President Bill Clinton yesterday hailed the US Senate passage of a bill extending permanent trade privileges to China, despite criticism that it deprives Washington of key leverage over Beijing on human rights and labour issues. The Senate's 83-15 vote in favour of extending permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status to Beijing was predictably welcomed by US business leaders, who said it heralded a new era in US-China commercial relations.
"We will find, I believe, that America has more influence in China with an outstretched hand than with a clenched fist," President Clinton told reporters after the vote. "We have a chance, not a certainty, but a chance to strengthen our prosperity and our security and to see China become a more open society."
"With 1.2 billion people, China is the world's largest marketplace," said Mr Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "They're hungry for the opportunity to buy more American products and could become one of our largest trading partners within just a few years. These exports will create hundreds of good-paying jobs for US workers."
The Senate's nod for PNTR, a major plank of Clinton's foreign policy, was seen as a major victory for the US leader four months before he is due to leave office.
PNTR, which had already been endorsed by the US House of Representatives in May, replaces the 20-year-old annual congressional review of China's trade privileges which was seen by Beijing's opponents as a key tool to monitor China's human rights and labour practices.
Not everyone believes the PNTR approval is in the best interest of the United States. "Today's vote by the US Senate marks a low watermark in America's honourable commitment to protect and defend the human rights of people around the globe," said Chinese dissident Mr Wang Xizhe, co-founder of the China Democracy Party.
"While we do not oppose trade with China, we emphatically resist the twisted logic that suggests that human rights standards will be elevated in China by rewarding the conduct of human rights oppressors in Beijing with increased trade," he added.
PNTR critics - human rights activists, religious, cultural and labour groups - contend that by abandoning the annual congressional review, Washington loses the leverage it has to pressure China to respect human rights and core labour standards.