In China, Respect for Law Must Come First : Copyrights: U.S. threats won’t work; helping the Chinese develop a legal consciousness that values rights might.

President Clinton may revel in his image as a policy wonk, but when it comes to China, he displays an unfortunate ignorance of recent history and a lack of sophistication about how that nation works. This is evident yet again in threats the Administration is making to impose more than $1-billion worth of punitive trade sanctions against China unless Beijing essentially stops all infringement of American copyrights, trademarks and patents before Saturday.

American producers and consumers are certainly within their rights to be riled. Obligations that China has accepted by joining the major international intellectual-property treaties or by entering into bilateral agreements with the United States are being routinely violated.

That this problem is serious and our grievance legitimate does not, however, validate the Administration’s chosen way of coping with it--which has been to demand that the Chinese government stop all infringing activity by a date certain or face severe trade sanctions. The Bush Administration tried that very approach and failed miserably.

The Clinton Administration must come to appreciate the folly of viewing our intellectual-property problems with China in isolation either from China’s larger problems of legal and political development or from the plight of Chinese (and other foreigners) also experiencing infringement. The lack of respect for American intellectual property in China is deeply interwoven with, and ultimately inseparable from, the lack of respect found throughout China these days for law and legal institutions, which are widely viewed all too often as corrupt and subservient to the Communist Party and the personal pecuniary interests of individual leaders.

Viewed in this light, we are not well-advised to follow a policy that presumes that bringing pressure to bear on a select number of individuals at the pinnacle of China’s government will transform the attitudes of 1.2 billion Chinese. Prominent figures in China’s leadership have a vested interest in the very behavior in question (as evidenced by Deng Xiaoping’s highly publicized ceremonial visit to the most notorious counterfeiting factory in his last trip to Guangdong) and may well not be inclined genuinely to abandon it even if the costs to the nation are considerable.

But even if the central leadership were to choose to halt infringement, there is serious doubt whether it still has the capacity to bring a sudden and meaningful halt to this or any other major type of illicit behavior. And, Washington might well ask itself whether we should be encouraging Beijing to reassert centralized control over the most economically and politically vibrant and autonomous parts of the country.

Our government should be directing the limited leverage we do have to help develop the type of legal institutions and legal consciousness that might in time generate a serious respect for law.

Only then will Chinese inventors and entrepreneurs, many of whom ache far more than we for intellectual-property protection, have a way to vindicate their interests and, in the process, help strengthen the legitimate interests of us all. Only then will ordinary Chinese citizens begin to understand how they cannot expect to enjoy their own property rights if their society fails to accord meaningful respect for other rights and the rights of others.

There are no magic formulas for developing a stronger commitment to legality in China. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations missed important opportunities when, in conjunction with the most-favored-nation debate, they so readily and transparently jettisoned human-rights concerns for the chimera of more commercial access. We must signal to Beijing our understanding that respect for property and political rights is, ultimately, indivisible and do what we can materially to buttress legal development there.

If our goal is to inculcate a greater respect for our property rights in China, it is incumbent upon Washington to show a greater concern for the fundamental rights of Chinese today even if it means eschewing headline-grabbing threats of trade sanctions.