Evolution of socio-political and academic discussions in the US at the turn of the 20th and 21 st centuries on granting China the "most favored nation" (MFN) regime

The author focuses on the process of granting the most-favored-nation treatment (MFN) regime to China from the US in the field of financial and economic relations between the two countries at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The purpose of the article is to trace the evolution of this process from the moment of establishment of diplomatic relations between the USA and the PRC in 1979 and before the ratification of the US-China trade treaty by the US Congress in 2001. In this connection, the article deals with a number of tasks connected with the discussions between neo-liberals and neoconservatives -supporters and opponents of granting the "most favored nation" regime in American ruling and academic circles. At the same time, the factors of both external and internal influences are revealed that led to the transition from the annual extension of the "most favored nation" regime to China, approved by the Congress during the years of the republican administration headed by George W. Bush, and until the regime was granted on a permanent and unconditional basis in the years of Administration of Democrats led by B. Clinton. All the 1990s business associations, unlike the American lawmakers and the White House administration, showed little activity on the issue of granting China MFN on an ongoing basis. After the events in Tiananmen Square, the American business community for a long time feared that the Chinese authorities could turn off the path of reform and again "shut down" their country. Thus, the process of granting the "most favored nation" regime to China from the US at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries occurred in two stages. At the first stage (the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s), the temporary state of the MFN was the subject of heated debates in American ruling and academic circles related to the search for instruments of pressure on Beijing from Washington on the widest range of political and territorial problems in the East Asian region. At the second stage (1995-2001), the financial-economic and trade relations between the two countries depoliticized, which led to the provision of China with a permanent and unconditional MFN as the basis of the US-China trade treaty (1999). In 2001, this treaty was ratified by the US Congress, which reduced the intensity of sociopolitical and academic discussions in the United States around this issue.

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