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CIAO DATE: 2/00
WTO and the Future of US-Asia Trade: A Panel Discussion
Nicholas Platt, Robert Thompson, Merit Janow, Richard Boucher, Mark Levinson, Ritu Sharma, Edward Cloonan
December 10, 1999, New York
Nicholas Platt: We’re here to talk about what happened in Seattle and what its implications are. Who would have thought that the meeting of a slow moving international organization would attract 35,000 protestors in Seattle. What’s going on here? Is this a primal scream against globalization? Did what was going in the streets have much to do with what was actually going on inside the negotiating room? What are the implications for US and Asian trade, for China’s accession into the WTO, for a whole range of things that are very important to all of us?
We are fortunate today to have a very distinguished panel to try and sort out some of the questions, and provide some ideas as to what the answers might be. They are led by Robert Thompson, Managing Editor of Financial Times, who has had a long and distinguished career as a correspondent in his own right in China and in Asia. And I’m going to, without further ado, turn the meeting over to him. I also want to add our thanks to the Financial Times for its sponsorship of today’s program.
We thought when we were putting this program together several months ago that we might have something to talk about. Little did we know how much.
Robert Thompson: The WTO was one of those professional organizations that we were quite concerned about representing on the front page of the paper. Literally a week before Seattle we had meeting of editors where we were discussing whether or not the front page main headlines should say, ‘WTO’ or ‘World Trade Organization.’ Because there might be people, particularly in the US, who thought the WTO was a spin-off of the WWF (and it turned out to be true!).
But as it was, the WTO made it onto the evening news. And WTO became literally a household name throughout the country. And though many people didn’t quite understand what was going on in the WTO, it became ‘the embodiment of all evil,’ Essentially, what we saw in Seattle was an extraordinary convergence of different kinds of concerns. It was, of course, not a secret that there were going to be protestors. The interesting thing, I guess, is that the protestors’ agenda was a lot clearer than that of most of the trade delegates.
And apart from trade issues themselves, there was a genuine I guess ‘cry from the heart’ about the effects of globalization. Maybe it was a vision of a strip mall stretching around the globe from Seattle to the South of France where there’s this terrible uniformity that’s imposed, and one of the reasons for its imposition are organizations like the WTO.
In a funny way, you can go back to the resignation quite a few months ago of Oskar LaFontaine, the German finance minister, where he made a comment along the lines of: ‘My party has sold out my heart. I still know where my heart is and it’s not traded on the stock exchange.’ Now in Germany you see those pressures building up on that government there. Then elsewhere in Europe you have the traditional trade friction between France and the UK over beef which may become one of the most dramatic disputes between those two countries for a couple of hundred years.
Obviously the images of Seattle were very much influenced by the activities of a fringe sort of crazy confluence of extremeists, some of who’s idea of free trade was to smash in a window and take out a television set.
But at the same time there really was a kernel of genuine concern ranging from the cultural to the economic. And one of the problems, fairly obviously, was because of the lack of planning, in the way that the agenda become so fluid, that President Clinton — who is probably one of the few people in the world who’s able to articulate complex cultural issues in an understandable way for a general audience — decided very much to focus on the US audience rather than the international audience. And so, rather than being an international meeting it did become, particularly for observers here, one very much dominated by a Washington agenda that wasn’t necessarily a Washington internationalist agenda.
You think back a few months ago where the debate was, ‘Well not only what should we have in the round but a presumption that the round would take place.’ And, the argument then was over what to call it, whether it should be the Clinton round or the Leon Britton round. But I guess given the nature of the wrestling that took place we could call it ‘Seattle Round One.’
But the question really is what happens next? And it’s a very, very big issue for us in The Financial Times. Apart from being perceived to be the mouthpiece of global capitalism, which made us a convenient target, or at least our vending machines a convenient target in Seattle. The issues that it raises will, over the next few months, affect everything from the China-US bilateral agreement, which is yet to be formally ratified and is still on shaky ground, through to issues of European trade both internal and external, right through to how we deal with these much more complex cultural issue of whether globalization is a good thing or not.
Arrayed before you is a panel of genuine experts in the field who are going to give you their interesting, and sometimes conflicting views about what happened in Seattle and what will happen next.
Our first speaker will be Merit Janow, Professor of International Trade at Columbia University. Next will be Mark Levinson, Chief Economist and Director of Public Policy at UNITE. Then Ambassador Richard Boucher, the Senior Official for APEC at the State Department. Ritu Sharma, who is the Executive Director of Women’s EDGE. And Ned Cloonan, Vice President of AIG, will finish up.
Also, I should point out in the audience we have a guest who, maybe because of the nature of her position is not able to sit on the panel and make public statements, but might be able, at some stage, to contribute to the debate. Her name is Xing Houyuan from China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.
I have to send apologies from Dan Seligman of the Sierra Club, who wasn’t able to be with us today. It is particularly unfortunate because some people would argue that more important than President Clinton are groups like the Sierra Club. But we have enough representative views here today to make a genuine contribution to the debate.
Merit Janow: I think all of us have felt strong reactions after events last week so it’s a real pleasure to be with this distinguished audience and panel. I thought what I would do is briefly comment on what was the agenda going into Seattle since that has been obscured perhaps by events a bit. And second, some lessons from Seattle both for the trading system, if you will and (given our venue) for US/Asia trade.
Starting with the agenda, I think it might be worth remembering that there really were four different areas. The only area that was mandated if you will by the Uruguay Round Agreement was to identify next steps in agriculture and services.
In addition, the whole range of matters that are covered by WTO disciplines such as tariffs, subsidies and intellectual property and trade rules such as anti-dumping counter veil were all matters for which some country or another felt they wanted to seek new extensions.
Third, there was something called The Singapore Work Program, which spoke to transparency in government procurement, investment and competition policy. And, then there were a host of issues under the rubric of the ‘new issues,’ such as labor and the environment. Reform of the WTO with respect to transparency and civil society, capacity building, accession issues for transition economies, E-Commerce, and extension of the moratorium on non-taxation.
So this is a very complicated and large agenda and there were other features that I haven’t mentioned, such as the working group on biotechnology, and other things.
It’s very tempting to get into a discussion of blame and responsibility. I think frankly what happened at Seattle was utterly predictable. Personally, I don’t have the view that it was very damaging to the international trading system, rule structure and we don’t yet understand or fully appreciate or know what the collateral consequences will be. And I think that people should really be thinking hard about how to rebuild confidence in the international trading system and the WTO itself.
