Dove in the China Shop
Such inside glimpses into China give McCurdy, 55, a perspective that politicians, answerable to constituents worried about the "offshoring" of U.S. jobs to China and the ominous implications of another Communist superpower, often lack. The bid by the China National Offshore Oil Co. to purchase U.S. energy firm Unocal, for instance, has triggered alarm in Washington. But McCurdy sees the gambit as fair game. Several U.S. banks and other big companies have bought stakes in Chinese firms, he points out. "You go to China and see Exxon stations, but when they come here, it offends the sensibilities of Congress," McCurdy says with a smirk. Yet he predicts that CNOOC will ultimately lose out to rival bidder Chevron, partly because Washington is tilted against such deals. In one poll he cites, by Zogby International, 59 percent of Americans held a favorable view of China, compared with just 19 percent of congressional staff members.
Free trade, in other words, is getting harder to defend. "McCurdy's more isolated than a couple of years ago," says Tom Donnelly, a Republican member of the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "That gung-ho rhetoric isn't as unquestioned as it once was." One reason is the red-blue political polarization that has rooted in Washington, which McCurdy himself decried in an article in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. "The place is more rancorous, less civil, more partisan, more polarized, and definitely less friendly than when I first came to Washington, D.C., in 1981," he complained. The net result: "loss of meaningful debate" on trade, national security, and other vital issues.
But China is becoming a hard sell, too. Concerns have mounted along with the huge U.S. trade deficit with China, more than double what it was in 1999, when Congress granted China permanent favored trade status. The Chinese have also been prickly, among other things passing an "antisecession" law filled with bellicose rhetoric threatening Taiwan. Yet McCurdy, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee while in Congress, feels the best national-security policy toward China should revolve around commerce, not cruise missiles. "The economic integration between China and the U.S. is reducing the risk of military confrontation," he insists. While many of his former colleagues wring their hands over the CNOOC bid and China's large purchases of U.S. government securities, McCurdy sees it another way. "I'm glad they're doing that instead of building supercarriers," he says. At least for the time being, that is.
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