE score) usually have high correlation with party, I did not include any of them in my analysis, except in the case of Taiwan policy where I included hawkishness. Not surprisingly, hawkishness turned out to be highly significant while party had no impact at all. Since most previous studies included both party and a similar measure of ideology, this may explain why they reported ideology to be the best predictor of foreign policy voting (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Leogrande and Brenner 1993; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985). Instead, I used the absolute value of DW-NOMINATE score. My expectation

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was that since both liberals and conservatives had good reasons to be critical of China, they should be united on China policy. As expected, the ideological ends were more likely to vote against PNTR and to support revocation of China’s MFN status. What’s more, the strength of this coalition steadily increased over time on the MFN issue. I contended that China’s growing military and economic power, its potential threat to Taiwan, and the soaring U.S. trade deficit with China, among other factors, made both liberals and conservatives increasingly uneasy about U.S.–China relations, thence the growing strength of the coalition. My findings provide further support for Nokken’s (2003) thesis of EATM voting (i.e., the ideological ends against the middle). However, Nokken attributed EATM voting to the special rules governing MFN renewal, and he reported decreasing EATM voting in the case of the PNTR vote where the special rules were removed. By contrast, I argued that the peculiar nature of U.S.–China relations was responsible for the emergence of such a coalition, and I reported evidence of increasing EATM voting between 1994 and 1999 on the MFN votes. But I did find decreasing EATM voting between the 1999 MFN vote and the 2000 PNTR vote. Constituency interests Despite the strong economic ties between the U.S. and China, constituency interests generally had only weak impact on members’ votes. Union Strength had significant impact in only one model, and Retail/Wholesale Employment in only four of the ten MFN votes. Two constituency variables performed rather well. Exports to China was negatively associated with support for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations but positively associated with support for PNTR. Farm Employment was positively associated with support for PNTR but negatively associated with support for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations. In eight out of the ten MFN votes, Farm Employment was negatively associated with support for MFN revocation. My findings about Farm Employment illuminates a key challenge to Congress in its campaign for human rights, namely, how to balance human rights with competing interests. The record of Congress’s human rights policy clearly suggests that with few exceptions, human rights has been subordinated to other interests (Avery and Forsythe 1979; Cohen 1987; Dittmer 2001; Forsythe 1988; Neier 1996). Whereas during the Cold War strategic and security concerns effectively killed most congressional initiatives in human rights, since the end of the Cold War human rights has often been downplayed or sacrificed by many members for the sake of economic benefits (Neier 1996). Despite strong economic ties between the U.S. and Taiwan since the late 1970s and the millions (and sometimes billions) of dollars worth of annual weapons sales to the island, neither Exports to Taiwan nor Military Awards had any impact on members’ votes. It seems probable that the dominance of

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strategic and ideological considerations in U.S.–Taiwan relations have overshadowed economic ties. On the other hand, this finding is entirely consistent with previous studies, most of which reported little or no evidence of constituency influence on defense policy (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985). In order to find out whether these findings are unique to China or represent a general pattern of congressional roll call voting on foreign policy, I also analyzed roll call votes on six countries that are similar to China in relevant respects: trade for Japan, Canada, and Mexico, and MFN extension for Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam. A comparison of findings from these six countries with those from China suggests a theory of roll call voting on different countries. One component of this theory is the political regime of a particular country. Being a democracy itself, the U.S. usually has close diplomatic, political, and military ties with democratic countries. Consequently, when members of Congress vote on trade legislation involving democratic countries, they tend to focus on a single dimension—i.e., the economic impact—of the pending legislation. In one-dimensional politics, liberals and conservatives are not expected to form a coalition. By contrast, when members consider trade legislation involving non-democratic countries like China, they are likely to consider not only economic issues, but also ideological and/or strategic issues. As the number of issues increases, the opportunities for liberals and conservatives to form a coalition also increase. For a liberal may oppose the legislation from one perspective and a conservative from another perspective. In other words, in a multi-dimensional world the conventional model of spatial voting may not work. And statistical findings provide support for this expectation. Whereas the ideological ends were almost always united in China policy, this coalition appeared far less frequently on votes involving the six countries. Second, the nature of political regime may also affect the impact of constituency interests. When a trade bill targets a democratic country, members are expected to focus on economic issues. As a result, constituency interests should be particularly salient to them. When deciding on trade legislation involving non-democratic countries, they will likely consider not only the economic dimension, but also the ideological and/or strategic dimension of that legislation, and the latter may well dampen the effects of the former. I adduced evidence that Union Strength, which is a measure of constituency interests in foreign trade, did not have any significant impact on the vote on China’s PNTR, but it had significant impact on the two votes on U.S.–Japan trade and the vote on U.S.–Mexico trade. Finally, the magnitude of constituency interests can also affect party loyalty. Out of electoral considerations, the president’s fellow partisans generally tend to be more supportive of his policy agenda than members of the opposition party, other things being equal. However, when a piece of legislation involves significant constituency interests and when a president’s preferences

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differ significantly from those of their constituents, members of Congress may be tempted to defect from their own president, as many Democrats did in the case of China. On the other hand, in the absence of clearly defined and significant constituency interests, as in the case of MFN extension to Hungary, Romania, and Vietnam, members may be more likely to rally around their own president. In fact, except for the 1987 vote on Romania’s MFN status, members of the president’s party were consistently more likely to support his position than members of the opposition party, controlling for other factors. Yet it should be pointed out that it is impossible to control for political regime in roll call analysis. Besides, it is very difficult to measure the number of issues involved in a piece of legislation or in U.S. relations with another country. Even if this is plausible, the various measures may be so highly correlated as to make statistical inference problematic. Historical-comparative analysis based on qualitative evidence offers one potential solution to the two problems. Regardless, my analysis makes a small but important step in building a theory of congressional policy-making.

Policy implications Now what are the implications of my study for policy-makers in Beijing and Washington? More specifically, what they should and should not do with respect to Congress in order to successfully manage and promote this important but highly controversial relationship? Focus on the Senate First and foremost, American and Chinese policy-makers interested in promoting friendly U.S.–China relations should perhaps deemphasize the House and instead focus their efforts on the Senate. Under bicameralism, it takes only one chamber to paralyze the legislative process. While it may seem logical to work on the more activist House, such an endeavor is inherently much more difficult given the size of the House. The Senate, by contrast, is much smaller in size and hence more manageable. More importantly, because of the important foreign policy powers granted by the Constitution (e.g., ambassadorial appointments and treaty ratification), the six-year tenure, and larger constituency, Senators tend to have a broader view of U.S. foreign policy than their House counterparts. As a result, the Senate can be a restraining force against the more activist and parochially-oriented House. Indeed, by refusing to act on House-passed bills, the Senate has effectively prevented many China bills from becoming binding legislation that would have either caused disputes in U.S.–China relations or embroiled the president and Congress in a tussle over China policy. However, as Fenno (1982: 5) pointed out, “The Senate is as likely to initiate heatedly as the House; the House is as likely to be the cooling saucer as the Senate.” Indeed, a handful of Senators like Jesse Helms were among the most vocal critics of China and

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were unusually active in China policy. Most recently, Senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer have introduced bills to impose stiff tariff on Chinese imports unless the latter appreciates its allegedly undervalued currency (see Andrews 2006; Blustein 2006a, 2006b; MacLeod 2006; Magnier and Lee 2006). But in general, senators have been much less active than the House in China policy. Therefore, American and Chinese officials interested in promoting friendly bilateral relations should spend more time cultivating good will among Senators so as to check House activism and punitivism. Don’t overreact to partisan bickering over China policy The Chinese should recognize that electoral dynamics in a competitive twoparty system will inevitably have some impact on foreign policy. Indeed, throughout the history of U.S.–China relations both parties have used China policy on various occasions as a partisan club to beat the other. Back in the late 1940s, the newly empowered Republican majority launched bitter criticism of Truman’s China policy in the hope of defeating him in 1948. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, Democrats mercilessly attacked George H. W. Bush’s China policy and voted overwhelmingly to override his three vetoes.1 When Clinton took office, the majority of Democrats immediately switched position and voted for unconditional MFN renewal. After Republicans became the majority in 1995, they launched incessant criticism of Clinton’s engagement policy. With its rising economic and military power and the myriad potential challenges that China’s rise poses to U.S. strategic interests, China is likely to be a favorite topic for partisan politics, especially when there are high-impact events such as the 1995–1996 missile crisis and the plane collision in 2001. Yet the key thing to bear in mind is that partisan politics, by definition, is driven primarily by electoral competition—to embarrass and defeat the incumbent president or the majority party—and only secondarily by genuine policy concerns. This is true for China policy as well. Democrats attacked Bush in 1992, but they voiced little criticism of Clinton whose China policy was not much different from that of his predecessor. Republicans tried to dismantle Clinton’s engagement policy through high-profile investigations of alleged Chinese campaign donations, nuclear thefts, and threats to Taiwan, yet they did not challenge George W. Bush who followed largely the same policy of engagement. The two examples also illuminate an important point: regardless of their campaign speeches, presidents eventually adopt a policy of engagement with China, and his fellow partisans in Congress almost always defer to him out of party loyalty. In conclusion, it is not only futile but also counterproductive for the Chinese to launch a diatribe against each and every China policy initiative motivated by party politics. It is futile because partisan politics is inherent to the American two-party system. It is counterproductive because members of Congress will probably regard such rhetorical aggressiveness as further proof of Chinese intransigence and ill will.

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Keep low key on Taiwan Taiwan has been the central issue in U.S.–China relations, and Congress has been most outspoken in its support for Taiwan due to historical ties, ideological beliefs, partisan motives, and genuine policy concerns. The strength of congressional support for Taiwan will likely increase as the island becomes a prosperous democracy and China remains under Communist one-party rule. Moreover, it seems very unlikely that Congress will sacrifice Taiwan on the altar of U.S.–China economic relations, despite the growing importance of the latter. This is especially true for Republicans who have been consistently supportive of strong U.S.–Taiwan relations (and hawkish foreign policy for that matter) and close U.S.–China economic ties (and free trade in general) at the same time. Consequently, the Chinese should not use bilateral economic relations to leverage congressional concessions on Taiwan policy. In a word, the Chinese should never underestimate Congress’s commitment to Taiwan. It appears that the best strategy for the Chinese is to keep a low key on Taiwan policy and wait for the U.S. executive branch to rein in the pro-Taiwan Congress. So far the executive branch has been largely successful in getting Congress on board a policy that accommodates most of China’s demands on Taiwan, e.g., the three communiqués and Clinton’s “Three Nos.” When China was openly belligerent in its Taiwan policy, as it was in the missile exercises in 1995–1996 and the passage of the Anti-Secession Law in 2006, Congress became even more adamant in its support for Taiwan. For their part, members of Congress should never underestimate the importance of the Taiwan issue in Chinese domestic politics and hence Beijing’s determination to use whatever means necessary to keep the island from becoming an independent entity. Since one of the cornerstones of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy is national reunification, any move by Taiwan toward de facto or de jure independence will be resolutely countered by the Communist Party. Moreover, Taiwan has become the single issue around which almost all Chinese are unified, and Chinese nationalism, whether spontaneous or manipulated by the government, has grown in proportion with China’s economic and military power. The immense popularity of books advocating hard-line foreign policy toward the U.S. illuminates, to some degree, popular support for reunification of Taiwan (e.g., Peng 1996; Song 1996, 1997). Thus Congress should be cautious in its approach to Taiwan if it does not intend to involve the U.S. in an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Non-confrontational approaches to human rights Human rights, particularly when it is narrowly defined to include only political rights like freedom of speech, freedom of press, and religious freedom, lies at the heart of the American creed; it is what Americans fought for in the Independence War and what America stands for. As such, members of