I guess I’d like to just point out perhaps some four or five implications for the system and then a few for US-Asia trade.
With respect to the system, I think it’s very tempting for officials to believe that summits are action-forcing events and that it’s a good idea to hold them. But I think the lesson from this experience should be — and those who have been involved in trade negotiations for a long time know — that you can’t engage internationally until you have a domestic mandate. And I don’t think any major jurisdiction went into these negotiations with a real negotiating mandate. And the reasons for that, I think, are various. Some are still digesting the consequences of the Uruguay Round, and have no real further liberalization appetite. Some jurisdictions feel that the gains from the Uruguay Round were not being felt because things like the Multi Fiber Arrangement were back-end loaded. Asian economies feel that they had already given a lot under the IMF conditionality requirements with respect to the structural aspects. And thus, to make further liberalization when they are still in a recovery phase, was not appealing.
And, I think frankly, there was just insufficient preparatory work for this summit. It’s worth recalling that the Uruguay Round was kicked off in ‘86 after the Tokyo round came to conclusion in ‘79. It took from ‘79 to ‘86 to do that preparatory work. Here we had an instance where that preparatory work just hadn’t happened, I think from a combination of you can point to management errors and also bad luck. You had a change in the commission after all. You had a change in the WTO leadership and deputies. So some of the failures, if you will, to make that preparatory phase meaningful and to forge consensus, coupled with the lack of fundamental agreement on the agenda, really made this almost predictably problematical.
So I think the lesson for this is that there is a tremendous need to rebuild a consensus within the United States on international trade. And given the breadth of issues now seen as trade related, this is going to be very difficult.
In some sense there will be an obligation to engage on this perhaps sooner than we’d like, given the domestic legislative agenda which is looming, a bill on the Caribbean basin, CBI. There’s a mandatory review of the WTO itself built into the Uruguay Round Agreement’s Act which will occur from March through June of this year, and at the end of which the House of Representatives is obliged to have a resolution with respect to the WTO. And, of course, we have Jackson-Vanik in June.
So these are action-forcing events I’d like to get back to in just a moment.
A second lesson, I think, has to do with transparency and the WTO. I think transparency for the WTO is important. But in my mind one should differentiate transparency of negotiation and transparency of dispute settlement. And it seems to me that we must increase transparency of dispute settlement and allow a variety of groups who feel affected to be able to submit Amicus briefs or other things to their government. And the deliberations, the panels should be an open process. But at the end of the day panelists have to be able to reach their judgments without fear of intimidation or harassment. And like any court, need to be able to write their opinions without fear of intimidation. I don’t think it’s possible to hold a negotiation in the public venue. I think governments have to be able to make trade-offs and cut deals. That is not to say there shouldn’t be more transparency about what those may be going into the process.
Third, clearly if you are going to have a negotiation you have to have some negotiating flexibility. And I don’t think we can expect developing countries to welcome US or any other government’s support for technical assistance to implement their obligations as an incentive for negotiation.
A fourth implication I draw from this is that the ‘so called’ quad countries — Japan, Canada, the EU and the United States, who for so long would reach agreement and then much of the framework will follow — are not able to play the kind of role they had in the past. There is divisiveness both among that membership, between each other, very substantial fissures I think on key issues, and of course very substantial fissures between developed and developing.
A fifth implication I draw from this, which is to me quite interesting, is that when you don’t have a negotiating mandate and the appetite for trade liberalization is not there, then countries are more likely to pursue their foreign policy objectives in such a forum then their foreign economic policy objectives. And so you saw countries siding with each other, I thought, in pursuit of their foreign policy objectives, more than you saw them seeking to pursue a trade liberalizing agenda. Clearly labor and environment are both on the agenda now at the World Trade Organization in a way that they haven’t been before and we will have to find ways of addressing these concerns.
Personally, I think the WTO is not such a strong institution and I don’t personally feel that the labor issue is sufficiently linked to bring it into a dispute settlement rule of context, but I know others here will disagree.
Just a word or two on the Asia dimension. Clearly the US-China, or should I say, the China WTO agreement, I think is now in peril. My own view is this is not a gift to China, but a way of integrating China into the world trading system and making China more accountable to the world for opening its economy. My hope is that the administration can make this perspective forcefully.
I think there are things that the WTO could do to focus on those institutional reforms in China that will further integrate it into the world economy and it hasn’t yet done so. That is to say, the protocol is really very market access oriented. I think there is more that could be done on the institutional features.
It will take time to resolve these, and to get other countries in the WTO to finish their bilateral negotiations. So I’m not expecting and I think the fellow at the WTO in charge of accessions has himself said that it will take six months, at least, before we will be at that point.
Now I can imagine a scenario where there is the ability to cobble together an agreement on China within our own Congress if it happens around June; the closer we get to October it becomes more remote, in my mind.
And, I guess, a final point that I would end on is one potential adverse consequence of this failure is that there will be some temptation for countries to follow Europe’s bad example and pursue bilateral arrangements and FTA arrangements. Japan is particularly ambitious in this regard and is actively negotiating a bilateral FTA with Mexico, with South Korea, with Peru and Columbia and just this week Singapore welcomed negotiations with FTA with Japan. I don’t think this is very constructive.
So, I think we’re in a period of damage control and one where we need to do an awful lot of hard work in the event that there is some possibility of resumption, which I would expect couldn’t realistically occur until after the election in the United States.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much Marit. Each of our speakers will make a presentation and then we will let them argue among themselves — and hopefully I won’t have to get out the tear gas to keep them in place.
And then you’ll be free to fire out tough questions.
Our next speaker is Mark Levinson.
Mark Levinson: For those of you who are wondering, UNITE stands for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees.
I want to make three brief points. First I want to talk about the context that the ‘Battle in Seattle’ took place in, that is the context of globalization today.
Secondly I want to say how those current trends in globalization, I think, fueled and expressed themselves in Seattle. I’m talking about the significance of what happened in Seattle. And third and finally, say a few words about where that is leading us in the United States, specifically around the debate of the possible political fight over the China accession to the WTO.
So first the broader context or trend in globalization. A few months ago James Wolfensohn, the head of the World Bank, commented that at the level of people he said, the system, meaning the global economy, isn’t working. Which led me to think: what other level is there? And, indeed, recent United Nations reports document that globalization has dramatically increased in equality, both between and within nations. It goes on to report today the assets of the 200 richest people in the world equal the combined income of more than 2,000,000,000 people at the bottom. And that such islands of concentrated wealth in a sea of misery have historically been a prelude to upheaval.
