Paper tigers.

THE cases begin to blur together. Dai Guillang, sentenced to labor camp by the Chinese government for the crime of propagating the Book of Genesis. Zheng Musheng, arrested, tortured, and killed by the Bureau of Public Security for being an evangelical Christian. Catholic Bishop Su Chimin, beaten with a board until it was reduced to splinters and then with a wooden door frame until it, too, splintered; placed in a tiny room for days hip-deep in water; beaten while hanging by his wrists.

While the Chinese regime's hostility to the rights of political dissidents is well known, only recently has its systematic persecution of Christians drawn attention. (Credit the Hudson Institute's Michael Horowitz and Freedom House's Nina Shea, whose In the Lion's Den documents persecution of Christians.) On Easter Sunday, some American critics of the regime released an open letter imploring Vice President Al Gore to champion religious freedom in China. That letter finally moved the Administration to issue a denunciation -- of the critics. Signatories, including former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey (D.), Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, and academics John DiIulio, Robert George, and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, were labeled "right-wing extremists" by Gore staffer Ginny Terzano. (She has since apologized to Casey.)

Outrage against China's oppression of Christians and the Administration's morally obtuse response is fueling the strongest challenge yet to the bipartisan establishment's policy of "engagement." Says one House Republican foreign-policy aide, "I've never seen an issue take off as fast as this has over the last six months. . . . A lot of folks who otherwise are not the least bit interested in geopolitics are interested in this." Folks who are interested in geopolitics, meanwhile, are concerned over China's territorial aggressiveness, military build-up, impending takeover of Hong Kong, intimidation of Taiwan, arming of rogue states like Iran, and rhetorical anti-Americanism. Republicans interested in making hay of possible Chinese interference in U.S. politics are also getting on the bandwagon. Finally, protectionists in both parties fret about America's trade deficit with China and its allegedly unfair trade practices.

Robert Kagan, who provides intellectual leadership for the anti-China lobby from his perch at The Weekly Standard, says, "We're seeing on this issue at least a re-formation of the Reagan coalition that essentially broke down when the Soviet Union collapsed." The anti-China camp now includes religious conservatives (led by Gary Bauer, with Ralph Reed straggling behind), organized labor, human-rights activists, anti-Communists, and a journalistic coalition of The New Republic, the Standard, and Human Events.

They want Congress to revoke China's "most-favored-nation" status, a misleading term for the normal trade relations the U.S. has with even Syria and Libya. California Reps. Chris Cox (R.) and Nancy Pelosi (D.) are eager to lead the fight this summer. They will be joined by House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.) and his lieutenant David Bonior (D., Mich.), who seek to humble the reigning Clinton - Gore wing of their party in the run-up to 2000. Patrick Buchanan, pursuing his constituency of socially conservative unionists, has departed from his usual isolationism to join this crusade.

The crusade's opponents include members of the Administration, corporations doing business with China, hard-core (and mainly libertarian) free-traders, old foreign-policy hands like James Baker and retiring Rep. Lee Hamilton (D., Ind.), influential right-wing journalist Robert Novak, and Kissingerian "realists" (with the exception of Foreign Affairs managing editor Fareed Zakaria). In the middle are Speaker Newt Gingrich, NR, Far Eastern Economic Review senior editor William McGurn, and the Wall Street Journal, whose columnist Paul Gigot advocates "engaging China with trade but speaking more bluntly, and deterring its worst habits more aggressively, than the Clinton Administration has been willing to do." The Heritage Foundation falls between this group and the Administration: it is pro-MFN and against confrontation with China, but critical of Clinton's supine posture.

Conservatives leading the anti-China lobby relish having powerful opponents. Plenty of conservatives would like to challenge the corporate dominance of the Republican Party. "At the end of the day," says Kagan, "the businesses can deliver a lot of money but they can't deliver the votes." His allies regard the corporate proponents of accommodation with China as rope-sellers, the same people the Reaganites fought during the Cold War. There are also factional scores to settle within the Right. Remarks Bauer, "I think the days are over when a few libertarian think tanks could make policy for the whole conservative movement."

Thus, libertarian arguments advanced self-servingly by business groups aren't taken seriously, even when the arguments have merit. Take the classical view that economic liberalization will lead to political liberalization, and that unregulated commerce promotes both. As McGurn puts it, "Trade has been the most beneficial influence on China in thousands of years. . . . The countries where Communism fell fastest and most softly -- Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany -- were those most involved with the outside world." William Kristol dismisses this notion as "reverse Marxism." Kagan observes that China might not mellow in time to avoid a conflict.

Participants in the debate over China policy don't agree even on the nature of the regime. Gigot writes that China "is more authoritarian than totalitarian," like "the South Korea or Taiwan of the 1960s." It has certainly liberalized, particularly on economic matters. The counter-evidence is China's treatment of religion: the demand that subjects recognize no power higher than the state is, after all, a characteristic of totalitarianism. Nina Shea vehemently rejects Gigot's comparison, dubbing China "the Evil Empire redux."

Evil Empire or not, it isn't clear that a sensible foreign policy is possible under this Administration. Says Rep. Cox, "The only reason that the Republican Congress is involving itself directly in China policy is that the Administration hasn't got one." Rep. Jim Talent (R., Mo.), a thoughtful Republican who is agonizing over MFN, says that on the Hill there's "a growing sense that the Chinese need to understand that we can stand up to them if necessary. I think that there is a reluctance to do it through MFN, a sense that it's the wrong medium. But it may be the only one we have." One reason for the reluctance is the collateral damage that revoking MFN could wreak on Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Michael Horowitz, for one, thinks it would be easier and more productive to cut off Export - Import Bank and International Monetary Fund aid to China than to cut off trade: "When people find out, Wait a minute, we're shelling out taxpayer bucks for this, they'll say, 'Who did you say your opponent was, Mr. Senator?" The U.S. has many other policy tools at its disposal, from cooperating with Taiwan on missile defense to prohibiting trade with companies affiliated with the Chinese army. Ultimately, however, any strategy will have to involve restoring America's defenses and its presence in the region. As Sinologist Charles Horner observes, "China can't displace America. We can only displace ourselves."

Rep. Talent also worries that an unsuccessful attempt to revoke MFN, or sanctions that are undercut by other Western nations, will make America "end up looking weaker." The former scenario is more likely: there probably aren't enough votes to override a Clinton veto. Kagan points out, however, that in the early Nineties China made concessions when congressmen were threatening an MFN cutoff. James Lilley, Bush's ambassador to China and an MFN proponent, concedes that the congressional "bad cops" gave the "good cops" more leverage during his posting. So the fact that a debate is taking place in Washington might do some good regardless of its outcome.