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Congress have strong incentives to be viewed as champions of American political values. On the other hand, unless there are major human rights crises like the Tiananmen Incident or pressure from ethnic groups, human rights will not be a salient issue to most Americans most of the time.2 The two factors together suggest that human rights is a position-taking issue for most members. It never hurts to speak in support of human rights or to vote for bills criticizing authoritarian regimes.3 What this means is that the Chinese, with their myriad human rights problems, should expect incessant criticism from members of Congress. If they want to avoid such criticism, then they should implement more political reform and, whenever possible, should engage congressional critics in human rights talks. VIP visits of congressional delegations to China, whether organized by Beijing or U.S. domestic groups, are not likely to have much impact on members’ human rights stances.4 These visits have so far “reinforced congressional support for continued trade relations and other economic exchanges with China,” but have had “less effect on congressional criticism of China regarding human rights” (Sutter 2001: 92). On the other hand, the good news is that rhetoric aside, many members have subscribed to the view, either out of constituency economic stakes in U.S.–China relations or out of policy beliefs, that the best way to promote human rights in China is through trade. These members (e.g., Max Baucus and Craig Thomas) played a pivotal role in keeping China’s MFN status and in the passage of HR 4444. Outright denial of human rights problems, the use of political prisoners as bargaining chips, or denunciation of American hypocrisy will in all likelihood alienate these key members supportive of engagement with China and harden the animosity of China critics. In a word, the Chinese should improve their own human rights conditions, engage in constructive talks with congressional critics, and remain optimistic that Congress will not sacrifice economic relations on the altar of human rights. In so far as Congress is concerned, the best strategy to promote human rights in China should be one of private and soft talk, not public confrontation or economic sanctions. The Dalai Lama, widely regarded as the symbol of Chinese human rights oppression in Tibet, made this point quite clear: I feel that on issues such as human rights and religious freedom, it is better to engage Chinese leaders directly, without public condemnation. . . . Once you state a critical view publicly, then the Chinese government, even if it wants to change, would find it more difficult. (quoted in Lampton 2001: 111) Senator Max Baucus (1994a) also supported “non-confrontational ways to promote human rights.” He wrote, “Angry speeches and stormy meetings get headline. But working at local levels—teaching individuals about law, communications, foreign languages, helping them understand the world better—does much more.”

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The failure of conditional MFN proves the futility of economic sanctions to achieve human rights goals. “Economic levers were often effective tools to achieve economic ends and sanctions sometimes were useful in achieving nonproliferation objectives; however, such measures were least effective in the domain of individual rights,” concluded Lampton (2001: 112). The reluctance of American allies like Japan and the European Union to jump on the bandwagon makes economic sanctions an ineffective tool. To quote Lampton (ibid.: 154) again, “using economic threats to achieve human rights objectives can create so much collateral damage to allies and nationalistic backlash among those you are seeking to assist that sanctions become demonstrably counterproductive.” Play the constituency card Policy-makers in Beijing should recognize that since the end of the Cold War era, bilateral relationship has been built primarily upon mutual economic benefits and only secondarily on strategic cooperation. And on economic issues, U.S. politicians are usually highly responsive to constituency demands due to the electoral connection. As Nivola (1997: 255) wrote, “The nation’s economic fortunes, or those of particular firms and workers, were seldom very far from the minds of politicians, even during the darkest days of the Cold War, and surely no realistic observer can expect them to be ‘subordinated’ today.” As bilateral trade keeps expanding and mutual investment continues to grow, the Chinese should learn to play the constituency card. That is, they should highlight the economic benefits of bilateral relations to the American people in general and members’ constituents in particular. It is one thing to place billions of dollars worth of purchase orders as gestures of good will every time the top Chinese leadership visits the U.S., and it is quite another to organize PR campaigns to tout the benefits of such orders to certain members’ districts. If the Taiwanese, despite the much smaller volume of their trade with the U.S., have gone to great lengths to publicize constituency benefits from trade with Taiwan, then the Chinese have no excuse to be sluggish in such PR campaigns.5 Yet the Chinese should not only learn to play the constituency card, but also beef up lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill in general. The influence of the Taiwan lobby should have long since galvanized the Chinese into action. As Sciolino (1996) pointed out, “On this battlefield, however, even a nuclear power of 1.2 billion people and the fastest-growing economy in the world is no match for a small island of 20 million inhabitants that has assiduously worked Washington for decades.” “It’s hard to think of anybody who does this kind of thing [lobbying] worse,” said Stanley Roth, a former senior Asia specialist during Clinton years (quoted in ibid.). “The fact that China does not have an active lobby in this town or does not have a lobby is a terrible oversight,” lamented Charles Freeman, a former assistant U.S. Trade

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Representative (quoted in Ma 2006). “The lack of active lobbying had made it hard for Beijing to counter the rise of China-bashing ahead of the mid-term elections,” he added. These Washington insiders’ comments indicate the urgency for the Chinese to develop and maintain an effective lobby on Capitol Hill, especially considering that American businesses stopped lobbying on China’s behalf after the latter’s accession to the WTO in 2000. In addition to organizing VIP trips or lobbying on a case-by-case basis, the Chinese should do what Stanley Roth suggested: “compete in the realm of ideas . . . [and] recognize that the key to lobbying is education over time” (quoted in Sciolino 1996). In light of the ideological and political divide between the two countries, the myriad disputes on a wide range of issues, and the prevailing attitude toward China on Capitol Hill, the Chinese should be well prepared for the amount of time and resources needed to cultivate good will among members of Congress. Last but not least, the Chinese should avoid another Donorgate and instead lobby within the American legal boundaries. Otherwise, their lobbying will be viewed as invidious efforts by a foreign government to buy influence in Washington, which in turn could add fuel to congressional activism in China policy.

A look into the future Having analyzed the past, it is time to pause for a moment and look ahead at the future of U.S.–China relations and the prospective role Congress will play in China policy. A number of factors determine that Congress will almost certainly continue to be an active and influential player in the development of an important relationship that is fraught with controversies and challenges. The end of the Cold War has had and will continue to have significant impact on U.S.–China relations. During the latter part of the Cold War, the U.S. and China “were drawn together almost exclusively for strategic necessity,” despite the crucial fact that the two countries “didn’t possess a common ideology, or similar political or economic systems, or shared cultural traditions” (Ross 1998: viii). As Mann (1999: 8) perceptively wrote, “The relationship between the United States and China established by Nixon, Kissinger, and their successors [was] a strategic marriage of convenience and the classic example of Kissinger’s obsession with geopolitics.” The end of the Cold War and the overwhelming dominance of the U.S. in the post-Cold War world largely eliminated the strategic rationale underlying U.S.–China relationship. To be sure, the U.S. still needs Chinese cooperation on a variety of issues of grave concern to Americans—stability in Asia, nuclear non-proliferation, environmental protection, and the war on terrorism—but Chinese cooperation is by no means as urgent as it was back in the Cold War. As a result, the U.S. is much less likely to compromise—on Taiwan or human rights—for the sake of Chinese cooperation. More importantly, with its fast-growing economy, enormous population,

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and increasingly modernized military, China has become, in the eyes of many American scholars and policy-makers, the major rival of the U.S. in the immediate future (e.g., Bernstein and Munro 1997; Gertz 2000; Kaplan 2005; U.S. Department of Defense 2006).6 The soaring U.S. trade deficit with China, the 1995–1996 missile crisis, the airplane collision in 2001 all appear to justify the thesis of China threat. As a result, in the foreseeable future U.S.–China relations will probably be characterized by mutual suspicion and occasional open confrontation on the one hand, and mutual cooperation on a number of issues on the other. In so far as Congress is concerned, the absence of overriding national security concerns and the dominance of non-security issues like trade in U.S.–China relations in the post-Cold War world give it a much bigger role to play in China policy. Congress is more likely to start its own China policy initiatives or to challenge the president’s policies. Lampton thus described the changing executive-legislative dynamics in the post-Cold War world: The U.S. Constitution vests Congress with significant powers in the trade area (e.g., to set tariff levels). In contrast, when security is the dominant concern, as it was during the cold war, constitutional prerogatives and the need for quick response favor presidential dominance. Thus, moving from a security-centered to an economics-centered relationship with Beijing put the relationship more substantially into the congressional domain. (Lampton 2001: 116) More specifically, as the breadth and depth of economic cooperation between the two countries keep growing, Congress will in all likelihood be more involved in trade policy due to constituent influence. On the one hand, there probably will be more Graham-Schumer-type initiatives to address the economic woes of certain constituencies. On the other hand, the beneficiaries of growing economic interdependence will almost certainly fight to maintain and promote their interests. If the past is any indication of the future, free trade supporters, backed by the White House, may successfully prevent Congress from taking any major legislative action restricting the flow of goods, technology, and people across the Pacific. Human rights will undoubtedly remain a major source of disputes in bilateral relations. Wrote former Congressman Lee Hamilton (1996), “Human rights will remain, for the immediate future, a problem of special urgency in our relations with China.” For one thing, the Tiananmen Incident, as the enduring symbol of China’s human rights, will continue to motivate many members of Congress to champion human rights progress in China. As Suettinger (2003: 414) noted, “Tiananmen will endure as a subject of contention between the United States and China, at least as a subtext of other issues, particularly human rights.” For another, there are still many human rights problems in China that need to be addressed (e.g., U.S. Department of

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State 2005, 2006). Unless there is solid evidence indicating significant progress in human rights in China, congressional attitudes toward China will remain highly critical. In so far as Taiwan is concerned, Congress will almost certainly continue to be its most powerful and most reliable supporter. China’s growing military power and its potential threat to U.S. interests in East Asia will be a major factor behind congressional support for strong U.S.–Taiwan relations. An equally, if not more, important factor is Taiwan’s democratic system. As long as Taiwan remains a prosperous democracy, Congress has little reason to question or suspend its long-time commitment to the island. On the other hand, Taiwan’s democratization can also be a liability to Congress. Domestic politics in Taiwan may force Taiwanese leaders to adopt certain policies that are unpalatable to Beijing, and if Congress throws itself firmly behind such leaders, confrontations between Beijing and Washington will likely ensue. The 1995–1996 missile crises illuminate the real danger of unconditional congressional support for Taiwan. Thus it seems that Congress will most likely remain active and influential in China policy in the foreseeable future. However, institutional structures and procedures as well as the electoral connection almost guarantee that Congress may not succeed in bringing about major policy shifts in China policy. Instead, it will probably be most successful in influencing the agenda of U.S. China policy. That is, members of Congress will be mostly concerned with highlighting the misdeeds, falsehoods, and shortcomings of the PRC regime, faulting the president’s policies for not being able to change China’s behavior patterns, preventing significant improvement in bilateral ties without certain conditions being met, and forcing the administration’s attention on Taiwan or Tibet. (Suettinger 2003, 328–329)

Appendix Sources

Source of China bills and coding scheme I identified China bills from Thomas, the online database of legislative information from the Library of Congress (http://www.thomas.loc.gov). All the China bills were retrieved between December 17 and 19, 2006. Thomas allows searches for bill summary and status from the 93rd Congress (1973–1974) until the most recent Congress. For each bill, Thomas lists its chief sponsor(s) and co-sponsor(s), the committee(s) to which the bill was referred, the latest legislative action on the bill, and a summary of the bill by the Congressional Research Service. I checked the accuracy of Thomas using statistics on legislative activity published in Congress and the Nation. Thomas reports the number of concurrent resolutions, resolutions, joint resolutions, bills, and amendments (starting from the 97th Congress) introduced in each Congress. I added up all types of bills (except amendments because Congress and the Nation does not report amendments) to arrive at a total number of bills for each Congress. Then I compared them with statistics from Congress and the Nation. For nine Congresses, the two sources do not comport with each other, but the discrepancy is so small as to be insignificant. That is, for eight Congresses the discrepancy is less than 10 bills, and only 101st Congress has a discrepancy of 37 bills. Meanwhile, the average number of bills in each Congress is around 13,600. In a word, it seems safe for me to use Thomas as the sole source of China bills. Using keyword search (i.e., China, Chinese, Taiwan, Taiwanese), I identified 875 China bills between 1973 and 2006. Table A.1 illustrates my coding scheme. The cells are by no means exhaustive; they merely illustrate the major issues that these China bills address.

