1) Most decisions made in politics are difficult. It is almost never completely straightforward, and you almost always have to give something up to gain something. This is never more evident then when we discuss China and granting it MFN trade status. Going into this decision President Clinton was faced with a challenging decision either decline MFN status and support "democracy, human rights, and the need to control the spread of dangerous technologies" or grant MFN status to protect US economic interests in China.
When first faced with the option to grant MFN status it was well known that China participated in flagrant human rights abuses. Some examples of this abuse are the production of goods through prison labor, imprisonment of political dissidents, and the Tiananmen Square incident. Furthermore, China was also known to be selling dangerous technology to rouge states, which was a violation of the MTCR agreement. These flagrant abuses of power led some Americans to believe we should not grant MFN status to China. On the other hand, supporters of MFN status look at the issue and point out that 150,000 American jobs rely on Chinese trade, and furthermore they believe that trade with China will lead to more democratic reforms.
2) The two main worldviews that underlay the various positions of the U.S. debate over China Policy are system reformers and system maintainers. System reformers believe in the individual as well as the reliance on the international system. By focusing on the individual, system reformers show that they want to bring Human Rights to the forefront, and it also shows that for a system reformer Free Trade and Human Rights must be linked with the China policy. Thus system reformers are mainly opposed to the signing of MFN status without significant reforms.
The overriding views of the people who support granting MFN status to China are the system maintainers. This is showed mainly through the focus of economics.