Now to be fair, globalization has wrought dramatic and significant benefits in some countries. Ironically the greatest success stories have been recorded in East Asia but those are the very nations, I would argue, that did not ‘play by the rules’ of the so called Washington consensus privatization, deregulation, fiscal austerity, and lower trade barriers. Many of these countries protected their markets, redistributed land, invested in education, targeted and subsidized their exports and purposefully ran mercantilists trade surpluses, all of which Washington winked at during the Cold War. These widely celebrated successes of the new global economy occurred in the very countries that later suffered the most during the recent global financial crises, which literally thrust millions of working people back into poverty.
A heavy dose of free trade conventional wisdom accounts for this reversible fortune. I would argue that the Asian countries were vulnerable not because of crony capitalism, but because in fact they had opened up their financial markets. Because they had, in fact, become better free market economies, not worse.
The last financial crisis was unusual only in its severity and scope. World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stieglitz — ex-World Bank Chief Economist — has noted that the deregulated global economy has produced a ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ of financial crises of increasing depth and regularity. Whereas speculators are often bailed out, working people are not. Education and health benefits are slashed, the patient pays off outstanding debts. Children are taken from school. Millions lose their jobs. Real wages fall. Families break up. Social unrest, crime, violence increase. In short, macro economic data can tick upward by working families who suffer the effects for years. Poverty and desperation still haunt Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea today even as foreign capital returns to these markets. Mexico’s economy may have recovered from the ‘96 crash, but many small business owners remain ruined. Mexican workers have lost 25% of their purchasing power since NAFTA passed in ‘94.
The very remedies that the IMF prescribes to nations in crisis — devaluation, austerity, cut backs in social services to entice foreign speculators by increasing imports, ensure that workers, domestic producers and peasants pay for a crisis they did not create.
This, I believe, is the context in which the WTO ministers met in Seattle. Which brings me to Seattle.
The protests that accompanied the WTO meeting in Seattle showed just how urgent the issues of globalization and trade are to working Americans. Joining with environmentalists, consumers, human rights activists, the labor movement sent a message from Seattle that could not have been clearer! The era of trade negotiations by sheltered elite’s balancing competing commercial interests behind closed doors is over. Globalization has reached a turning point. The forces behind global economic change which exalt deregulation, cater to corporations, undermine social structures, and ignore popular concerns, cannot be sustained. The alternative is to build labor rights, environmental protection, and social standards into the core of trade accords and the protocols of international financial institutions, and enforce them with the same vigor now reserved for property rights.
These concerns of the labor movement are often caricatured as protectionist, parochial and out of touch with the realities of today’s global economy. This is a dangerous misreading of the labor movement’s position.
Confusing labor’s concern over fairness with rising isolationist sentiments in America and abroad will only hinder the adoption of reforms needed. Trade policies that ignore the rights and needs of workers, move the world backwards, not forwards. The voices in the streets of Seattle represent the future, not yesterday’s nostalgia. They imagine a world in which prosperity is shared by those who produce it and in which nations treat each other on the Earth with dignity and respect. They demand accountability for the powerful and a voice for the voiceless.
Such idealism, I believe, has a practical effect. Sharing prosperity increases the purchasing power of workers, and creates new demand to absorb the excess capacity that now depresses global markets. The fragile institutions of the emerging global economy will therefore be strengthened by giving working people a place at the economic and political table.
And, by the way, I am one who believes we need international institutions. I don’t believe that global capital can be regulated without international institutions. That is the position of the labor movement. We need the right kind of international institutions.
Let me say a few words about China, the China accession of the WTO, and the coming debate in the United States. China’s accession to the WTO and the debate that is going to take place in the United States are as much about the future of trade policy and the future of the WTO as it is about China. We oppose China’s accession to the WTO because China’s government brutally suppresses its citizens’ rights to free association.
China targets no social group more ruthlessly than workers and activists who attempt to emphasize their right to organize, to achieve even modest gains in labor standards.
In addition, China’s domestic labor market is marked by a floating population of between 100 and 200,000,000 people. The largest movement of surplus migrant laborers in world history. In China, these workers have a status comparable to undocumented workers in the US. They have even fewer rights than other Chinese workers. This is the basic of the underground economy in China.
Integrating such an economy into the WTO without any conditions on labor rights, we believe, has several consequences. First it would institutionalize the race to the bottom, which we believe is already occurring in the global economy, in ways that go way beyond what any other countries’ accession to the WTO would have.
And secondly, we believe it would probably forever doom the WTO as a forum where progress can be made on worker rights, because of the weight of China, the importance of China. And, for an institution that has already been suffering serious credibility problems, this could be a final, fatal blow.
The labor movement has publicly said we will oppose any trade accord, any deal that does not include worker rights and environmental standards, and that is why we’re going to fight the China accessions to the WTO in Congress.
That is what the battle in Seattle was about and that’s what is a continuation of that battle which I think we’re going to see in the United States over the China accession.
I want to end with the following thought. I believe when future generations look back on Seattle they will comment on the protests in the street. They will say, that is when the turning point in the globalization debate took place. But what they will really remember and what they will really be astonished about is that the debate in the hall was not about how to integrate labor rights and environmental standards into trade agreements, but whether they should exist at all.
Thank you very much.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much, Mark.
Our next speaker will be Ambassador Boucher, who is a Senior Official for APEC at the Department of State.
Richard Boucher:I think that Mark’s remarks are a good place for me to start because I do intend to address the same issues but perhaps in a slightly different manner than he did.
I think fundamentally, you have to look broadly at what’s going on. And what is going on is a whole lot of economic reform and a whole lot more open trade in Asia. And it’s going on through domestic efforts being undertaken by governments. Sometimes under pressure from the IMF. It’s being undertaken by this movement to free trade. And you have this proliferation of negotiations on free trade agreements. Some of them probably meeting a very high standard and others we’re not so sure about. And you have the work of APEC, the organization I spend most of my time on, which is 21 governments from around the Pacific Rim getting together to try to do this kind of more open, economic work together.
And this work will continue and it will continue for the best of all possible reasons. And that’s because people want the benefits that come from these things. They want the benefits from having more open societies. They want the better jobs that come from exports. They want the new jobs that come from investments and they want the prospects of being part of the world, because it brings prosperity and it changes people’s lives in a very, very positive way.