Sources of other quantitative data Favorability rating Favorability rating has probably the longest time series in surveys. The major survey houses across the nation have fielded such questions with slightly

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Appendix: Sources

Table A.1 Examples of coding of China bills Policy type

Specific issues

Taiwan

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Generic trade

1. Prohibit importation of certain goods from China 2. Prohibit Export-Import Bank from extending credit to exports to China 3. Impose quota on Chinese products 4. Authorize negotiation or conclusion of trade agreements with China 5. Establish agencies to promote U.S.–China trade 6. Reduce tariffs on certain Chinese exports

MFN

1. Deny MFN to China 2. Attach conditions to MFN renewal 3. Extend MFN to China

WTO

1. Attach conditions to China’s WTO 2. Withdraw China’s WTO membership if it attacks Taiwan 3. Call for U.S. approval of China’s admission to WTO

Generic Human Rights

1. 2. 3. 4.

Tibet

1. Criticize China’s Tibet policy 2. Support Dalai Lama 3. Establish agencies for Tibetan affairs

UNPF funding

Prohibit or withdraw funding for UNPF unless it ceases its operations in China

Tiananmen

1. 2. 3. 4.

Condemn Tiananmen crackdown Support student activists Commemorate Tiananmen Give Chinese students special immigration status

Export control

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Prohibit U.S. satellites from being launched on Chinese vehicles Deny licenses to exports to China Prohibit the transfer of certain technologies Place arms embargo on China Criticize China’s alleged transfer of missile and nuclear technology to Middle East countries Prescribe punishment if China violates non-proliferation regimes Treat China more favorably than other “controlled countries” Shorten review period for license application Allow third countries to export high-tech products to China

Support Taiwan’s membership in international organizations Urge arms sales to Taiwan Demand peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue Declare U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s security and democracy Allow Taiwanese officials to visit the U.S. Advocate official relations with Taiwan Authorize negotiation or conclusion of commercial treaties with Taiwan 8. Repeal the Formosa Resolution 9. Criticize Taiwan’s human rights

6. 7. 8. 9.

Call for release of religious prisoners Call for release of political prisoners Demand progress in human rights Sponsor resolutions criticizing China’s human rights at the UN

Appendix: Sources Foreign assistance

1. Deny or reduce foreign assistance to China 2. Prohibit international institutions from giving loans to China 3. Authorize foreign assistance to China by U.S. or international agencies

Other

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

159

Any combination of the above policies Establish agencies or commissions to carry out China policy Appropriate funds for these agencies Establish exchange programs Furnish assistance to express condolence to Chinese victims of natural disasters 6. Deny visas to Chinese officials

different wording and response categories. The questions usually have either four response categories—“very favorable,” “mostly favorable,” “mostly unfavorable,” and “very unfavorable,” or a 10-point-scale running from +5 to −5. A third type of questions has three categories—“generally favorable,” “generally unfavorable,” and “neutral.” Hirshberg (1993) was among the first to collect and organize data on American public’s favorability rating of China. His data covered 1954–1991, and most of the questions in his data have 10-point-scale response categories. I selected the first two types of questions, i.e., four-category and 10-point scale questions. I collapsed “very favorable” and “mostly favorable” into “favorable,” and “very unfavorable” and “mostly unfavorable” into “unfavorable.” For those 10-point scale questions, I collapsed + 1 to +5 into “favorable” and −1 to −5 into “unfavorable.” I used the percentage of Americans having favorable opinion of China as the measure of favorability. For years in which multiple survey houses asked the same questions, I take the average of the percentages. For missing years, I take the average of the previous and following year’s percentages. I updated Hirshberg’s data by including more recent data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research available online at www.lexisnexis.com. For exact question wording, see T. Xie (2004: Appendix 1) and Hirshberg (1993: 249–250). Ideology DW-NOMINATE score: www.voteview.com. Hawkishness: The Center for Security Policy. Constituency variables Union Strength, Farm Employment, and Retail/Wholesale Employment (before 1998): Adler, E. Scott. “Congressional District Data File, [congressional term].” University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. Farm Employment and Retail/Wholesale Employment (after 1999): I used the 2000 Census CDs at the Government Section of Northwestern University Library to arrive at the percentages.

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Union Strength (after 1999): Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, “Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 2003, pp. 349–354. State Export to China: Office of Trade and Industry Information, Manufacturing and Services, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. Military Awards: U.S. Department of Defense, Atlas/Data Abstract for the United States.

Notes

Introduction 1 Though Congress passed legislation (HR 2676) in 1998 changing MFN to NTR, MFN is still commonly used in international trade negotiations. Besides, MFN is the term used in most congressional documents, scholarly works, and journalistic accounts. Thus MFN instead of NTR will be used throughout the book. 2 Scholars sometimes draw a distinction between foreign policy and defense policy (Lindsay and Ripley 1992; Ripley and Lindsay 1993). The former generally includes diplomatic and strategic relations with other countries and trade policy, whereas the latter refers exclusively to defense spending like military bases, weapons purchase, and payment for military personnel. Thus defined, the three policy issues in U.S.–China relations that will be examined in this study belong to foreign policy. 3 To be sure, there are many other—and perhaps equally important—questions about Congress’s role in foreign and defense policy, such as who decides the congressional agenda, the role of interest groups, the impact of constituency opinion, and the consequences of congressional activism (for the most comprehensive review of the literature, see Lindsay and Ripley 1992). Nonetheless, answers to the three questions form the foundations on which other questions can be pursued. For example, one cannot adequately address the question of who decides Congress’s foreign policy agenda without first addressing executive-legislative interactions in foreign policy or the decision-making process in Congress. 4 Many studies approach Congress’s relative power vis-à-vis the president in foreign policy from the legal-constitutional perspective. They focus on Congress’s constitutional prerogatives, particularly the war powers (e.g., Adler 1988; Crovitz and Rabkin 1989; Deering 1991; Fisher 1985; Fisher 1988; Fisher 1991; Franklin 1987; Schlesinger 1989). 5 Since it was published, the two presidencies thesis has been at the center of scholarly debate. For a review of the debate, see Fleisher and Bond (1988); Shull and LeLoup (1981); Sigelman (1979); and Wildavsky (1975). 6 In the final analysis, Schlesinger seems to be reluctant to completely reject presidential dominance in foreign policy. “To restore the constitutional balance, it is necessary in this period to rebuke presidential pretensions, as it has been necessary in other periods to rebuke congressional pretensions,” he cautioned (1972: 108). “But in demythologizing the presidency we must take care not to remythologize the Congress,” he hastily added (ibid.: 109). 7 I borrowed the term “contingency” from public opinion research. Based on interviews with a representative sample of House members, Cook (1992) contended that congressional responsiveness to public preferences on welfare policy is

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8

9

10 11

12

13

14

Notes

contingent upon the particular issue. See Manza and Cook (2002) for a review of the literature on the contingency view. According to Lindsay and Ripley (1993: 19), crisis policy is characterized by “the perception of an imminent threat to the U.S. national interests, usually one involving the use or potential use of force.” Strategic policy “specifies the goals and tactics of defense and foreign policy.” It includes what is commonly called foreign policy plus “those aspects of defense policy that specify the basic mix and mission of military forces.” Finally, structural policy “governs how resources are used and mostly clearly resemble decision making on domestic, distributive politics.” To my knowledge, Burgin (1991) is the only scholar who has systematically studied the extent of legislative participation in foreign policy. She constructed a scale of participation and then divided members into four different categories based on the participation scale: leaders, activists, position-takers, and voters. She examined the impact of constituent interests on whether to participate in a foreign policy issue and the extent of participation. Hall (1996) offers the most comprehensive study of legislative participation in Congress, but his focus is participation in general, not foreign policy issues in particular. The Act was repealed in 1943 by the Magnuson Act, but large-scale Chinese immigration didn’t occur until after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. For the most recent account of the history of Chinese immigration, see Lee (2003). Since almost all bank notes in China were backed by silver, large-scale purchase by the U.S. depleted China’s silver reserve and led to sharp appreciation of the currency. As the Chinese currency appreciated, exports became more expensive and imports cheaper, resulting in more outflow of silver. Meanwhile, banks began to withdraw notes from circulation, which resulted in credit stringency and deflation. The Silver Purchase Act appeared to be the major cause of the financial crisis in China in the 1930s. Three sentences from the 1971 CQ Almanac best summarize the intensity of congressional opposition to China’s admission to the UN. “From 1950 to 1970, Congress expressed its opposition to the seating of Communist China in the United Nations at least 30 times. Every year, statements expressing this opposition have been attached to appropriations bills and enacted into law. Every year, that is, until 1971” (CQ Almanac 1971: 364). When Deng visited Washington, 85 Senators and 70 House members met with him, with another dozen accompanying him to Atlanta, Houston, and Seattle. Many House members “avidly sought invitation” for a meeting with Deng and members of both chambers “stood in line to shake Teng’s [sic] hand and even to get his autograph.” Senator Henry Jackson was so impressed by Deng that he predicated that Deng “would be kissing a lot of babies here” (CQ Almanac 1979: 207–208). For example, Mann (2001) and Crabb (1985) examined congressional support for Taiwan. Nokken (2003) analyzed roll call votes on MFN renewal. Yang (2000) offered a detail account of MFN renewal and Taiwan policy in the Bush and Clinton years. Xie (1993) conducted an in-depth analysis of roll call voting on the Taiwan Relations Act and the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act of 1989.

1 The new institutionalism and legislative behavior 1 The rational choice theory is a broad name that subsumes a variety of theories built upon the assumption of individual rationality. Social choice theory, theory of collective action, and principal-agent theory all belong to the rational choice theory. For a review of scholarly debate about the rational choice theory, see (Barry 1978; Chong 2000: Chapter 1; Friedman 1996; Green and Shapiro 1994).

Notes

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2 Admittedly, the number of committees, committee jurisdiction, chamber rules, party rules, and committee rules may be considerably different from one Congress to another, as in the case of House reforms in the 1970s and Republican reform after 1995. Nevertheless, the fundamental structures and procedures such as bill referral, seniority, the filibuster, and the germaneness rule have largely remained intact since they were first instituted (see Deering and Smith 1997). 3 For a different view about the committee’s ex post veto power, see Crombez et al. (2006) and Krehbiel et al. (1987). 4 In addition to gatekeeping, other terms commonly used to describe committee power include veto power, proposal power, and agenda-setting power. According to Crombez et al. (2006: 323): an early-acting individual or group of individuals is said to possess a gatekeeping right if the governing procedures of the body allow the individual or group not to act on specific proposals, and if the certain consequence of such inaction is that an exogenously determined status quo policy remains in effect.

