The Religious Right's China Conscience

By Mark Shields
Washinton Post

Yes, China scorns and sneers at its trade agreements with the United States while running up a projected $50 billion trade surplus with America this year.

Okay, China regularly bullies its neighbors through threats of military force, and it sells nuclear technology to Pakistan and missiles to Iran and other rogue nations.

Sure, the Beijing regime tolerates no political dissent, forcibly aborts pregnant women and as of today, has persecuted more Christians for practicing their faith than any place on earth.

But in spite of any of this, according to the American establishment -- both political and economic -- China deserves, and Congress must renew, its most-favored-nation trade status, which is given to a majority of the world's nations.

Six administrations and Congress, responding to sustained pressure from the Fortune 500, mostly have preferred to overlook China's treachery and tyranny. But 1997 could be different because of the efforts of an unlikely Don Quixote from the religious right, Gary Bauer.

At a recent Capitol Hill press conference opposing MFN for China, those speaking were so politically diverse that one of them, John Carr of the U.S. Catholic Conference, quipped, "We all checked our weapons at the door."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat who has fought Bill Clinton's policy toward China as fiercely as she did George Bush's, co-hosted the event with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), a conservative who has exposed religious persecution around the globe.

But what made this gathering different was the high-profile presence of social and religious conservative Bauer. He did not hesitate to promote this show, also featuring an AFL-CIO condemnation of China's trade barriers, which have generated a $120 billion trade deficit and by some estimates, the loss of as many as 2 million American jobs during the first four years of the Clinton presidency.

Bauer is not only breaking precedent, he also is breaking ranks. Up to now, the religious part of the conservatives' coalition meekly has deferred on trade and taxes to their senior economic partner in the movement. Cultural and religious conservatives were free to lobby for school choice and prayer and against smut. But in matters of high finance and the global economy, Wall Street held sway.

The Christian Coalition and its outgoing director, Ralph Reed, effectively were mute on the subject of U.S. policy toward China. This may have been influenced by the interests of its founder, the Rev. Pat Robertson, who in 1995 entered into a major joint investment in China television with Lippo (sound familiar?) and Malaysian real-estate interests.

Where Ralph Reed was brimming with boyish charm, Bauer burns with intensity. He opposes MFN for reasons that have little to do with trade. What makes him angry is China's brutal repression of Christians and other religious believers, and the official one-child-per-family policy that results in millions of forced abortions each year.

In opposing MFN for China, Bauer is challenging Speaker Newt Gingrich and corporate giants with regional clout such as Aetna in New England, TRW in California, Motorola in Illinois and Texas, General Motors in Michigan and Boeing in Seattle. Bauer argues that "my side has paid too much attention to the foreign-policy elites and the corporate suites."

As Bauer told the prestigious and free-trade-championing Heritage Foundation, "I think the day is over when a few Washington think tanks should be allowed to make economic policy for the Republican Party."

In a Boeing promotional film, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a fervent admirer of Chinese economic progress, unabashedly panders to a Chinese audience as he derides the "missionary aspect" of the American character that dares to criticize China.

Kissinger then approvingly points out that "China has managed to govern itself for 5,000 uninterrupted years without significant advice from the U.S." China's heavy-handed attempts to influence the 1996 election look as unnecessary as they do amateurish in light of the American corporate muscle being flexed on its behalf.

Bauer personifies the split between corporate and populist Republicans, free-traders and protectionists, globalists and nationalists, and fiscal versus social activists. He breaks from economic conservatives in his outspoken opposition to privatization of Social Security; his unflagging support for the $500-per-child tax credit; and his attacks on Wall Street's most sacred of sacred cows, tax breaks for capital investment.

In this era of the non-ideological center, with alignments crumbling and allegiances negotiable, Bauer -- whose strongest political asset is that he knows what he believes -- could become an unlikely power broker.

To the administration, more eager to challenge human-rights abuses in Burma than in China, and to the conflicted GOP, Bauer's emergence in this role is an unwelcome prospect.