China as Most Favored Nation

14 Pages 3384 Words

on. Also China would have to satisfy that they are moving toward improving current policies. The conclusion of the US-PRC commercial accord in July 1979, and the initial waiving of the Jackson-Vanik requirements, and with Congressional approval, most-favored-nation status was granted to China. This action sealed the successful efforts of the Carter Administration to create social and economic ties through Sino-American relations.

The renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade status has been supported by Chinese liberalization of its own emigration policies. Six hundred and twenty-five thousand Chinese citizens traveled abroad in 1990. The Chinese government in 1990 issued 280,000 new passports. During the same year, the United States issued seventeen thousand immigrant visas through consular offices in China, the full number allowed by American immigration law. The principal restraint to Chinese emigration has arisen not from Chinese emigration policies but from the unwillingness of other countries to accept immigrants. Most-favored-nation status for China continues to provide an incentive for further advancement in this area as well as facilitating the contacts that the Carter administration established well over a decade ago.

By granting China most-favored-nation trade status the United States has started that long and difficult process of bringing China out of its international dark ages. In order to live up to the terms of most-favored-nation trade status China has had to become more open to social and economic changes. These reforms included more economic freedom, easier access for foreign direct investments. The economic developments these reforms have been to a main cause for China’s newly increased gross nation product. Over a ten-year period from 1978 to 1988 most-favored-nation trade status was directly responsible for an annual ten percent growth in China’s gross national product.

China will likely prove ...