5 6

7 8

They offered a distinction between gatekeeping right and gatekeeping power, arguing the former is a necessary condition for the latter. For example, in 1999 the Senate voted on a motion to discharge from the Finance Committee S.J.Res.27 that would revoke China’s MFN for one year. The motion was overwhelmingly rejected by a vote of 12–87. The three dominant theories of legislative organization have different predictions about committee–floor relationship. The informational theory predicts that committees should be representative of the floor majority (Krehbiel 1991). The distributive theory contends that committees should be composed of preference outliers (Weingast and Marshall 1988). Finally, the partisan theory argues that committee preferences should be similar to those of the majority party (Cox and McCubbins 1993). Cox and McCubbins (1993: 260–262) reported evidence that bills sponsored by majority party members were most likely to be reported out of committee. For some scholars, it is not so much structural differences—and the resulting differences in policy preferences—as sequential actions that enable the Senate to serve as a check to the House. Fenno (1982: 4–5) thus wrote, By setting up two distinct and different bodies, they made it necessary that the Senate and the House take separate action. . . . Separate action means, at a minimum, sequential action, and sequential action very likely means different actions. That is because sequential action implies the passage of time and with it the changing of relevant contexts. Different contexts very likely lead to different behavior.

9 The “cooling saucer” originates from an anecdote about the Senate. Thomas Jefferson, who was absent at the constitutional convention due to his mission to France, asked George Washington why he had consented to a second chamber. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” asked Washington. “To cool it,” said Jefferson. “Even so, we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it,” said Washington (quoted in Fenno 1982: 5). Under the original arrangement of bicameralism, the Senate may have been more likely to cool down the legislative process by blocking or amending House-passed bills because Senators were elected indirectly by state legislatures. But the 17th Amendment brought about a new bicameralism under which Senators, like their House counterparts, are elected directly by the people (Binder 1996: Chapter 2; Fenno 1982). For more recent assessments of the impact of 17th amendment on legislative behavior, see Crook and Hibbing (1997) and Bernhard and Sala (2006).

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10 Cronin and Fordham’s (1999) analysis of Senate voting on foreign policy between 1947 and 1993 produced evidence that challenges the notion of ideological coherence and stability. They concluded: Above all, a successful treatment of ideology must not assume that issue linkages can be traced to a logically coherent and unchanging set of principles. Preferences on a wide range of issues may be linked to the cleavage between liberals and conservatives, but the content of these ideologies is not consistent over time. Something other than enduring principles determines what it means to be a liberal or conservative in American politics. (ibid.: 987–988) 11 This appears to be true only at the individual level, however. There is convincing evidence that aggregate or collective opinion is remarkably stable, coherent, and meaningful (Page 2006; Page and Shapiro 1992). 12 Students of American politics have constructed various measures of constituency opinion, including demographic variables, small-sample estimates, presidential election results, and referenda voting (for a review, see Ardoin and Garand 2003; McDonagh 1993; Stone 1979), but none of these directly concern China policy. 2 Congressional efforts to punish China 1 A modified version of this chapter and Chapter 3, entitled “Congress and China Policy: An Analysis of China Bills,” were originally published in Journal of Contemporary China, 2008, 17: 54, 141–165. 2 Members attach riders to non-China-specific bills such as authorization bills because these bills are more likely to pass than freestanding China bills. For example, those opposed to China’s abortion policy often turn to foreign operations authorization bills, adding language that prohibits U.S. contribution to any international agency—particularly the UNPF—that is involved in family planning programs in China. These bills are more likely to pass than independent legislation barring U.S. contribution to international agencies because they deal with routine authorization of funds necessary for the implementation of U.S. foreign policy. Some of the most controversial congressional policies are found in these authorization bills. In 1995, Jesse Helms introduced a state department authorization bill to which he added language that the Taiwan Relations Act should supersede the 1982 joint communiqué regarding arms sales to Taiwan. 3 Following my logic, Congress’s policy toward Hong Kong and Macao should also be included as part of its China policy, since both Hong Kong and Macao are now special administrative zones under Chinese sovereignty. I do not include China bills respecting the two entities because the numbers are rather small: 26 bills respecting Hong Kong and three bills respecting Macao. 4 The controversy over funding to the UNPF arose because UNPF was allegedly involved in coercive abortion in China. Given the intense passions evoked by abortion in U.S. domestic politics, it is not surprising that the battle over appropriations for the UNPF has repeated itself each year since 1985, when Congress adopted the “Kemp–Inouye–Helms” amendment that prohibits U.S. funding to any organization that “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” One year before the passage of the amendment, the Reagan administration announced a new policy at the Second United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City, which denies assistance to any foreign, non-governmental organization that “performs or actively promotes abortion as a method of family planning.” This became known as the “Mexico City” policy (CQWR 2001: 236). Because UNPF funding is

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usually attached to the annual State Department authorization bill, the battle oftentimes stalled the passage of the authorization bill, creating chaos on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, and in the White House (CQWR 1998: 579; CQWR 1999: 563, 2326; CQWR 2002: 197). Crane and Finkle (1989) offer the best analysis of the domestic politics linking UNPF funding with China’s population control programs. U.S. companies must obtain a license before they can export high-power computers, missile technology, or satellite technology to China. Export control respecting China became a high-profile issue in 1998 amidst allegations of Chinese thefts of U.S. nuclear secrets and Republican accusation of Clinton issuing export licenses in exchange for Chinese campaign donations. Later that year Congress formed a Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, chaired by Republican Christopher Cox, and the Committee issued the highly controversial Cox Report in early 1999 (e.g., CQWR 1998: 1375, 1400, 1402, 1886–1889). In the House, no member may offer an amendment to a bill under floor consideration unless the bill is granted an open rule or the amendment is pre-approved by the Rules Committee. More importantly, a particular rule of the House—effective since April 1789—requires that amendments be germane to the bill under consideration. A ruling of non-germaneness can be—and frequently is—challenged on the floor, but it is “virtually unprecedented for the membership to overrule its presiding office in order to consider a proposition that has been ruled nongermane” (Bach 1982: 343). Unlike the House, the Senate does not have any general requirement of germaneness, unless an amendment is offered to an appropriations bill, a budget bill, or a measure on which cloture has been invoked. As a result, Senators have much greater latitude than their House counterparts in amending a bill. The numbers in Figure 2.1 include amendments. Some official sources of legislative activities like Congress and the Nation report only bills (i.e., bills, concurrent resolutions, simple resolutions, and joint resolutions). With amendments excluded, then the total number of China bills introduced in the first session of each Congress is 481, and the figure for the second session is 227. This results in an aggregate inter-session ratio of 2.12. Based on statistics from Thomas, between 1973 and 2006 the total number of bills introduced in the first session is 153,695 and that for the second session is 78,203. This leads to an aggregate inter-session ratio of 1.97, which is strikingly similar to that for China bills. However, unlike the ratio for bills in general, which stabilizes around 2 from one Congress to another, the ratio for China bills has considerable variations. Another reason may be that all House members and one-third of Senators have to campaign in their home districts for reelection in the second session of each Congress and hence spend less time on Capitol Hill. A third reason is that if voters tend to pay more attention to their representatives immediately after an election—and the first session is temporally closer to the election than the second session—then members have incentives to be seen as legislatively active. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Republicans made up the overwhelming majority of the China bloc that supported Chiang and opposed recognition of China and China’s admission to the UN (Bachrack 1976; Koen 1974; Tsou 1963; Tucker 1983). In the 1990s, Republicans like Gerald Solomon (NY), Tom DeLay (TX), and Benjamin Gilman (NY), to name just a few, were among the most vocal supporters of Taiwan and critics of China because they “still bear animus toward the last outposts of global communism” (CQWR 1996: 712). Since the dependent variable is the number of times a specific event (i.e., a China bill is introduced) in each chamber each year, it can only take values that are nonnegative integers. Moreover, the event occurs at most a few dozen times per year. A

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very flexible modeling approach often used for dependent variables with these characteristics is to assume that they follow a negative binomial probability distribution. Unlike the classical regression model (e.g., ordinary least squares), the negative binomial model explicitly builds the special characteristics of the dependent variable into the analysis. As such, it can make better use of the available information than classical techniques, and will not make invalid use of information in the data (e.g., the lack of negative observations), as classical procedures would. The parameter estimates in a negative binomial model govern the rate at which the expected number of events changes in response to a change in any given independent variable, but (unlike in the classical regression model) are not themselves estimates of the slope of a line. More specifically, in event count models the effect of an independent variable with coefficient β is βθ, where θ is the expected value of the dependent variable (King 1988: 857; Mayer 1999: 199; Shields and Huang 1995: 567). 3 Effects of congressional activism on China policy 1 Another way to control for chamber size is to compare the ratio of China bills to all bills in each chamber, but the major problem with this method is that the denominator is so big as to make the ratio close to zero. The mean of all bills (excluding amendments) introduced in the House in each Congress during the studied period is 9596.8 and the mean for China bills (excluding amendments) is 28.2. The corresponding figures for the Senate are 4041.9 and 13.5. 2 Apparently, Table 3.2 does not answer why a member is active in a particular policy issue. For example, why is Chris Smith active in human rights but not in MFN or Taiwan policy? To answer this question, one would need to conduct in-depth analysis of each member’s personal background, constituents, and the circumstances under which he or she served in Congress. 3 It is possible that some China bills were amended on the floor before their passage, and the inclusion of these bills may be responsible for the higher estimate I arrived at. 4 The tradition of individualism and extended debate in the Senate greatly empower individual Senators to influence the legislative process. One common practice is to file an objection to unanimous consent agreement (UCA) request regarding a piece of legislation pending floor debate. This is called a “hold.” Since most Senate legislative business is done through UCA, putting a hold is in effect a threat to filibuster. Unless the Senator who puts the hold is satisfied, the bill is likely to stay in the committee (see Sinclair 2006: 204–211). 5 The six resolutions are: H.Con.Res.148 in 1996, H.Con.Res.270 and 301 in 1998, H.Con.Res.56 and H.Res.297 in 1999, and H.Con.Res.292 in 2000. 6 President Jimmy Carter used the fourth veto. In 1977, both houses passed HR 2521, a bill that provides for mandatory federal inspection of rabbit meat. Carter vetoed it on the ground that “[r]equirements for on-site inspection of foreign processing facilities by Department of Agriculture employees would strain relations with the People’s Republic of China, a major exporter of domesticated rabbit meat to the United States” (Carter 1977). Congress did not attempt to override Carter’s veto. 7 According to former Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), “They are afraid of him. Jesse runs a pretty tight ship” (quoted in Berke and Myers 1997). Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), the ranking Democrat on the Committee, said, “He’s prepared to be mean. He’s prepared to be disliked. He’s prepared to be ostracized” (quoted in ibid.). 8 Supporters of human rights in Tibet come in different party labels and ideological hats. In a reception held in the honor of the Dalai Lama in Washington, D.C., the