We can boost this process. We try to boost it through the work that we do in APEC by undertaking the kind of market reforms and financial reforms that have to underpin the more open economy in order for it to function without breakdown, in order for it to function well in society.
We work on strengthening markets in specific areas, like natural gas or electronic commerce are things that are coming up for the future.
We work on making trade easier as well as lowering tariffs. We work on reducing customs processing time, and a whole lot of different projects like that. Standards between products that make it easier for small businessman to get their products into foreign markets.
A whole lot of areas where people want to move forward and are moving forward together to establish the ground work, the basis to become more and more involved in a global economy.
Obviously starting the WTO round would be a big push for that and that was one of the things that APEC wanted. At our meeting in Auckland, we said we wanted a new Round and we started to describe how we wanted to see it happen.
But we did hit a breakdown in Seattle, or at least a time out, over some tough issues. Some of them new issues for the people who negotiate the WTO.
There will be consultations now. There will be some negotiations already on the built-in agenda. WTO was due to take up agriculture and services anyway. So that will begin. But there will be a process now where we are asking people to recommit to a new Round and to take the kind of discussions that can lead us there.
Finally, I want to talk about China and the WTO. I have to say, I have been working in China for about 20 years (not as long as Nick Platt). But certainly the kind of changes that I have seen in China have been enormous and there is basically a strategic, positive, and fundamental change going on in China that is very much in the interest of the world community and is very much in our interest to support. And what it involves is China becoming part of the world and China participating in world organizations. And not only participating in making rules to world organizations but being subject to those rules, as well. I believe very, very strongly that the WTO agreement with China is in the interest of the United States because essentially, as we all know, the US market has been open to Chinese goods for 20 years and the Chinese market has been very regimented and very close. Anything that opens up the Chinese market is good for people who aren’t selling to the Chinese market, who want to make things there, who want to get to the Chinese market, the Chinese consumer.
Even more fundamentally than that, it is good for the process of change in China. The lives of my Chinese friends have improved enormously because they can find jobs, because they can travel, because they can do things on their own. Because they can live a life beyond the control of the state in many cases. And that kind of change, I assume, came about in the last 20 years because of foreign investment, because of the opening up of the economy, and because of the economic reforms. And the WTO is very much a part of that in continuing that policy.
And you now have, in Asia, I think perhaps for the first time in a long time, in a lot of places, that kind of fundamental commitment to reform, to getting rid of the distortions in the economies — the cronyism, the bribery and the corruption, and the disadvantages that disadvantage. To establish the right rules and give people the ability and freedom to do things. That’s going in China and in it’s own way that’s going on in a lot of other places. You have the commitment of Kim Dae Jong, you have the commitment of the fine government of Thailand, and in various other places, because of what I said before.
Fundamentally these kinds of changes are in the interest of the people of these countries and that’s why they should be supported.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much Mr. Ambassador.
Our next speaker is Ritu Sharma.
Ritu Sharma: Good Morning.
It’s a real honor to be here on this panel with such distinguished speakers. I would particularly like to thank the Asia Society and David Youtz in particular, for the invitation to be here this morning.
As Mitsuye Yamada said of women, ‘We need to raise our voices a little more. Even if they say less. More, raise that voice. We need to raise our voices a little more even if they say to you, this is so uncharacteristic of you. Invisibility is not a natural state for anyone.’
This is what we are doing at Women’s EDGE. We are raising the voices of women in the debate where they have been all but silenced until now, until Seattle.
Women’s EDGE is a new coalition of organizations which include groups like CARE, Save the Children, Oxfam America, the World Wildlife Fund, the Feminist Majority, and individual American women from around the country, that is working to make US aid and trade policies work for women.
So, why did women go to Seattle? I think many of you have been wondering, ‘Why in the world is trade a women’s issue?’ Well, it’s highly likely that a woman made the shirts that you wearing this morning. Women probably picked the coffee that we’re drinking this morning. And East Asian women almost definitely sewed together the running shoes that you jogged in this morning. And chances are good that the precise fingers of a young Asian woman made the computer chips inside your Palm Pilot that you scheduled this breakfast into.
Now I’m not asking you to feel guilty about that by any means. Globalization and the increase of production oversees has provided millions of jobs for women, which has given them an income that they would not otherwise have had. Independence also has raised their status in their families and in their communities.
What we are talking about is how can we turn those jobs into better jobs, into more highly paid jobs, into more secure jobs. If we had the creativity and the human capacity to build the Palm Pilot we certainly have the creativity and the know-how to provide people with jobs that are safe, dignified and sustaining.
Now international trade cannot happen without women’s labor. 90% of the 27,000,000 workers in the export processing zones are women, 90%. In East and Southeast Asia alone women make up more than 80% of the workers in these zones.
These women are bringing more than their labor to international trade. We’re bringing a new vision and a set of values to globalization which recognizes the positive role that trade plays in our lives, most definitely. But also holds that human rights, environmental protection, public health and intangible concepts like dignity, sovereignty, and independence must have equal status as trade regulations.
The human value that holds that capital should be free to seek profit by whatever means, by whatever methods, it should have complete freedom is a human value that we hold. It’s not a truth that sort of came to us on the tablets from Moses. It’s something that we created and we believe that other human values should have equal status as that particular value.
An Association of Women in International Trade poll (and AWIT, if you don’t know it, is an excellent association of pro-trade organization of which Women’s Edge is a member) did a poll in May and found that a majority of respondents said that human rights, child labor and environment issues should be tied to trade agreements with sanctions to enforce those provisions. And this startled the pollster and they asked a follow-up question to say that, ‘Don’t you realize that these sanctions are not effective’ They don’t really work in this context!’ And 58% of those polled said they still strongly supported the use of trade related sanctions to promote human rights and the environmental protection. Even if they realized that those don’t work. They support it as a matter of principal.
So what disturbs women about the WTO is not a beef about trade or liberalization of trade. It is that trade rules are given top priority over all other forms of regulation. And that the WTO now has the authority to enforce that hierarchy.
And as an aside it is interesting to note that the WTO is the only — and I did my homework this — it is the only intergovernmental organization in the world that does not recognize gender issues in its policy.
I just want to say a few words to flesh out this issue as to why trade affects women differently than it affects men and there are three primary reasons.
