China and the United States, after rounds of talks, finally reached agreement on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization at the end of 1999. In order to put the agreement into effect, the United States needed a special legislation to ensure mutual Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR). This legislation was an important event in the political life of the United States in 2000, and was also one of the two important legislations involving foreign economy and trade during the two terms of office of Bill Clinton. The pros and cons of this legislation had heated debates in the Congress. In the Senate, Baucus was a leader of the pros group and was also a major proponent of this legislation among the Democrats. During the debates, he warned that disapproval of PNTR for China would cause a series of grave consequences, because China would consider the US policy as to isolate China, obstruct China’s development and progress and block its road to become a big power. The United States, he said, should not expect fundamental changes in China to happen overnight, and the United States should do its best to reinforce the reformers. At that time, some senators even wanted to make this legislation a big basket and put some issues irrelevant to economy and trade into the PNTR basket, and some even proposed to make the China’s arms nonproliferation bill as an amendment to the PNTR bill. Baucus aired his strong opposition to this proposal. Baucus pointed out that the United States already had a legal system on the nonproliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and this amendment was unnecessary. Furthermore, such an amendment would hamper the initiative of the president in the future and restrain the flexibility of the president in resorting to the leverage of sanctions to coerce arms proliferating nations to change. He argued: it has proven in the past two decades that unilateral sanctions do not work … It does little harm to China, but will seriously damage important American economic interests, and it only brings significant benefits to Europe and Japan. Furthermore, if the United States loses out in this market, it will be extremely difficult to win back the market again. After heated debates, the legislation to grant PNTR to China was finally adopted, with the yea votes as high as 83 in the Senate. The passage of this legislation cleared the last hurdle for China’s accession into the World Trade Organization.

It can be seen from the facts mentioned above that Baucus is well-versed in finance and economy. By nominating him to be the next ambassador to China, just like choosing Gary Locke several years ago, Obama intends to strengthen bilateral economic and trade relations, to increase the shares of US commodities in the Chinese market and to attract more investment from China. Naturally, as an ambassador, Baucus will have to deal with all issues in relations between the two nations. He is familiar with and knows well about China and the China-US relations, and he is personally involved in US policy on China. He has visited China eight times, and maintains extensive contacts with the Chinese political and business circles. He has served in the Senator for more than 30 years and has established extensive relations in the US political arena. All these will help him better perform the ambassadorship in China. In a word, Baucus is an appropriate choice for the post of US ambassador to China.

No doubt, he represents the US interests. It was natural for him to criticize China on some issues relating to bilateral economic and trade interests, and he also supported some anti-dumping and anti-subsidy bills against China. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand. It is hoped that after assuming the ambassadorship, he will have a better understanding of China and the China-US relations, and will make contributions in building the new type of big-country relations between China and the United States.

Tao Wenzhao is a Researcher for the Institute of American Studies at the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences.

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