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guests present included senators John Kerry, Jesse Helms, Bob Dole, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan as well as representatives Benjamin Gilman, Charlie Rose, Tom Lantos, and John Porter (Glassman 1991). 4 Congress and U.S.–China trade relations 1 A shorter version of this chapter, entitled “Congressional Roll Call Voting on China Trade Policy: MFN and PNTR,” was published in American Politics Research, 2006, 34: 6, 732–758. 2 For example, the AFL-CIO filed a petition to the Bush administration in April 2006, the second since 2004, urging the U.S. Trade Representative’s office to launch probes into China’s suppression of labor rights, which was believed to be a major factor behind the cheap prices of Chinese imports that have resulted in soaring trade deficit and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Americans jobs (see Greenhouse 2006; Reuters 2006). 3 It should be noted that in the early years of U.S.–China trade, it was the United States that demanded MFN status from China. Following China’s defeat in the Opium War in 1840, the Chinese government signed the infamous Nanking Treaty in 1842 with Britain that granted the latter many trade privileges. Two years later, the U.S. signed the Wanghia Treaty with China, securing MFN status from the Chinese government. Despite its name, MFN does not offer preferential treatment. The U.S. grants MFN to nearly all its trading partners. Moreover, MFN is not the lowest tariff status. More than 125 developing countries pay even lower tariff under the Generalized System of Preference (CQ Almanac 1992: 157; CQWR 1990: 1774–76). Under the Jackson–Vanik amendment to the 1974 Trade Act, an amendment that has the former Soviet Union as its prime target, the president cannot grant MFN to a Communist country unless he waives a requirement that denies MFN to any Communist country that prohibits free emigration. MFN status expires July 3 each year, and if the president wants to renew it, he must notify Congress by June 3. Congress has until September 3 to pass a joint resolution to disapprove of the renewal, subject to presidential veto. 4 China was one of the 23 contracting members of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT), founded in 1948 and the predecessor of the World Trade Organization. The nationalist regime on Taiwan, the official representative of China in the UN until 1971, withdrew from the GATT in 1950. In 1982, China was granted observer status in the GATT. In July 1986, the Chinese government requested resumption of its contracting party status on the ground that the withdrawal from the GATT by Taiwan was null and void. The GATT established the Working Party on China’s Status in the following year, which began China’s 15-year process to rejoin the international trade organization. In 1994, the GATT concluded its eighth round of multilateral negotiations—the Uruguay Round— and created the World Trade Organization the next year. 5 China can join the WTO without congressional approval of PNTR. However, if China is not removed from the Jackson–Vanik amendment, the U.S. will be in violation of Article II of the GATT, which requires unconditional MFN for members, and hence subject to trade sanctions. Meanwhile, the U.S. has to invoke nonapplication of the GATT, which means China would be able to withhold benefits of the 1999 trade agreement from the U.S., such as market access, special import protection, and the right to enforce China’s commitments through WTO dispute settlement (U.S. Congress 2001c: 3). 6 Two factors stand out as contributing to the better-than-expected vote outcome. First, the Levin–Bereuter provisions, which addressed members’ concerns about human rights, labor abuses, compliance, etc., made the vote much easier for many members. It is estimated that the Levin–Bereuter provisions secured as many as

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40 votes (CQ Almanac 2000: 20: 4–8). Second, Charles Rangel (D-NY) switched from No to Yes, “the single most important pro-permanent NTR event of the last month” (ibid.: 20:8). Rangel’s conversion had the most impact on the New York delegation, in the Congressional Black Caucus, and among Ways and Means members. The first vote was on passage of HR 2195 in 1997 that authorized US$2 million for the U.S. Customs Service and the State Department to enforce a U.S. ban on Chinese prison labor products. The bill passed 419–2. The second vote, which took place in 2003, was on adoption of a resolution (H.Res.414) under suspension of rules that encouraged China to fulfill its international trade commitments. The vote count was 411–1. The third vote occurred in 2004, and again it was on adoption of a resolution (H.Res.576) under suspension of rules that urged China to improve its protection of intellectual property rights. The resolution passed 416–3. The recommitting motions would ask Ways and Means to report the bill (HR 2195 and HR 2605 respectively) back with an amendment to require that the total amount of tariffs paid to China for U.S. exports be adjusted quarterly to equal the total amount China pays to the U.S. for Chinese exports. Frutiger (2002) offered a different perspective on AFL-CIO’s opposition to China’s PNTR. He argued that AFL-CIO’s China policy amounts to nothing less than “a revival of . . . [u]nconstrained economic nationalism [and] an antiCommunist agenda” that had guided AFL-CIO’s policy agenda through the Cold War up until John Sweeney’s election in 1995” (ibid.: 72). Labor union’s vehement opposition to PNTR potentially threatened Al Gore’s presidential campaign, as Gore firmly endorsed China’s accession to the WTO. On the other hand, union leaders knew that it was in their interest to have a Democrat in the White House, and a Democratic majority in Congress if possible. Thus the challenge for John Sweeney was to devise a strategy that would simultaneously defeat PNTR and put Gore in the White House (Connolly 2000; Edsall 2000; Mufson 2000). To help colleagues who planned to vote for the China bill in spite of labor union opposition, a group of moderate House Democrats organized fundraisers and raised $160,000 from the business community in two months. Boeing, America Online, and Microsoft were among the donators at the fundraisers (CQWR 2000: 907). This does not seem to be a big problem in my case because I use the absolute value of DW score. Party has the highest correlation with retail/wholesale (−0.259, significant at 0.01), and the absolute value of DW score has the highest correlation with farming employment (−0.124, significant at 0.01). The correlation between party and the absolute value of DW score is −0.134 and significant at 0 .01. However, Garzke and Wrighton (1998) also found that Senate Republicans were more supportive of GATT than Democrats, and Wink et al. (1996) reported evidence that House Republicans were more likely to vote for NAFTA than Democrats. Thus it appears that there is no conclusive evidence on the direction of partisanship on trade votes. For example, in 1997 President Clinton asked for renewal of fast track authority, but over 80 percent of House Democrats opposed it. In the end, Clinton suffered a “stinging blow” to his prestige when the House Republican leadership canceled the vote on fast track authority (Conley 1999: 786). This point is based on Kernell’s (1973) finding that party composition of each chamber was the central determinant of inter-chamber difference in policy liberalism. It is also possible that there is something special about the Senate as an institution that makes it more liberal than the House. Grofman et al. (1991) examined Senators and representatives who have identical constituencies, that is, they

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come from states that have only one representative in the House. It turns out that Senators were still a little more liberal than representatives despite the fact that they have identical constituency. 5 Congress and Taiwan 1 On January 5 1950, President Truman made it clear that the U.S. would not intervene militarily on Chiang’s behalf. This hands-off policy amounted to abandonment of Chiang. A week later, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech to the National Press Club, reiterating Truman’s China policy (see Finkelstein 1993: 272–74; Grasso 1987: 123). 2 Before the outbreak of the Korean War, Secretary of State Dean Acheson seemed to be optimistic about U.S. relations with Communist China. He believed that Chinese Communism was of a different strain from Stalinist Communism, hence his hopes for the emergence of a Chinese Tito. Even after the interposition of the Seventh Fleet, Acheson wanted to signal to the Communists that the U.S. had no intention of grabbing Taiwan (see Finkelstein 1993: 334–336). 3 The China bloc is not a formal organization within Congress. Rather, it is a loose conglomeration of members who were instrumental in China policy in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is part of the legendary China lobby. The China bloc, wrote Koen (1974: 29) in his classic study of the China lobby, “merely used the China issue as an aid in their battle against the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations or the Democratic party.” Tucker (1983: Chapter 5) also studied the role of the China bloc in U.S. China policy. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the China bloc opened another front: opposing China’s admission to the United Nations and U.S. recognition of China (see Bachrack 1976). 4 I will not examine in detail Congress’s role in Taiwan’s human rights. First, only a handful of members were actively involved in the issue and only for a relatively short period of time. Second, the issue is of minor importance in U.S.–Taiwan relations. Suffice it to say, policy-makers in Washington had long been cognizant of the authoritarian nature of the Taiwan regime, but the strategy of containment in the Cold War resulted in a policy that “valued the strategic potential of Taiwan too highly to risk undermining mutual confidence by insisting upon the kind of liberalization that America’s principles and traditions in theory demanded” (Tucker 1994: 77). The year 1977 marked the beginning of earnest efforts by liberal members to address Taiwan’s human rights. In June, Congress held its first public hearing on human rights in Taiwan, convened by Representative Donald Fraser (D-MN) (U.S. Congress 1977). In retrospect, Congress, particularly the handful of liberal Democrats, “played an important role in persuading Taiwan to democratize” (Mann 2001: 204). For a detailed account of Congress’s human rights initiatives regarding Taiwan and a different assessment of Congress’s influence on Taiwan, see Bush (2004: Chapter 6). 5 If adopted within two days in the House (or three days in the Senate), a motion to reconsider requires the original vote to be held again. Members seek to reconsider a vote because they want to change a close outcome in a vote. They also file such a motion as a delaying tactic to use up floor time. In daily practices, however, the motion to reconsider is routinely tabled or killed (C-SPAN 2006). 6 A motion to recommit returns a bill to committee. Recommittal motions can take two forms: a simple motion to recommit or a motion to recommit with instructions. A simple recommittal motion gives the minority party a final opportunity to kill the bill. When adopted, the bill goes back to committee and is considered to have been rejected. Motion to recommit with instructions provides the minority a last opportunity to amend a bill. If adopted, the bill goes back to committee with binding directions to the committee which is required to report the bill back with

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an amendment specified in the instructions. Most recommittal motions contain instructions. The right to offer the motion to recommit is the prerogative of a minority party representative who is opposed to a bill (Mulvihill 1997). If the motion to reconsider had been agreed to, members would have had to vote on HR 2386 again and the bill could have been defeated. In and of itself, the rejection of the bill does not entail any fundamental change in Taiwan policy, but its failure does signify that Congress as a collective decision-making body was not willing to consider such a missile defense system for Taiwan. This would be bad news for Taiwan’s supporters in Congress and for the political leadership in Taiwan. Similarly, if the motion to recommit HR 4444 had been agreed to, the bill would have been returned to committee and reported back to the House floor with language conditioning China’s PNTR on its promise not to attack Taiwan. Beijing would almost certainly have protested against such language and withdrawn itself from the trade agreement. Meanwhile, given their objections to placing conditions on U.S.–China trade, pro-trade members would likely have voted against the bill, delaying if not killing China’s bid to rejoin the WTO. Thus it seems likely that this recommitting motion was a parliamentary tactic used by opponents of HR 4444 to stop its passage. Because the bill is expected to pass, albeit with narrow margins, the opponents filed the motion in order to add a new dimension to the bill, a dimension on which they expected to win, knowing that there was a strong bipartisan consensus in support of Taiwan in Congress. Party leadership demands strong party loyalty on procedural issues such as election of the Speaker of the House and the majority leader, committee jurisdictions, rules governing floor debate, and committee assignments. There is a huge literature on procedures and rules in Congress, their influence on legislative behavior and legislative outcomes, and the forces underlying changes in rules and procedures (e.g., Cox 2000; Evans 1999; Shepsle and Weingast 1984; Shepsle and Weingast 1994). The biggest controversy in the current scholarly debate surrounds when, how, and why rules and procedures change. One school argues that procedures are stacked in favor of the majority party (e.g., Binder 1996; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Sinclair 1994). Another school contends that rule changes are decided by floor majority (e.g., Schickler 2000; Schickler and Rich 1997). The probability of a Republican voting against the Pallone motion was 0.791 higher than that of a Democrat, holding other variables at their means. By contrast, being a Republican decreases the probability of voting for the Bonior recommitting motion by 0.80. Scholars also identified other factors that contributed to partisan disputes over China policy during this period. The growing illness of Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), the pillar of postwar bipartisanship, contributed to party polarization over China policy, according to Crabb (1957: 110). But “the decisive factor in the situation,” contended Westerfield (1955: 245), “was that the administration failed to associate prominent Republicans with its conduct of Chinese–American relations, on a basis either of ‘educational’ indoctrination or of mutual compromise.” According to Bachrack (1976: 38–39), Tsou (1963) mentioned six Senators and five Representatives in his assessment of the China bloc’s influence in Congress: Senators William Knowland (R-CA), H. Alexander Smith (R-NJ), Pat McCarran (D-NV), Kenneth S. Wherry (R-NE), Owen Brewster (R-ME), Styles H. Bridges (R-NH), and Representatives Walter Judd (R-MN), John M. Vorys (R-OH), James G. Fulton (R-PA), Robert B. Chiperfield (R-IL), and Donald L. Jackson (R-CA). Judd, Vorys, and Bridges were instrumental in the passage of the China Aid Act of 1948. Conspicuously, there was only one Democrat in Tsou’s list. Dulles’s (1972: 73–74) list included not only Judd, Vorys, Knowland, Bridges, and McCarran, but four more Republican Senators: Ferguson (MI), Jenner (IN), Wiley (WI), and Butler (MD).