When it comes to getting in the game it’s not a level playing field for women. Throughout the world women still face discrimination in every area of their lives including education and training, employment, access to capital or access to land. Women are 60% more likely than men to be illiterate. In Southeast Asia primary school enrollment rates for girls are still 20% lower than for boys.
An APEC paper on women and the economy states that in order for the benefits for liberalization to be shared, all resources, that is men’s labor, women’s labor; men’s capital, women’s capital. All resources must be free and equally free to respond to market incentives. But gender bias gives rise to differential access to resources. And, as a result, women are often less able to take advantage of the benefits of economic liberalization.
Now, are we asking the WTO to fix this? No. I think many of you in the press have certainly covered this. The protestors on the street are asking the WTO to fix all social ills or solve all the problems in the world. By no means are we expecting the WTO to do that. But we are asking the WTO that when programs are put into place to fix some of these social ills, that the WTO cannot undo that progress. And specifically that when it comes to issues such as national treatment or performance requirements, that WTO cannot disallow companies, nations, organizations to disallow affirmative action measures to help women overcome this kind of discrimination.
Secondly, women’s socially prescribed roles limit their abilities to participate in the economy. Women are required to care for the household, to grow food, to care for the family and children, etc. And the social norm that women should stay home prevents them from really participating fully in the formal economy.
And what’s happened, particularly in Asia, is that women have gone into the informal economy, which is why they’re street vendors or they sew garments in their own home, etc.
In Korea, for example, following the start of the Asian financial crises women made up 17% of Korean households were supported by women and after the crisis this figure rose to 40%. Just to give you a sense of the size and importance of the informal sector. In the Philippines, more than half a million women work at home assembling garments. In Indonesia 21% of women workers assemble products in their home. One study in one province in the Philippines showed that the informal sector contributed $200,000,000 to export. It’s a huge sector.
The issue is that women are outside of protection from labor, health or safety laws. It is very, very precarious employment for them. It is employment, but again, can’t we do better than that?
So, to sum up. What is it that women want from the WTO or from any other trade forum and there are primary things.
Women want equal access. Access to negotiators, information, documentation. Like everyone else in Seattle, women are calling for transparency in democracy in the global trading systems. In addition women want to see more gender diversity in delegations, expert groups, science panels and most of all in the dispute resolution body. In particular, we feel strongly that members of a dispute resolution body should not have a conflict of interest. They should be independent judges without business interests in the dispute mechanism.
Secondly we like to have assessment before agreement and Merit mentioned that preparatory work that is necessary before the WTO can go into its next round of negotiations. We think that there should be a full social and environmental impact assessment of WTO policies, including a gender impact assessment before starting a new round of negotiations.
And, third, women would like again equal values. Women would like to see a core set of labor, human rights and environmental standards that have equal weight with trade rules in negotiating and dispute resolution processes. Not necessarily inside the WTO, possibly a strengthened ILO that has some enforcement capabilities.
Impossible? Many of you think this is impossible. But you may be surprised to know that one multi-lateral organization has been admirably including these concerns in all of its work. I’m talking here about APEC. APEC is one example of a trade policy body that can do this in an effective way. And, in particular, I’d like to thank Ambassador Richard Boucher, because his leadership has been key in making this happen. I know from contacts inside and outside the State Department that his support for the APEC process on women is what has made it happen despite the skepticism of a number of other nations.
APEC had a ministerial-level meeting on women in October of 1998 and there are a few copies of the overview paper near the elevators. They called on APEC to develop a framework for gender analysis of all its policies and programs to collect sex-aggregated data and to increase the participation of women in all of the APEC forums. And not only did they put these words on paper, but they have followed up with a detailed series of how-to guides: how to do a gender analysis of trade, how to collect and use sex-aggregated data, and how to promote women in APEC. And all of these are available on the APEC website if anyone has interest in them.
So, when women are involved I think you can never underestimate what is possible. Even Charlene Barshefsky said failure is impossible in Seattle. Well, in the words of Pearl S. Buck, all things are possible until they are proven impossible and even the impossible may only be so as of now.
Thank you very much.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much Ritu. Next is Ned Cloonan of AIG.
Edward Cloonan: I’m beginning to wonder how I find myself sitting here, probably one of the first times in my life sitting at a place where I’m sitting in the place of the corporate, tyrannical representative — who, by the way, comes from a labor background himself. My father, my whole household was labor. I went to school as a result of the labor movement because of the benefits accruing to my father and his work. I was also a member of two unions myself and I participated in the organizing of a local 1199 in a hospital in Boston and also was a member of the bartenders union here in New York City.
So, having said that, I do think it’s a pleasure to be here and so much has been said already, and so many people know already the corporate argument that I will just try to be brief and mention a few things.
I do believe, and I think AIG and many corporations do believe, that if what took place in Seattle, if the coalition that did such a formidable job in Seattle is successful in derailing the WTO process going forward, and if they are successful in defeating WTO accession for China, I think they would be doing a disservice to the economic and political interests of the United States.
Conversely, if we continue to ignore what was presented in Seattle in some of the positions that were presented by representatives here, so vehemently protesting on their behalf, I think that we are probably going to find ourselves reducing the WTO, not realizing its potential going forward at the pace it probably could. And somehow or other we’ve got to find a way, we’ve got to find a place to deal with these issues.
But I think you’ll find many corporations feel that that place is not in the WTO. It has to be elsewhere and can meet with support in providing venues and mechanisms with teeth, as my colleague just said elsewhere.
But I’m going to confine most of my comments to the China WTO accession. The agreement — because I think it is going to be passed - I think is going to be the place where these arguments in this country are going to be articulated and fought.
Clearly this commercial agreement is a ‘home run.’ I say this as someone that’s been going to China for the past 18 years, and part of a company that has had a strategic focus on China for the better part of 22 years, working directly for a CEO who has made enough round trips to China that in mileage totals two round trips to the moon. And 20 years of work have resulted in us securing licenses in Shanghai and other cities in China.
So with 20 years of work, we have had limited access, and although we are grateful for that access, and we feel there are great gains in that country, with that limited access — this WTO agreement does something that we haven’t been able to do in 20 years, that eventually leads to unfettered, unlimited access to the largest potential insurance market in the world.
So we are going to pursue this WTO accession with vigor, you can imagine, and we support it wholeheartedly.
The agreement has such salutary benefits for so many sectors in our economy, not only for insurance, that it’s just impossible to ignore. Financial services in these sectors that are considered the new economy, if you will, are tremendous beneficiaries of this agreement. As well as, manufacturing and a lot of these things known as the traditional economy.
