The most far-reaching vote any representative will cast this year will take place next week. It will be on the bill to permanently guarantee that Congress will have no economic leverage to restrain China's internal repression of dissidents or external aggression against Taiwan.

Bill Clinton, architect of the discredited ''strategic partnership'' with Beijing, is lobbying for H.R. 4444 as part of his legacy thing. His strange bedfellow is the G.O.P. leadership, fairly slavering at the prospect of heavy contributions from U.S. companies that want to profit from building up China's industrial and electronic strength.

Clinton has been purchasing Democratic votes one by one. The latest convert to pulling the U.S. teeth is Charles Rangel of New York, who was seduced by last week's legislation to benefit African workers at the expense of Chinese laborers in sweatshops at slave wages. He is the ranking Democrat on Ways and Means, which yesterday voted to send the any-behavior-goes bill to the House floor.

The president's tactics include frightening Americans with ''dangerous confrontation and constant insecurity'' from angry China if his appeasement is not passed.

He also divides American farmers from workers with his mantra, ''exports mean jobs.'' Of course they do; in the past decade, our trade deficit with China has ballooned from $7 billion to $70 billion. That means China's exports to the U.S. have created hundreds of thousands of jobs -- in China. Clinton's trade deficit is certainly not creating net jobs for Americans.

His trade negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, has become increasingly shrill, turning truth on its head this week by telling Lally Weymouth of The Washington Post that ''organized labor, human rights advocates and some environmentalists have aligned themselves with the Chinese army and hard-liners in Beijing who do not want accession for China.''

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