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12 Few scholars have paid sufficient attention to the role of partisanship in congressional debate about the TRA. Even those who did often ended up claiming that the TRA was the result of bipartisan cooperation. For example, Ripley (1985: 99) contended that the TRA “stands as an outstanding example of ‘bipartisan’ collaboration in the foreign policy field.” 13 There appears to be a significant element of institutional struggle for power in the executive-legislative skirmish over the TRA. The struggle has something to do with the Dole–Stone amendment to the International Security Assistance Act that was adopted five months before Carter’s announcement of normalization. The amendment stated, “It is the sense of Congress that there should be prior consultation between the Congress and the executive branch on any proposed policy changes affecting the continuation in force of the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954.” Apparently, President Carter paid only lip service to the amendment. As Senator John Glenn said, “Calling a few of us in one hour before he goes on television doesn’t seem like much consultation” (quoted in Gayner 1979: 334). Senator Jacob Javits (D-NY) (1981: 55), a key member involved in the TRA, lamented that “Neither on the manner and timing of the decision or on the substance of the understandings reached had there been effective consultation.” These complaints indicate that congressional assertiveness was directly attributable to the lack of consultation by the Carter administration (see also Sutter 1983). However, under the American constitutional structure, it is extremely difficult to clearly distinguish the institutional from the partisan. As Crabb (1957: 6–7, italics original) observed, Relations between the presidency and the Congress as institutions are bound to have a direct and often decisive bearing upon the relations between the party in power and the opposition, if for no other reason than that the President is automatically the leader of his party and that his leadership extends into the sphere of legislation. 14 During his campaign, candidate Reagan sent his running mate, George H. W. Bush, to Beijing to reassure the Chinese that he did not intend to make any changes in U.S.–Taiwan relations. On August 25, 1980, the day Bush returned from China, Reagan held a news conference at which he issued a major statement on U.S.–China relations. After affirming his interest in developing U.S.–China relations, he declared, “I would not pretend, as Carter does, that the relationship we now have with Taiwan, enacted by our Congress, is not official” (quoted in Washington Post 1980). After he was sworn in, Reagan began to discuss sales of FX fighter jets to Taiwan. With strong warnings from Beijing, however, Reagan backed down and signed a communiqué with Beijing on August 17, 1982, which papered over disagreements over arms sales to Taiwan for the time being but did not solve the issue to the satisfaction of either side (see Barnett 1981; Harding 1992: 108–19; McClaran 2000). The communiqué also became a sore in the eyes of die-hard Taiwan supporters on Capitol Hill who have since repeatedly tried in vain to introduce legislation declaring that the TRA supersedes the communiqué on arms sales to Taiwan. 15 Bush’s 1992 decision to sell Taiwan 150 F-16 fighter jets had something to do with congressional pressure, but Congress’s role in the sales appeared to be marginal (Mann 1999: 264–268; Yang 2000: 176–185). Mann (2001: 207) pointed out that Congress “was not the driving force behind the sale” and that “legislative involvement was limited almost exclusively to the Texas delegation.” Texas legislators, most notably Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Representative Joe Barton, lobbied hard for the sales after Bush announced his decision, because thousands of jobs at Texas-based General Dynamics would be saved. However, the primary reason behind Bush’s decision seems to be Taiwan’s deteriorating security vis-à-vis China, with the latter having acquired advanced Su-27 fighter jets (Bush 2004:

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184). Nonetheless, the timing of the sales was largely determined by the pressure of Bush’s 1992 presidential campaign (Friedman 1992; Schmitt 1992), as Texas is Bush’s home state with a large number of electoral votes. In the final analysis, then, Bush’s decision appears to be a mix of security concerns, constituency interests, and electoral politics. 16 The language in the TRA reads as follows: Nothing contained in this Act shall contravene the interest of the United States in human rights, especially with respect to the human rights of all the approximately eighteen million inhabitants of Taiwan. The preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all the people on Taiwan are hereby reaffirmed as objectives of the U.S. 17 Wichita, Kansas, is perhaps the best example of local dependence on the militaryindustrial complex. Known as the Air Capitol, Wichita is home to four major aircraft manufacturers: Boeing, Cessna, Raytheon, and Bombardier-Learjet. They turned out be among the ten largest employers in Wichita in 2004, with Boeing topping the list. Together, the four manufacturers employed 30,000 people, or more than 10 percent of non-agricultural labor force in Wichita (Frank 2004: 55–56; Thomson 2006; Wikipedia 2006). 18 Back in the 1980s, the U.S. ran a huge trade deficit with Taiwan, which reached a record high of US$17 billion in 1987. Among Taiwan’s exports to the U.S., textile products made up a large proportion—17 percent of the total at the peak year of 1982. Under pressure from textile industries, some members began to propose tough measures to address their woes, and Taiwan, along with the other three Asian Tigers, was often singled out in legislation aimed at curbing textile imports (CQ Almanac 1985: 256; CQ Almanac 1987; 640–641). 19 However, not all constituency economic interests will lead to congressional support for Taiwan, as illuminated by congressional actions respecting a seemingly peripheral issue: driftnet fishing. Running as deep as 30 feet and as long as 40 miles per stretch, driftnet poses serious dangers to marine life as well as navigation. Taiwan, among others, had a large driftnet fishing fleet. Fishermen from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California complained that their salmon were pirated by these driftnets and pressured Congress to take actions. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, albeit a strong Taiwan supporter, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 1991 that would suspend U.S. military sales to Taiwan until the driftnet issue was resolved. The other Senator from Alaska, Frank Murkowski, who was also a staunch supporter of Taiwan, expressed his support for the Stevens amendment because of constituency interests (Yang 2000: 159–161). As insignificant as this episode may appear in U.S.–Taiwan relations, it clearly shows the extent of constituency influence on members of Congress, even on those who otherwise have been long-time supporters of Taiwan. 20 Scholars have used a variety of interest group ratings such as National Journal’s foreign policy scale (Leogrande and Brenner 1993) and American Security Council’s (ASC) National Security Index (Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981). The published ASC ratings go back to 1998 (Sharp 2000) and the ASC’s website has only ratings for the 108th Congress. 21 The aggregate voting score for 1998–2000 is based on 25 selected votes in the House. They include the vote on HR 1838, which is also one of the two Taiwan votes I examine. For this reason, I recalculated the voting score excluding the vote on HR 1838. This does not change the statistical findings. 22 Scholars have used a wide variety of measures of the military–industrial complex (Clotfelter 1970; Cobb 1969; Gray and Gregory 1968; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985). I tried federal defense expenditure in each state and federal expenditure for salaries of civilian and military personnel, and the results remain the same.

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23 This explains why in most previous studies of defense policy voting, hawkishness or similar measures of ideology (e.g., jingoism or ADA scores) have the largest estimated impact, whereas party usually has marginal or no impact at all (e.g., Bozeman and James 1975; Cobb 1969; Leogrande and Brenner 1993; Lindsay 1990; Ray 1981; Wayman 1985). 24 The correlation between raw DW score and hawkishness is 0.894 and significant at 0.01. This is strong evidence that liberals tend to be doves and conservatives to be hawks. This also explains why I do not include the two variables in the same equation. 25 There is evidence for this speculation. I construct an aggregate voting index for each state delegation in the House on the basis of the two votes and the PNTR vote. It turns out that the most consistent and strongest supporters of free trade with China and U.S.–Taiwan relations are IA, KS, LA, MT, NE, SD, TX, and WY, all of which are strongholds of the Republican Party and rely significantly on China for their agricultural exports. 26 One explanation for the weak effects of the military-industrial complex is that military spending is deliberately steered away from states with dovish congressmen to states with hawkish representatives. Another explanation is that voters in states with significant stakes in military spending may elect hawkish members. Lindsay (1990: 944–945) offered persuasive rebuttal of the two arguments. 27 For example, the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations, an influential China lobby organization, had its headquarters on Capitol Hill and a number of Congressmen including Representatives Walter Judd (R-MN) and Francis Walter (D-PA) and Senators Paul Douglas (D-IL) and Kenneth Keating (R-NY) served on its Steering Committee (see Bachrack 1976). 28 Senator William Knowland (R-CA) and Representative Walter Judd (R-MN) are perhaps the best examples. Knowland is known as the senator from Formosa due to his staunch support of Taiwan, and Judd devoted his life to a crusade for China and Taiwan because of his missionary years in China (see Bachrack 1976; Edwards 1990). 6 Congress and China’s human rights 1 Cohen (1987) offers the best and most comprehensive analysis of U.S. human rights policy toward China in the 1970s and 1980s and her focus is on the executive branch, not Congress. She singled out “the information gap,” “sheer numbers,” “absence of a lobby,” and “prejudices in China’s favor” as the primary factors for the exemption of China from U.S. human rights policy. Under “the prejudices in favor of China,” she included strategic cooperation between the two countries, which muted congressional criticism of China’s human rights. Another factor, which at that time was emphasized more by administration officials than by members of Congress but which will have decisive impact on congressional debate on MFN renewal after 1989, is the potential loss of trade resulting from an aggressive human rights policy. 2 For example, in 1975, a one-year ceiling was placed on military aid to South Korea. Since 1975, ceilings had been placed on economic aid to Chile and military aid was prohibited. Military aid to Uruguay was prohibited in 1976. Congress prohibited all military aid, including military training, to Argentina in the early period of the Carter administration. Military aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Brazil was also prohibited after the three countries voiced objection to congressional criticism of their human rights practices. Congress also cut back military grant aid to the Philippines and prohibited military aid to Nicaragua. 3 The U.S. and the former Soviet Union signed a trade agreement on October 18,

