Title: Why We Need China and Why China Needs Us | U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Headings: Why We Need China and Why China Needs Us
Why We Need China and Why China Needs Us
Content: The United States exported over $18 billion in goods and services to China last year, supporting hundreds of thousands of high-paying U.S. jobs and improving American living standards. Our commercial relationship with China is more important now than ever before given that U.S. manufacturing, agricultural and high-tech sectors are in the midst of a serious economic downturn and need access to foreign markets to recover. However, encouraged by recent challenges in U.S.-China relations, a small but vocal group of labor union bosses, human rights activists, political ideologues and anti-free traders opposed China NTR, arguing that China should be punished through the loosening of U.S.-China economic ties. But history is proof that commercial engagement is America's most effective tool in promoting democracy, free enterprise, human rights, and rule of law in China. Consider the enormous economic, political, and social changes that have gripped China in the first two decades since normalization of U.S.-China economic ties. China's per capita gross domestic product has increased fivefold, with some 250 million Chinese having been lifted out of poverty. A completely state-controlled economy and closed society back then, today China boasts more than a million private businesses, which created more than 4 million new jobs last year alone and account for more than 20% of China's $1 trillion gross domestic product. China's economic engagement with the U.S. and other Western democracies triggered the historic display of free political expression in Tiananmen Square, and the infiltration of American traditions and values into China through open engagement has forced the unbending Communist Party to loosen its grip on Chinese society, even recently inviting private businessmen to join the party. But China has a long way to go before its people enjoy the same freedoms Americans do. That's why it's important we continue to engage China, nurture it, and guide it along the path toward a free enterprise democracy.