There were some comments made about labor and the women’s movement and Ambassador Boucher articulated beautifully the importance of America’s presence in the relationship with China.
I can say that when we were licensed to do business in China in 1992 we were the only 100% foreign owned insurance enterprise to be able to operate there — resulting from a lot of work, I want to add again. We now have 7,000 insurance agents working in Shanghai alone. These agents are, for the first time in their lives, and for the first time in the history of China, working on a commission basis and earning incomes that they never would have dreamed of 15 years ago or 10 years ago. As a result, we are attracting the best talent in China. And, by the way, the group of 7,000 agents is headed by a woman, a Chinese woman born in Dalian but raised in Beijing, now working in Shanghai and educated exclusively in China. I would say that a third of the total insurance agent base of 7,000 people are women. So there’s a lot of potential there.
But we in corporate America and those who have traveled to China and traveled to Asia really see this as a play well beyond their own limited commercial interest. You’d be hard pressed not to conclude that, the relationship with China is our most important relationship economically and it is the most important relationship we have politically. You’d be hard pressed to conclude that we as a nation would be able to have a successful foreign policy in that part of the world unless we have a dialog with China that is productive. You’d be hard pressed to conclude that unless China is growing, is instituting reforms and is stable that you China will do any of the things Americans want it to do.
We know about the struggle that’s going on in China with the reform movement there. It is estimated now that with WTO accession, China’s GDP growth will yield approximately an additional 12,000,000 new jobs created. And this is extraordinarily important because of the fall-out that is going to result from the reform of the state owned enterprises, and new jobs are going to need to be created. China knows this.
Also, we need to be quite clear that this leadership in China is extraordinarily capable. Premier Zhu Rongji, in the position that he has taken and the courage that he has shown in leading reforms, needs to be encouraged. He was jeopardized last Spring when the original WTO accession agreement was tabled and rejected by the Clinton administration. It was agreed that rejection then was a mistake, but I think most people here have to realize what jeopardy that placed those who wanted to institute reforms and encourage reforms in China. It was much more than what was reported here.
We as a nation — not we as corporations — we as a nation have to be cognizant of that. There is important capability in China right now that needs to be encouraged. WTO is part of that. And the accession and approval by the Congress of China’s accession is part of that.
In the United States, let’s face it, this is just a tremendous economic opportunity. It’s the ability to sell cars and computers and to open up bank accounts there, it’s just tremendous. And also I’m a firm believer, having traveled to that part of the world for so long, that there are so many obvious, obvious salutary benefits in the presence of US investment around the world that US companies need to be there.
I can’t comment as to whether or not there is child labor going on here or there and I can’t comment of the abuses that take place. I’m sure that a lot of these things do take place. But the presence of US commercial interest in these parts of the world is a tremendous benefit. The working conditions are almost always better in these companies. The opportunities presented to local nationals are definitely better. The opportunities for women, as you pointed out.
Finally, I want to say, we have workers too. We are not a union. But I had an analysis done at our headquarters at 70 Pine Street. We have 7,000 people employed there. I had the head of human resource of the department come up to examine our workforce and he concluded that one-third of our workforce at 70 Pine Street alone, one-third of the 7,000 people have their jobs here in New York directly supporting our international operations around the world.
As a US service provider you cannot grow and prosper unless you are gaining access in markets around the world. We will not be able to sustain in a competitive environment and levels of employment unless we are succeeding around the world. It’s a point that never really gets mentioned much. For example, workers in Ft. Worth, Texas in our office there are directly linked to our success around the world. And I think it’s something that needs to be taken into account.
As far as the domestic politics going forward on this, there’s going to be a fight. And it’s going to be formidable fight. As the gentleman from UNITE mentioned, they are going to fight it tooth and nail and we’re going to match that, tooth and nail. And my own belief — although one should never make predictions — but I do believe this will pass in the Senate and I do believe it will ultimately pass in the House. There’s going to be tremendous rancor, there’s going to be angst, there is going to be things said that we will all regret, but I think it’s going to pass.
So China’s WTO accession will take place. And it probably will take place for the exact same reason the protestors showed up in Seattle. They decided to unite, if you will, around this particular venue in time because they know how important the WTO is. And that’s exactly why members of Congress ultimately will agree to the same thing: WTO is too important not to have it happen in China. To have accession is too important for it not to happen and they will pass it.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much Ned. Merit has to head off a little early, so I thought I would ask her a tough question. Which is, ‘Will the US China trade agreement be ratified by Congress and when?’ That’s two questions.
Merit Janow: Well I have no special knowledge on either question. You know, there are some members of Congress who are working hard to form a coalition and rebuild a working ability to pass trade legislation.
So, I think it’s conceivable, I agree with Ned, I think certainly it is possible. The question is partly one of timing and how much it gets delayed and how much it runs into the election cycle. The closer we get to the election, the more remote it is. It seems to me no one will want to be associated with the China vote on the eve of a Congressional election. So that to me is part of the calculus. I also think that in the fashioning of an agreement over Jackson-Vanik, it is conceivable that one could fashion an approach that kept certain features very important to some constituents, such as the human rights issue on the American agenda but not necessarily the requirement of a trade linkage. And, I think that will be important and I think that’s doable, because that’s a strong sentiment in this country that needs to be heeded. But it need not, in my view, result in a linkage to trade. So I think it’s very possible. I think at this point in time we should be optimistic.
Robert Thompson: Ambassador Boucher, what are the odds?
Richard Boucher: I spend my life analyzing foreign political systems; I have to say I have the singular credit of having predicted every American election absolutely wrong.
I would say about WTO passage in Congress: I guess failure is not an option, but that’s not the right way to put it. But it is really important and it’s really important to this administration. It’s really important to our foreign policy and we’re going to try to make that very, very clear in Congress — and I think ultimately the Congress will agree.
Robert Thompson: Mark, what are the odds?
Mark Levinson: Well, I would go back to the debate around Fast Track and remember that every major group in the business community was completely unanimous in their support of fast track. Every single newspaper in the country supported fast track. Everyone was for fast track — except the people. And, I think, we’re going to see a replay of that.
I agree that this has all the makings of a major fight, but, you know the public opinion polls that I’ve seen show that this is very unpopular. Auto workers, steel workers, the apparel and textile workers don’t quite get the argument that, you know, this is in their interest.
So it’s hard to predict, but I think we have a real chance of stopping it.
