China Consul Fetes 10-Year Link With U.S.

It was a Los Angeles premiere of a different sort, a diplomatic coming-out party for the world’s most populous country.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing, the Chinese government Monday night opened its 10-month-old consulate in a mid-Wilshire District office building for a lavish buffet and party.

As a calling card, it was enough to turn out several hundred local politicians, government officials and corporate executives for an evening of often-effusive rhetoric, capped with champagne toasts.

Bridged Long Gulf

“A new historical stage was opened,” Consul General Ma Yuzhen said of the Dec. 15, 1978, agreement in which the United States formally recognized the communist government. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley called the anniversary a “great historic celebration.”

Appropriately, the 54-year-old Ma’s career as a diplomat and his posting in Los Angeles owe a good deal to the long effort to bridge the gulf that had separated the United States and the People’s Republic of China for 30 years.

A former director of information for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Ma was recalled to Beijing in 1971 from a tea plantation in southern China where he had been exiled during the Cultural Revolution. Back in the capital, he was assigned to help work on the first tentative contacts with the United States that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit in 1972.

References to history and international friendship, however, were underlined at Monday night’s party by expressions of mutual self-interest in such matters as investment in and trade with China, which in recent years has experimented with capitalist-style economic reforms.

Bradley, for example, noted in an interview that locating a Chinese consulate here was the result of several years of efforts by members of the business and political communities who were interested in expanding Los Angeles’ commerce with the world’s most populous country.

Ma also has been quick to note that one of his chief missions is to enhance trade with the United States. It now totals more than $9 billion a year, he said, and more than 30 Chinese trading companies are represented in the Southern California region.

Consulate Opened in March

Although Los Angeles isn’t noted for its diplomatic life, Bee Lavery, the city’s chief of protocol who accompanied Bradley to the affair, pointed out that 72 countries now have consulates here, second only to New York, where the United Nations is headquartered.

The consulate opened here early in March with responsibility for Chinese interests in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Hawaii. Ma estimates that there are 300,000 to 400,000 Chinese in the region, including 2,000 college and university students, who might at some time call on the consulate’s services.

In an interview, Ma said he has a higher profile than expected. He can’t keep up with speech invitations and he frequently dines at that bastion of corporate and civic power, the California Club.

12,000 Visas Issued

“We didn’t know that our consulate-general would be given such visibility,” he said. “I thought we would be busy with paper work.”

Actually, there has been plenty of paper work: The consulate has issued 12,000 visas since it opened.

Obviously pleased that the consulate is running at close to full speed, Ma and several other staff members proudly explained that Monday’s buffet was prepared by the consulate’s two cooks, who arrived in May.

Have Own Cooks

The cooks, who prepare three meals a day for the staff, apparently have a lot to do with the Chinese diplomats’ sense of well-being.

Before their arrival, “we had to go downstairs like the other lawyers and people here (in the building) and buy from this mobile canteen, hamburgers and hot dogs,” Ma noted. “The first week or two we liked that very much, but after two weeks. . . .

“We don’t have to bother about food now,” he said. “We can concentrate on our work.”