With your permission, Mr. Cardin, I will answer in the language of Shakespeare rather than the language of Molière to be able to explain myself more clearly.
Of course, we are in disagreement.
What you say is so contestable to me—not detestable, but contestable—because if we look at the whole evolution of the post-war world, what is it that we have seen? If you and I had been meeting in this committee room 15 or 20 years ago, the majority of the countries of the world would have been under dictatorships and under centralized economies. What have we seen in the last 25 years? Most of those dictatorships have been swept away. Why? Because concomitant with it, we've seen an opening up of the economies.
What is the European Union other than a massive internal free trade agreement? Are we suggesting to ourselves that the workers of France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and the 27 countries of the European Union somehow have seen no connection between the opening up of the European Union and the protection of workers' rights? Go and say that to any leader in any western European country, and they will say,
“I wonder what world you live in, Mr. Cardin.”
Secondly, look at the case of Mexico. Mexico is a country that still has a lot of problems. If you were to compare the Mexico of today, in which you have a much more vibrant free press, in which you had a Mexican president who defeated the dominant central party that had been in power for 72 years in the last election when he won by a razor-thin majority, what is it that you have in Mexico today? You have a much more vibrant democracy, much more openness and, with that, greater accountability, greater transparency, and all the things that go with openness.
In reality, what is the WTO but a gigantic free trade agreement? The reality is that the post-war world negates totally the assumption of many people that somehow free trade is incompatible with human rights.
The last thing I would say is that I would argue to the contrary, Monsieur Cardin, that the reason we are seeing democratic reforms in China today is not that the Chinese leaders have decided out of their benevolence to start bringing out reforms. They've been brought about because a market is alive and well with people, the Internet, communications, technology, fax, and all these things. This is what opening up really means--