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6

7

8 9

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1972, that would have granted MFN status to the latter. Shortly before the trade agreement was concluded, the Soviets imposed a prohibitively expensive “exit tax” on emigration. Since most Soviet emigrants were Jews, this exit tax became a formidable restriction on Jewish emigration. In reaction, Senator Jackson launched a relentless campaign against granting MFN to the Soviets, hence the Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Omnibus Trade Bill. In January 1975, the Soviets notified Washington that they would reject the trade agreement, including MFN status. It was not until June 1990 that the Soviet Union was granted MFN (see Willkie 1994: 119–124). According to Willkie (1994), geopolitical considerations were only part of Jackson’s differential treatment of China. Jackson repeatedly expressed his concerns about using China for short-term strategic advantages vis-à-vis the former Soviet Union. He seemed to have a long-term version of China, a potentially powerful country with which the U.S. should establish a “constructive, and enduring . . . relationship” (quoted in ibid.: 126). Congress did take some actions. For example, the Congressional Friends of Human Rights Monitors took up the case of a Chinese dissident in 1984. In the same year a member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus introduced a resolution respecting Chinese persecution of Christians (Cohen 1987: 525). According to Mann (1999), it was the Chinese students studying in the U.S., not members of Congress, who first came up with the idea of revoking China’s MFN. No student at that time would have realized that they were “starting a series of annual legislative battles that would continue through most of the decade and would prove far more enduring than the Chinese student movement itself ” (ibid.: 231). Emigration has never been a major issue for China in the MFN debate. When it was first brought up during Deng’s 1979 visit to Washington, D.C., Deng said to President Carter, “If you want me to release ten million Chinese to come to the United States, I’d be glad to do so”(quoted in Cohen 1987: 458). That effectively ended any further discussion about China’s emigration policy. In fact, given China’s enormous population, many administration officials were wary of a literal interpretation of the Jackson–Vanik amendment. Senator Bob Dole is arguably the most famous supporter of China’s MFN. He “has consistently extolled the commercial benefits of extending MFN for China, particularly for his home state of Kansas” (CQWR 1996: 1232). It should be noted that the Chinese government also adopted various tactics to keep its MFN status. On the one hand, Beijing signed a six-month contract with Hill and Knowlton, a Washington-based PR firm, to “boost its images among lawmakers” (Lee 1991). On the other hand, China initiated a series of buying sprees to demonstrate the importance of the Chinese market. For example, in early 1993 the Chinese purchased nearly US$1 billion worth of planes, cars, and oil equipment (Southerland 1993). The ultimate purpose of dangling large contracts in front of American businesses is to motivate American business community to exert political influence over their own government. This is the so-called strategy of “play barbarians off against barbarians,” used by the Chinese back in the colonial times. And the strategy has proven very effective, as reflected in the emergence of a new China lobby on Capitol Hill representing Boeing, GE, Wal-Mart, wheat growers and the like and in the lobby’s success in keeping China’s MFN status (Weisskopf 1993). In addition to the 12 votes on joint resolutions to revoke MFN, there were 11 House votes on three bills that set conditions for MFN renewal: three votes on HR 4939 in 1990, four votes on HR 2212 in 1991 and 1992, two votes on HR 5318 in 1992, and two votes on HR 4590 in 1994. The Senate had nine MFN-related votes. I will not give details about the Senate votes because I analyze only House

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votes. Readers who are interested in the determinants of roll call voting on HR 2212 are encouraged to see my article in American Politics Research (Xie 2006). 11 There were 32 House votes on China’s human rights in the House. With the exception of the six votes on funding to the United Nations Population Fund, three votes on denying visas to Chinese officials involved in religious persecution or forced abortion, and one vote on inter-chamber difference on the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act (HR 2712), all the votes were unanimous or nearly unanimous. 12 Andrew Nathan (1994) had a different assessment of the usefulness of MFN linkage, based on the fact that the Chinese strongly protested against conditional MFN or outright revocation, made concessions like release of political prisoners days before presidential renewal of MFN, and used various lobbying tactics to maintain unconditional MFN, including hiring PR firms (Lee 1991) and placing high-profile purchase orders (Southerland 1993). He thus concluded, “But the vigor of Chinese rhetoric and lobbying against MFN withdrawal and the timing of major Chinese concessions show that the MFN threat has been the single most important element in the effectiveness of Western policy” (Nathan 1994: 89). 7 Beyond the case of China 1 In 2005, Congress passed HR 1053 authorizing presidential extension of MFN to Ukraine, but the vote was a nearly unanimous 417–2, which leaves no room for analysis of variation in voting. Hence I do not include the case of Ukraine. 2 In 1983, Congress postponed indefinitely—thus killing—resolutions to deny Reagan’s renewal of MFN status for China, Hungary, and Romania. The House postponed H.Res.256 rejecting MFN for Romania by a vote of 279–126 and postponed resolutions on China and Hungary (H.Res.257 and H.Res.258 respectively) by voice votes (CQ Almanac 1983: 264–265). 3 The UAW, as well as U.S. automobile companies, supported the U.S.–Canada Automotive Products Trade Act of 1965, while independent parts manufacturers opposed the trade bill on the ground that it would increase the dominance of the Big Three (CQ Almanac 1965: 510). This may explain why Union Strength is not statistically significant in this vote. 8 Conclusion 1 In retrospect, there appears to be more to it than merely partisan motivations in Democratic criticism of Bush’s China policy. Some Democrats, notably George Mitchell, Nancy Pelosi, and Dick Gephart stuck to the same position on China policy even after Clinton took office. Take George Mitchell, for example. “Mitchell would later become nearly as much of a problem for a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, as he had been for the Republicans,” Mann observed (1999: 199). “He was genuinely outraged by the Chinese repression; he believed in what he was doing.” But for many others Democrats, “the conclusion seems inescapable that . . . the MFN disputes of the Bush years had been primarily an issue of partisan politics.” 2 The case of Taiwanese-Americans is one example of ethnic pressure. While the number of Taiwanese-Americans is very small, they are well organized and have easy access to Congress because of the historical ties between Taiwan and the U.S. In the 1980s, a number of Taiwanese groups lobbied Congress to pay more attention to Taiwan’s human rights conditions and they were successful in bringing Congress to bear on the political regime on the island (Bush 2004: Chapter 6). 3 There are some members who pursue human rights for personal or partisan reasons. Steven Solarz and George Mitchell are examples of the former, while

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Ron Brown and other Democrats in the Bush years are examples of the latter. Moreover, Congress’s human rights crusade in the 1970s was also partly motivated by a desire to rein in the runaway executive branch in Vietnam and Latin America. As Forsythe (1988: 26) wrote, In short, what an observer may fairly and properly call a human rights vote may not be seen as a purely human rights vote by any given member of Congress. A member may view it as a test of power between Congress and the president, or of national versus international jurisdiction, or of economic versus idealistic considerations, or of security versus morality, and so on. Nevertheless, these various motivations do not refute the observation that it is in the interest of members to take a pro-human rights position. 4 Keller (1997a; 1997b) offered some journalistic accounts of Chinese lobbying by organizing congressional delegations. 5 Commenting on the strength and sophistication of the Taiwan lobby, Charles Freeman (quoted in Tucker 2001: 338) described how Taiwan skillfully played the constituency card. Even if it was a Q-Tip cotton swab, according to Freeman, the Taiwanese made sure that the congressman from the district where cotton was grown knew Taiwan bought the cotton swab. By contrast, in 1980, the Chinese were buying one out of seven bales of cotton produced in the U.S. but no one was aware of this, except the Board of Trade at Chicago and the cotton traders. 6 For a good review of the arguments about the China threat, see Roy (1996). For a more benign view of the rise of China, see Spence (2005) and Zakaria (2005). For a critical view of how the China threat is played up by the neoconservatives, see Klare (2005). Pei (2005) is much more pessimistic about the rise of China, arguing instead that China’s political system prevents it from becoming a real superpower.

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Index

Acheson, Dean 81, 169 AFL-CIO 167–168 Albright, Madeline 56 American Institute on Taiwan 85–86, 97 anti-Communism: Chiang Kai-shek’s record of 80; impact on roll call voting 129–131, 135, 141; measure of 38; Taiwan’s bond with Congress 97 anti-secession 6, 151 arms embargo 6, 32, 40, 158 Asia and Pacific, Subcommittee on 87–88, 96 AuCoin, Les 63, 105 Baucus, Max 49, 100, 112, 143, 152 Bellocchi, Nat 97 Bereuter, Doug 38, 83, 88, 96, 167 bicameralism 9, 10, 14, 43, 48, 51, 149; cooling saucer 163; policy implications of 17; presidential dominance 51; structural differences 17, 143 Biden, Joseph 86, 166 Bonior, David 70, 83, 170 Bonker, Don 120 Bush, George H.W.: Democratic criticism of 150; kowtowing to Beijing 111; MFN extension to Hungary 128, 140; policy of “business as usual” 64–65; pressure from Congress on Taiwan policy 84; renewal of China’s MFN 109, 111–112, 145–146, 162; Republican loyalty to 145; sales of F16 jetfighters to Taiwan 145, 171–172; veto and override, 46, 50–52, 107, 114, 116, 143, 145 Bush, George W. 40, 150, 167 Byrd, Robert 64 Canada: roll call votes on 132; U.S. trade

with 124, 126–127 Capitol Hill 15, 30, 34; anti-Communism 36; Chiang Kai-shek 80; China’s human rights 58, 108; China’s PNTR 66, 69; Chinese human rights lobbies 106–107; Chinese lobby 154, 174; criticism of engagement policy 51; critics of China’s human rights 54, 58; Deng Xiaoping’s visit to 105; Jiang Zemin’s visit to 26; Madame Chiang Kai-shek 80; MFN renewal for China 30, 130; Taiwan lobby 98–99, 153, 171, 173; trade with China 9, 77 Carter, Jimmy: establishment of diplomatic relations with China 34, 51, 84, 171; human rights policy toward China 100–104; meeting with Deng Xiaoping 174; promotion of PNTR 67; secret diplomacy 81, 171; U.S.China trade agreement 63; veto of HR 2521 166 Cassidy 98–99 Center for Security Policy 91, 159 Chiang Kai-shek: military and economic aid to 51; wife of 80 China Aid Act 1, 5, 80, 98, 170 China bloc 36, 80–81, 84, 87, 98, 165, 169 China card 107 China lobby 98, 169, 173–174 China White Paper 81 Chinese Exclusion Act 1 Chinese Foreign Ministry 7 Clinton, Bill: arms sales to Taiwan 56; campaign for China’s PNTR 64–67, 96; engagement with China 64, 111, 119, 150; executive order linking MFN and China’s human rights 119, 121, 128; illegal Chinese campaign donations 30, 119, 165; lobbying

200

Index

against Murkowski amendment 55, 86–87; MFN renewal for China 64, 150; MFN renewal for Vietnam 129; renewal of fast track authority 168; summit with Jiang Zemin 26–27, 49, 55; Taiwan policy 84–87; Three-Nos 151; visa to Lee Teng-hui 35, 55, 87–88; votes on China’s MFN renewal 114, 116–119, 140, 145; votes on China’s PNTR 73–75, 145 Committee for Democracy on Taiwan 87 Committee of One Million against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations 173 Constituency influence 3, 19, 22; defense policy 148; foreign policy 22–23; see also electoral connection Constituency interests 10, 67 129, 135, 147–149; congressional responsiveness to 22; foreign trade 69, 77; impact on roll call voting 4, 11, 19, 24, 72–73, 94, 97; measures of 72, 91; Taiwan policy 90, 172; U.S.-China trade 91 Constituency opinion: impact on roll call voting 24–25, 161; measures of 164; methodological issues concerning 24 Cox, Christopher 35, 47, 55, 165 Cox Committee 7 Cox Report 7, 35, 165 Craig, Thomas 49, 143, 152 Crane, Philip 64, 128, 131, 140, 165 Dalai Lama 53, 152, 158, 166 DeConcini, Dennis 107 deficit, U.S. trade: Canada 126; China 9, 32, 61–63, 74, 77, 119, 130, 147; Japan 125–126; Mexico 127; Taiwan 172; the world 126 DeLay, Tom 26, 82, 165 Democratic Party 20, 69, 75, 169 Deng Xiaoping 5, 105, 162, 174 Derwinski, Edward 104 divided government 35, 39, 41, 96, 108 Dixon, Alan 108 Dole, Bob 57, 112, 166–167, 174; amendment by 86 Dole-Stone amendment 171 Dornan, Robert 104 Dreier, David 96 electoral connection: House-Senate difference 22; human rights 120; Taiwan policy 97; trade issues 77

Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act 50, 108, 116, 162, 175 English, Phil 63 European Union 6, 32, 40, 153 evil empire 111–112 export control 12, 28, 158, 165; bills regarding 29–31, 34 Export-Import Bank 63, 66, 158 fast track authority 76, 122, 168 filibuster 49, 163, 166 Finance, Committee on 49, 68, 163 forced abortion 26–27, 32, 105, 175 forced labor 65, 74 foreign assistance 28, 32, 45, 102, 159 Formosa Resolution 5, 79, 81, 158 Frank, Barney 105 Fraser, Donald 103, 169 free trade: constituency interests 77; fast track authority 76; House-Senate difference 76–77; impact on American jobs 76; labor union 21, 69; Max Baucus 49; opposition to 76; party division over 20–21, 69, 73, 136, 151; support for 49, 75–77, 155 Freeman, Charles 153, 176 Garn, Jake 84 gatekeeping rights 15–16, 49, 143, 163 GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariff): China’s membership in 167; party division over 73–74, 168; roll call votes on 75 Gephardt, Richard 26, 70, 105 Gibbons, Sam 64, 112, 118, 131 Gilman, Benjamin 47, 49–50, 56, 88, 143, 165, 167 Glenn, John 8, 86, 171 Goldwater, Barry 84, 87 Gore, Al 168 Graham, Lindsey 6, 63, 77, 150, 155 Grassley, Chuck 60, 67 Hamilton, Lee 155 hearings 15, 19, 27–28, 50; on China’s human rights 57–58, 102 Helms, Jesse 36, 47, 56–57, 111, 149, 164, 167 Holbrooke, Richard 101 Hong Kong 34, 67, 111, 164 human rights: bills regarding 29, 31, 104; campaign for 52, 101–103, 176; Chinese violation of 30, 57, 101, 103,

Index 106, 128; conflict with other policies 120, 147; double standards 121; exemption of China from 101–104; impact on roll call voting 135, 137, 141; Jimmy Carter 101; lobbies 106–107; Richard Nixon 101; roll call votes on 113, 175; Romanian violation of 128, 140; strategies to promote 102, 113, 152; Taiwan 29, 34, 87, 158, 168–169, 175; Tibet 54, 57, 104, 166 Hungary: MFN renewal for 128, 148–149; roll call votes on 128, 131–132; U.S. trade with 130 Hyde, Henry 6 ideology: attributes of 21–22, 164; correlation with party 24, 71; impact on roll call voting 3–4, 11–12, 24, 73, 94, 173; measure of 93, 146, 173; predictor of foreign policy voting 146; sources of data on 159 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) 12, 21, 32, 64, 112 interest group 54, 99, 161, 172 International Operations, Subcommittee on 58, 120 International Relations, Committee on 27, 49, 56, 83 Jackson, Henry 103, 162, 174 Jackson-Vanik Amendment: emigration requirement 57, 108, 128, 174; former Soviet Union 103, 173–174; procedures of 167; removal of China from 65, 167 Japan: economic sanctions against China 153; roll call votes on 132; U.S. trade with 124–127; UAW 136 Javits, Jacob 171 Jiang Zemin: meeting with members of Congress 26; summit with Bill Clinton 55; visit to the U.S. 7, 27, 34 Johnson, Lyndon 127 Kemp–Inouye–Helms amendment 164; see also Mexico City policy Kennedy, Edward 87, 107 Kissinger, Henry 58, 67, 101, 154 Knowland, William 170, 173 Korean War 36, 169 labor union: China’s MFN renewal 113–114; Democratic Party 21, 69, 75;

201

impact on roll call voting 67, 135; NAFTA 135–136; PNTR 66, 68–69, 76, 136, 168 Lantos, Tom 47, 78, 167 Leach, James 87 Lee Teng-hui 35, 55, 87 Lenovo 6 Levin, Carl 87, 167 Lieberman, Joe 88 Lilley, James 101 Lord, Winston 105, 121 Lott, Trent 47 Macao 164 majority cycling 15 Mansfield, Mike 63, 80 Manton, Thomas 81 Markey, Edward 107 Mathis, Dawson 47, 102 Matsui, Robert 112 McCurdy, Dave 105 McIntyre, Thomas 63 Mexico: comparison with China 137; roll call votes on 132; U.S. trade with 124, 127 Mexico City policy 164; see also Kemp–Inouye–Helms amendment MFN: bills regarding 29–32; executive order 111, 119, 121, 128; Hungary 128–30; joint resolutions to disapprove of 11, 30–31, 109–110, 113, 120, 174; linkage with human rights 48–49, 54, 111–112, 119, 121, 153; opposition to 111, 128; presidential veto 48, 50–52, 108–109, 112; Romania 128, 132, 137; unconditional renewal of 49, 58, 111, 119, 150, 175; Vietnam 128–129, 131–132 military-industrial complex 89, 91, 97, 172–173 Miller, Clem 16 missile technology 30, 119, 165 Mitchell, George 175 Moynihan, Patrick 57, 111, 167 Murkowski, Frank 84, 88, 172 Murkowski Amendment 55 145 NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement): congressional debate about 127, 136; labor union opposition to 135–136; Mexico 127; party division over 73; roll call votes on 74–75; Senate passage of 76 Nanking Treaty 167

202

Index

National Offshore Oil Corporation (NOOC) 6 Negroponte, John 101 new institutionalism 12, 13, 48; application of 4, 9, 10, 142; insights from 14; prediction of 10 Nixon, Richard: visit to China 5, 37, 103, 129 normalization 5, 34, 42, 64, 84, 102–103; Bush’s involvement in 51; Congress’s role in 8 North Korea 12, 79 nuclear secrets: Chinese theft of 7, 30, 119, 165 nuclear technology: Chinese transfer to Iran 26; Chinese transfer to Middle East countries 158; transfer to China 27 OPICO (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) 53–54 Pallone, Frank 83, 170 Panetta, Leon 105 party leadership 4, 19, 23, 170 Pease, Donald 51 87 Pell, Claiborne 47, 87–88, Pelosi, Nancy 26, 70, 112–113, 175; sponsor of China bills 50–51, 54; Taiwan 88 PNTR (Permanent Normal Trade Relations): Bill Clinton 64, 73; linkage with Taiwan policy 83; opposition to 69–70, 76, 136, 168; support for 67–68, 136, 147; votes on 65 Porter, John 167 Pritchard, Joel 104 procedural legislation 19, 55, 57–58 public opinion 17, 108, 161; favorable toward China 36, 38, 40–41; framing of 19, 55, 58; impact on China policy 25, 36–37; impact on public policy 24, 36; measure of 25; responsiveness to 24, 37, 98; significance of 24 Radio Free Asia 27, 50, 55 Rangel, Charlie 168 Reagan, Ronald: human rights policy toward China 101; Mexico City policy 164; opposition to auto domestic content bills 136; renewal of MFN status for Romania 128, 140, 175; support for Taiwan 5, 84, 171 Regula, Ralph 64

Republican Party 20, 69, 173 Richardson, Bill 105 Roemer, Tim 112 Rogers, Mike 63 Rohrabacher, Dana 47, 88, 107 Romania: MFN renewal for 128, 137; roll call votes on 132, 140; U.S. trade with 130 Rose, Charlie 167 Rostenkowski, Dan 112, 128, 131 Roth, Stanley 98, 153–154 rule of anticipated reactions 55–57 Ryan, Tim 63 sanctions 27, 46, 105–106, 121, 152–153, 167 Sasser, James 8 Scarborough, Joe 26 Schulze, Richard 64, 111, 128 Schumer, Charles 6, 63, 77, 150, 155 Shanghai Communiqué 55 Silver Purchase Act 21, 162 Smith, Chris 26, 47, 70, 111, 166; hearings on China’s human rights 58 Smith, Gordon 6 Solarz, Stephen 47, 87, 121, 175 Solomon, Gerald 47, 85, 88, 107, 111, 165 Solomon, Richard 120 Soviet Union (former) 2, 101; demise of 11, 107–108; MFN status for 57, 103–104, 167, 173–174; strategic alliance against 11, 103, 120, 128, 144 Stevens, Ted 172 Stone, Richard 63 substantive legislation 19, 56–57 Taiwan: anti-secession law 6; arms sales to 12, 55, 84, 144, 89–90, 99, 164, 171; bills regarding 30–32, 34, 47; 82; congressional support for 5, 24, 30, 98, 151, 156; 162, 172; constituency interests 91, 172, 176; democratization 24, 97, 156; Frank Murkowski 55, 84, 88 145, 172; human rights 29, 34, 87, 169, 175; Lee Teng-hui 35, 55, 87; lobby 98–99, 153, 176; roll call votes on 82–83, 85–86; U.S. military relations with 49, 81, 84, 93; U.S. trade with 29, 90, 172; Walter Judd 80, 173; William Knowland 170, 173 Taiwan Relations Act: arms sales under 55, 164; bipartisan support for 84, 171; congressional debate of 34, 87;

Index executive-legislative skirmish over 81, 84, 171; Jesse Helms 164; language on human rights 87, 172; partisan division over 84; roll call votes on 85–86; significance of 81 Taiwan Security Enhancement Act 11, 35, 56, 82, 145 tariff: Generalized System of Preference 167; on Chinese products 6, 51, 63, 111, 150, 158 Three Nos 151 Tiananmen Incident: bills introduced before and after 10, 32–33; impact on Congress 5, 11, 33–34, 36–37, 40, 105–106; 144; passions about 116; symbol of Chinese human rights 152, 155 Tibet: bills regarding 29, 31–32, 34, 47, 53; Dalai Lama 152; human rights 54, 57, 104, 106, 152, 166 Truman, Harry: aid to Chiang Kai-shek 36, 51, 80, 169; comparison with Clinton 52; reelection of 83; Republican criticism of 35, 40, 52, 80, 83–84, 146, 150, 169 UAW (United Auto Workers) 125, 127, 136, 175 Unified government 35, 96 United Nations: China’s admission to 5, 36, 98, 169; Taiwan’s admission to 88 Unocal Corporation 6 UNPF (United Nations Population Fund): bills regarding 29–31, origin of the controversy 164–165 U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement 126, 131 U.S.-China Act: of 1991 50; of 1992 51

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U.S.-Taiwan Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Cooperation Act 11, 35, 82 U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty 79, 81, 84 Vandenberg, Arthur 170 veto 9–11, 14, 17–18, 42, 163; George H.W. Bush, 50–52; impact on China policy 112, 143; Jimmy Carter 166 Vietnam: MFN renewal for 128–129, 131; roll call votes on 132, 137, 140; U.S. trade with 130 Walden, Greg 67 Walter, Judd 80, 170, 173 Wanghia Treaty 167 War Powers Act 18 Ways and Means, Committee on 63, 66, 83, 112–113, 128, 131, 168 weapons proliferation 74, 77, 112, 144 White House: alliance with free trade supporters 113, 155; disagreements with Congress on China policy 35, 64; engagement with China 109; party control of 37–38 WHO (World Health Organization) 54 Wilson, Woodrow 13, 15–17, 43, 48, 122 Wofford, Harris 107 Wolf, Frank 6, 60, 111, 128, 140; amendment by 132, 137, 140 WTO (World Trade Organization): China’s accession to 28, 64–67, 76, 95–96, 154, 158, 168; Taiwan’s accession to 65; withdrawal of 158; see also PNTR Zablocki, Clement 28, 85 Zhu Rongji 64