A special US commission that advocates tougher policies toward China said on Monday it has asked Congress to enact some of its ideas into law, including tightening access of Chinese firms to American capital markets.
Other recommendations under legislative scrutiny would provide US$2 million to help the US Customs Service ferret out imports made with prison labor.
The recommendations emerged from a yearlong study of Sino-American relations by the US-China Security Review Commission, a Congress-mandated panel whose members largely are viewed as skeptical of China.
Voting 11-1, the commission concluded that China's leaders believe the US is a declining power with important military vulnerabilities that can be exploited, Chairman Richard D'Amato told a news conference.
The report also concluded that the US has been a major contributor, through trade and investment, to China's rise as an economic power, and said this raises serious national security concerns for Washington.
William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, the sole dissenter among the panel members, faulted the report for "implicitly repudiating engagement" with China.
"What this report says is we should be more suspicious [of China]. I think that's the wrong way to go," he said.
One of the most controversial recommendations would establish a federally mandated corporate-reporting system requiring US firms investing in China to report:
-- Their initial investments in China;
-- Any technology transfers or research and development cooperation
-- And the resulting shift in production capacity or job relocation from the US to China.
The US is "poorly served" by a fragmented, inconsistent and superficial China policy, wielded in compulsive secrecy and plagued by dismal crisis management, the bipartisan commission warned.
"US policy toward China has been and is fragmented, lacking consistency and depth," D'Amato said.
"It has often been driven solely by commercial interests, or by specific human rights issues, or by a particular military crisis -- rather than by a comprehensive examination of all the issues which impact this relationship."
The commission said that, for 30 years, the US stance toward China had been driven by strong presidential personalities and "compulsive secrecy."
"We lack a sustainable consensus on the fundamental national interests of the US among our elected leadership, particularly between the president and Congress," D'Amato said.
"We think the nation is poorly served by this shortcoming, and it needs to be corrected."
"If China becomes rich but not free, the United States may face a wealthy, powerful nation that could be hostile to our democratic values, to us, and in direct competition with us for influence in Asia and beyond," the commission said in its report.
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