Robert Thompson: Ritu.
Ritu Sharma: I think they will punt. I think it will come up early in the election, early next year, probably right after the Congress comes into session they will have some debate about it. They will hold a couple of hearings. It will be a mess in the media and they won’t bring it to the floor.
They may bring it to the floor of the Senate, I agree with Ned, and it will probably pass the Senate, but the fight in the House will just be too brutal. They won’t bring it to the floor for a vote and they will punt and bring it up right after the election. It will probably be one of the first agenda items after the election in 2001. That will give people plenty of time to forget about it before the next Congressional cycle.
Robert Thompson: What do you think Ned? I know, you sort of answered the question already. But when you look at the political agenda, the political calendar, what for you are the key dates?
Edward Cloonan: Well it’s hard to disagree with the comments made just now. The longer they delay... I mean, I guess the Republicans don’t want to see another, foreign policy success for Clinton, that’s for sure. They would like to box him in. I think they may try to force it to the floor for a vote as early as they can. And they’ll probably have a hard time doing it. Ritu may be correct.
But my comments were that eventually, when it does come, whether it happens before the next election or not, this is going to take place and I think that it will prevail, that it will pass.
You know, I think, eventually you do appeal to the leadership issue here. Each and every member of Congress does have a leadership responsibility, as ‘blue sky’ as that may sound, and ultimately that will prevail.
Robert Thompson: I wonder if we can ask Madam XING HOUYUAN to, first of all, give your impression of the nature of the debate in the US and how much the Chinese government expects the WTO agreement to be approved.
And secondly, to describe for us, the forces for and against the WTO agreement within China.
Ms. Xing: Thank you for the chance to speak to these questions. I would like first to make it clear that I speak today just on behalf of myself, and not on behalf of my government.
[From Translation] First of all I’m very happy to be here. I want to thank the organizers, Asia Society and The Financial Times to let me have a chance to participate in this very meaningful forum and I’m very grateful to USIA for sponsoring my trip to the US.
Now with regards to China’s accession into the WTO, of course there are pros and cons in China too. I will speak about this in a moment.
When I attended the WTO Conference in Seattle, I found out a lot of countries are in support of China’s accession into WTO. But here let me express my gratitude to Ambassador Boucher for your strong support for China’s entry into WTO.
Also, I would like to thank all the other friends for the support of China’s accession into WTO.
My conclusion: Those who are in favor of China’s accession into WTO are those people who really understand China.
I’m speaking for myself here, not for my ministry. I am a consultant to the MOFTEC - the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. And I’m also a consultant for the Chinese WTO delegation. So I have been trying to work very hard to facilitate China’s accession into the WTO.
So I say, ‘No pain no gain.’ And know in the long term, there are long term benefits. We have to go through a very painful period.
For the long-term benefits, China has gained a lot in the past 20 years of reform. But I believe that China’s accession into the WTO will even do more to open up China to the market and to all kinds of reform.
That was why our Premier, Zhu Rongji tried his utmost to enhance China’s accession into the WTO.
Of course, there are people who are against China’s accession into WTO. This is understandable. Even in China itself, there are pros and cons. Lots of people oppose China’s entry into WTO, but this is really due to their ignorance of what WTO really represents.
Of course, a lot of Chinese workers, labor force, they are very, very worried about losing their jobs. According to some statistical prediction, maybe in the next three years China may have 5,000,000 people unemployed.
There is another saying: ‘Seeing is believing.’ So we welcome each and every one of you to visit China. Then maybe you will understand our situation and you will be a supporter of China in the WTO.
Of course, I believe nobody wants to see China in trouble, in crisis. If China is in trouble, in crisis it won’t benefit the USA, neither will it be for the benefit of the whole world.
Now for the peace of the whole world, everybody would like to see China be in peace and prosperity.
I’m happy to report to you that China has already taken steps for the preparation for the accession into WTO and for it to carry out agreements with the different countries. The most important step for us is to reform our regulations and our law in order to cope with our entry into WTO.
Just last week, China has sent a legislative delegation to Washington and New York to seek advice from the US government and the private sector and the legal field to advise us and prepare us in the legalistic field about our entry into WTO.
I’m speaking for myself. I specifically welcome all the enterprising business people here to go to China to learn more.
I will give you a concrete example. When Americans come to invest in China it really enhances the economic reform of China. Several years ago, China didn’t have any mobile phones. Now people in China identify mobile phones with Motorola and Motorola with mobile phones. Of course, now China has more than one foreign telecom company, maybe some from the Europe, as well, but in the minds of the Chinese people, Motorola is number one.
I would like to give you another illustration of the New York firm, since New York is the largest financial center in the world, and since we have AIG here on the panel today. In the past, there was no life insurance company or the concept of life insurance in China. Since US investment came to China, it introduced the concept of life insurance to us. Also the American banking system has helped China establish the management of banking.
Therefore my conclusion is that foreign investment, especially US investment, is crucial to China’s reforms in the economic field. So again, I welcome each and every one of you to invest more in China.
Now coming back to the Financial Times’ moderator’s question, I hope the US Congress will quickly endorse permanent Normal Trading Relations for China.
China now is undertaking the process of negotiating with you for the entry into WTO. I hope within the next three to five months we can complete all the negotiations to move forward China’s accession into the WTO.
Another question?
Robert Thompson: I was wondering a quick question while you have the microphone. Ms. Xing, do the senior members of the Chinese Communist Party understand the complexity of the American political process? And who will they hold responsible if Congress doesn’t approve the China US trade agreement?
Ms. Xing: They understand. They understand what will happen if the US Congress could not pass Most Favored Nation (MFN or NTR).
Robert Thompson: So would they hold the Congress responsible, or, for example, would they hold President Clinton responsible for not having pushed hard enough?
Ms. Xing: I think it’s understood, the difference. I think China’s government will do our best to push our reform. I mean we just want to push our reform and the economic development for our own domestic reasons. It’s not just to please everyone, it’s for the development of the economic system and reforms.
Robert Thompson: Thanks very much, Ms Xing. Now we’d like to take some questions from the floor. Fire away.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question that goes to the heart of what we’re talking about today. To what extent does the debate in the United States really deal with ratifying or approving China’s accession to the WTO?
