THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210489
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 54 lines
The architects of American foreign policy are on the road meeting their bosses: the American people.
They're finding that the people have some tough questions for them.
Three senior U.S. officials stopped in Norfolk on Thursday for one in a series of ``foreign policy town meetings'' being held around the country to engage Americans in a dialogue about the world and America's place in it.
The forum at the Norfolk Airport Hilton, attended by several hundred people throughout the day, was sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Greater Hampton Roads.
Kent Wiedemann, a deputy assistant secretary of state and China specialist, offered a ringing defense of continuing China's most-favored-nation status as a U.S. trading partner.
Rather than isolating the Asian giant, he said, ``engaging'' China is the best way to nudge it toward democracy and respect for human rights.
Wiedemann offered some startling facts: China is the United States' sixth-largest trading partner. Some 20 to 30 percent of shoes, 50 percent of toys and vast numbers of electronic components sold in America come from China.
By 2015 or 2020, he said, many experts believe the Chinese economy could be the biggest in the world, eclipsing Japan and perhaps even the United States.
Cutting that market off, he said, would throw 18 million Chinese out of work.
``I'm sorry, but the heck with them,'' said Jerry McMannen of Hampton, an International Longshoremen's Association official. ``What about our own people who are losing jobs?''
America must adapt to a changing world, Wiedemann replied.
``Napoleon called China `a giant that is best left sleeping,' '' he said. ``It's waking up now, and we want it to be a partner, not an adversary.''
Arturo Valenzuela, another deputy assistant secretary of state, took a similar line defending U.S. policy toward Mexico, including the groundbreaking North American Free Trade Agreement approved in 1993 and $20 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to prop up the collapsing peso in 1995.
NAFTA ``has been a phenomenal success,'' he said: U.S. exports to its southern neighbor are at an all-time high.
But David McCormick, a Norfolk lawyer, was not convinced. ``While we're bailing out the peso,'' he said, ``who's going to bail out the American taxpayer?''
The Mexican loan wasn't a bailout, Valenzuela replied, it was a good business deal. ``It was a loan - on very good terms, backed up by oil as collateral, and at a good interest rate.''
Also at the forum, David Satterfield, director of Near East and South Asian affairs for the National Security Council, said the election last month of hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister has not diminished U.S. support for the Mideast peace process. by CNB