U.S. Trade Relations With China

* Todd Carrell’s views (Commentary, Sept. 1) on the limits to U.S. missionary and capitalist zeal in China are the most sensible to appear in The Times for many moons. He identifies but does not explain the cultural thresholds across which both Chinese and Americans view and bargain with each other in a world that is rapidly filling up. We, raised in an exaggerated secular expression of Calvinist predestination of the individual that was made affordable by the conquest of the American West, protect the person at the expense of the community. The Chinese protect the community at the expense of the individual. Both systems have their excesses and costs along with their benefits; the point is that they are and will remain different.

These basic differences are reflected in many ways. In China, law and government are the same; here we love the law and hate the government. The hierarchical Confucian model assumes trust and harmony in a cooperative system of command and control; our free-market democracy is one where trust is an earned competitive advantage. There are many other distinctions.

It seems evident to Carrell that mutual acceptance of these realities is inevitable. There is some urgency in this. I believe it will lead to cooperation that will increasingly rule over competition in a shrinking world where wars for resources and markets will be succeeded by conflicts over riparian rights to pollute. It will be more efficient to adapt to cultural differences than to try to eliminate them.

CHARLES GUNNERSON

Laguna Hills

* How ironic the article (Aug. 31) on China and its “progress in human rights” just below a photo of two leggy dress-up dolls symbolizing China’s treatment of women. How continually ironic the U.S. policy toward Cuba, where, as opposed to China, it is still not believed that “commercial engagement has a greater impact than the threat of commercial disengagement.” If only we could learn from our lessons, and really live by our ideals.

GREG CHITTICK

Santa Barbara

* Where is Clinton’s moral purchase for protesting Tian An Men Square when his own Administration burned hundreds of men, women and children to death in Waco, Tex., for the even-lesser crime of following their religion?

A. E. MOSES

Laguna Beach

* The Clinton Administration’s non-policy on Cuba is a total disgrace and the epitome of hypocrisy. At the same time when Commerce Secretary Ron Brown is dispatched to Beijing to initiate talks on increased trade with China, the largest remaining communist country and which has been granted MFN status, the Administration pretends that a small decrepit island nation in the Caribbean is still the threat that we were all led to believe it was during the Cold War and states that further suffering by its people is the only solution to the Castro regime.

In an era that has seen mortal enemies such as the PLO and Israel, the IRA and Britain, Mandela and De Klerk engaged in peace talks, why then does this Administration insist on continuing a 35-year-old policy that has obviously failed?

Open trade with Cuba will hasten the demise of Castro’s government faster than any embargo will.

JUAN G. SANCHEZ

Downey