My understanding is that the debate is going to be about whether or not to grant China permanent Normal Trading Relations, which is really a question of whether or not the United States gets the benefit of the agreement that we’ve made with China. Now is it true or not, and to what extent is the Senate being asked to ratify the WTO agreement as an agreement or is this an executive agreement that has been made? And once China has got it’s act together with the other countries, then it’s permitted to enter the WTO whether or not we have the NTO or not?
Robert Thompson: I might ask Ambassador Boucher and then Mark.
Richard Boucher: We’ve lost our trade expert (Merit Janow), so my response is somewhat imperfect. But my understanding is that the entry of China to the WTO takes place on the basis of the agreements included and the procedures in the WTO. For us to apply that agreement unconditionally we have to amend our laws in one way. Right now, China gets Most Favored Nation or Normal Trade Relations on a year-to-year basis. So it’s not unconditional, it’s conditioned every year. It’s conditional on our Congress approving it every year.
So if China entered the WTO on that basis, we have to say to the WTO we will apply this agreement with China but only selectively, we have to take an exception on one point. So we have to change our law and make it permanent so that we don’t have to take that exception. And our understanding is that if we had to go to the WTO and say we’re going to apply the agreement to China except some part to it, that would give then give China grounds for saying, well, we’re going to do the same thing.
So for us to apply it completely, for others to be able to apply completely, we need to be able to apply it completely and that means facing normal regulations and permanent NTR.
Mark Levinson: This is a very important question and discussion around this is quite confused in this gray area. We’ve been advised by international law experts that if we don’t change our law — that is, if we don’t grant MTR, if we don’t repeal Jackson-Vanik, and China still accedes to the WTO, which it is able to do, Congress does not reject the actual agreement. What Congress does vote on is MTR in Jackson-Vanek.
If we don’t abolish or waive Jackson-Vanik, our understanding is that China’s in the WTO, we’re in the WTO, but we don’t have a WTO relationship with China. And, in fact, contrary to what has been said in the press, because China has granted MFN to the United States, going back to at least 1979 as part of our international treaties with China, or bilateral treaties with China. The fact is the United States would get whatever benefits China grants the rest of the world. It may not be the US bilateral. But whatever benefits China grants the rest of the world, the US would get access to by right of China’s granting of MFN to the United States.
The only thing that the United States wouldn’t get under this scenario is access to the WTO dispute resolutions panels. But we would have access to our current bilateral laws and we would not be in violation of WTO rules vis-à-vis China because we have not waived Jackson-Vanik and we do not have a WTO relationship with China.
What this means to us is that it takes away the argument on the other side that if we defeat MTR, we’re somehow permanently disadvantaging US business against the rest of the world, that is not the case.
Edward Cloonan: I got lost in there. But our understanding is, for us to gain the benefits, it’s essential that we pass permanent NTR in the Congress.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We’re not debating whether or not China joins the WTO?
Edward Cloonan: That’s right, no.
Mark Levinson: A veto over China accession at WTO. That is incorrect in my view. As I listen to the experts.
Robert Thompson: There is sometimes a misconception that the WTO is not a US bilateral organization.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I manufacture in both the United States and in India and both are difficult. I am in favor of anything that makes it easier to work in Asia. But I also have a question because these other issues seem fraught with difficulties and complication in a way that isn’t practical.
Even in America we can’t pass ERA, we can’t pass the mine field agreement, we can’t pass a decent minimum wage. We really aren’t leaders in this respect. I know from working in India that one of the most painful things is that you can’t breathe the air. Here’s a fantastic country that is probably going to melt from chemicals. I can understand that this doesn’t have a place in the WTO, but where does it have a place and how?
I would ask the Ambassador’s views here. The United States, which every time we try to pass an environmental law here industry is just up in arms. Other than that being totally pro business, can anyone protect the world, should anyone protect the world? I would be interested in hearing both from the Ambassador and from Mr. Cloonan.
Robert Thompson: First of all I might ask Ritu to speak and perhaps then Ambassador Boucher.
Ritu Sharma: I think it’s a fundamental question and I have dear personal connections with India in particular. I think that where, and who and how are the questions. There is the International Labor Organization (ILO), a multi-lateral body to which most of the governments that belong to the WTO have already ratified a number of different conventions on labor laws, particularly a set of core labor standards. And one of the things that we would like to see possibly is for the ILO to be given some teeth in order to enforce some of those. It would provide uniformity across the world so that it would reduce the so called ‘race to the bottom’ in which countries are bidding the lowest wages and the lowest working conditions in order to attract foreign capital. So that’s one answer.
On environment it’s more difficult because there is not a multi-lateral environmental agency that has powers to develop conventions and treaties. The United Nations has its environmental program. There have been different treaties that have been developed and ratified, but there is no one international body.
Richard Boucher:These issues have become important and I think need to be part of our national agenda and we need to be able to go to them. They’re tough, they’re new issues for a lot of people and you get very strange arguments coming out when you first address them with other governments. You get the argument that: you (the USA) exploited women and ruined your environment for 150 years, we deserve the same chance to develop (!) And, when it actually comes out, you sort of realize how absurd it is. But a lot of arguments sort of boil down to that.
And I think our approach is that it’s got to be part of our national agenda. We need to find ways in APEC of helping people develop prosperity and open economies. But with pension funds and welfare schemes and things that protect workers, you know, when the system breaks down.
You need to find ways in the WTO of making sure of the Hippocratic Oath: ‘Above all do not harm.’ Get rid of fishing subsidies, get rid of agricultural subsidies. Drop high tariffs on environmental goods so that you can actually promote an environmental agenda and trade agenda at the same time.
So in all the organizations and places where we work, this needs to be part of our national agenda and obviously in places like the ILO we need to work more intensively on strengthening the organization and getting more results. It needs to be part of the curriculum.
Robert Thompson: One final question before we go.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just returned from three weeks in China and my observation is that China right now is at a crossroads. One foot in the past another foot in the future. And for us to sit up here and to say a WTO debate doesn’t have to do with our relationship with China — the world’s most populous nation and the US as the most powerful nation — it’s living somewhere in a bubble because this is going to have a tremendous impact in the 21st Century for the entire world.
There are hard-liners in China just like there are hard-liners in the United States. And it’s up to us whether we call it trade or business or future concerns. We’re not going to change the environment, we’re not going to change gender issues unless we stand to gain. If we take our cards and leave, we’re not going to have any control over these issues and I think that is what’s in front of us today.
Thank you.
Robert Thompson: I’d like to thank our panelists very, very much for participating. I’d like to thank the Asia Society for putting this together, and thank you all very much for coming today.
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