China plays the lobbying game

By Michael Forsythe Bloomberg News
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2006

WASHINGTON China, which up to now has relied on U.S. presidents to keep Congress from derailing bilateral relations, is turning to lobbyists to burnish its image with increasingly assertive lawmakers.

Employees of Patton Boggs, Washington's biggest lobbying firm by revenue, made at least 116 contacts with lawmakers or their aides on behalf of China in the last half of 2005, according to disclosures made to the Justice Department. China's lobbying rose 74 percent from the year-earlier period; it spent just under $500,000 in the second half on lobbying, paying Patton Boggs $22,000 a month.

China is "becoming more knowledgeable about how all countries need to play the game in Washington," said Kenneth Lieberthal, who oversaw China policy for the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton. "The Chinese are simply starting to hedge by working harder with Capitol Hill because the Hill has become a more active player," said Lieberthal, who teaches political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

As President Hu Jintao of China meets with President George W. Bush this week at the White House, U.S. lawmakers are challenging Bush on such issues as overseas investment in the United States, tariffs and currency policy. The United States is China's biggest export market, with two-way trade reaching $285 billion last year.

A Patton Boggs spokesman, Brian Hale, said the firm's China lobbyists declined to comment on their work.

In the past year, Congress scuttled a planned takeover of Unocal by China's Cnooc. Lawmakers including Senators Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, have proposed legislation to put tariffs of 27.5 percent on Chinese goods unless China revalues its currency. The House last year passed legislation to let the president impose sanctions on European companies that sell arms to China.

Patton Boggs lobbyists have aimed most of their efforts at members of the Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, contacting offices of 13 of the 18 members of the Foreign Affairs panel from July to December 2005, according to the disclosures.

"In Congress, there has been an increase in interest in China," Zhou Wenzhong, China's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview. The lobbyists "know members and their staff better than we do, so they often help us to set up meetings. Sometimes they help us to follow what is going on in Congress."

In addition to Patton Boggs, the Chinese government retains other firms to influence Congress, including Jones Day.

Some of the contacts were for routine matters, such as the eight times Patton Boggs contacted aides to Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican. The calls were to set up and follow through on a Nov. 10 meeting between Chafee and Zhou, said a spokesman for Chafee, Stephen Hourahan.

Aides to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, a Virginia Republican, were contacted at least seven times, with Warner himself conferring about U.S.- China relations with a Patton Boggs lobbyist on Aug. 4.

"We do not recall anything specific about the meetings and phone calls, if in fact they occurred," said John Ullyot, Warner's spokesman. "Senator Warner and his staff are contacted hundreds of times a week by individuals or companies" with business before the Senate.

Dan Adelstein, an aide to Geoff Davis, a Kentucky Republican who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, was contacted four times in December by Patton Boggs. The lobbyists were seeking information about a defense funding bill.

China's lobbying is still overshadowed by other nations. China and its provinces spent $483,325 on lobbying in the second half of 2005, employing three firms.

By contrast, just one of the 12 firms retained by Taiwan, Barbour Griffiths & Rogers, gets $1.5 million a year from the government of the island, which China considers a rebellious province. Patton Boggs's contract with Trinidad & Tobago, a Caribbean country with less than a thousandth of China's population, is bigger than its China contract.

Still, with Bush's job approval ratings in public opinion polls sliding to the lowest of his presidency, China must look elsewhere to block some more extreme congressional proposals, Lieberthal said.

China has been improving its understanding of how Congress works since the early 1990s, when lawmakers would engage in annual debates over whether to approve "most-favored-nation" trading privileges for it, said John Frisbie, president of the Washington-based U.S.-China Business Council.

"They've come a long way since then," Frisbie said. "There is a greater understanding in China about Congress's role." The congressional move last month to scuttle the purchase of U.S. port facilities by DP World, the state- owned Dubai firm, was another reminder of the lawmakers' power, he said.

"Certainly, the Chinese have become more sophisticated in how they approach matters here in Washington," said Myron Brilliant, vice president for Asian affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business group, and a registered lobbyist. "They understand what's going on in the Congress."