To Companies With Business in China, It’s Wait-and-See

Bill Liu expected to be on the phone to Canton, China, Monday night--Tuesday morning in China--anxiously checking with his suppliers to learn if the unrest in Beijing has disrupted activities 1,200 miles away in the industrial province just north of Hong Kong.

Liu doesn’t usually find himself in this position, but events in China have stirred the same state of anxiety in the president of tiny China America Trade Corp. in Costa Mesa as officials at some of Orange County’s largest international firms.

So far the situation in China, where troops have been ruthlessly crushing a pro-democracy protest in central Beijing, has not seriously disrupted business, said spokesmen for a half dozen local companies.

All of the companies are trying to keep their Chinese operations going, and none have been affected by the suspension of military and armaments sales to China ordered Monday by President George Bush.

Slack Time for Travel

Even local travel agencies say they are not feeling much impact, largely because summer is a slack time for travel to China due to the heat and humidity there.

But at least three of those firms, AST Research Inc., Beckman Instruments and Calcomp Inc., could be affected by an embargo on technology exchanges--as some members of Congress have urged.

Still, for those companies and for most other county businesses with China connections, it is very much a wait-and-see situation.

At Fluor Corp. in Irvine, for instance, executives have been in constant telephone contact with employees in China, where the engineering and construction firm maintains a small sales office in Beijing and is involved in 15 projects outside the capital.

Spokesman Rick Maslin said Fluor has not thought it necessary to transfer any of its employees out of China, including those in the Beijing office. Fluor has been doing business in China since the country opened its doors to foreign trade in 1977.

Also working the international phone lines have been officials at Allergan Pharmaceuticals in Irvine, which has two contact lens manufacturing joint ventures in China, employing about 100 workers. Both are outside of Beijing, however, and so far have not been affected by the disruption in the capital, an Allergan spokesman said.

Liu, whose total business is minute compared to Allergan’s, trades with more than 100 factories in China’s Canton province. He imports artworks, chinawear, clothing, furniture, toys and other goods. So far, he said, shipments have been arriving on time and in good shape, but in light of the violence that broke out Sunday, “we don’t know what’s going on right now.” He said the word he has gotten from China is that it is calm most everywhere except Beijing.

Several local travel agents reported the same, saying that tour companies that represent groups making early summer treks to China have reported no disruption outside of the capital.

Don Storey, manager of World Travel in Santa Ana, said one major agency reported that it simply adjusted its itinerary when gunfire erupted. “(They) told us they had a group in Beijing on Sunday (when troops opened fire on students occupying Tian An Men Square) and just took them over to the Forbidden City instead of going to the square and had no problems at all,” Storey said.

3 Employees Transferred

Beckman Instruments in Fullerton, which sells and services scientific and medical instruments, last week transferred three employees in Beijing out of the country. Beckman spokesman Robert Crittendon said two workers were moved to a Beckman office in Hong Kong and one was sent to Singapore to await resolution of the Chinese protest.

Beckman has stopped shipping goods to customers elsewhere in China from its office in Beijing because of the turmoil but has continued operations from a similar center in Shanghai, Crittendon said.

Other large Orange County technology firms in China are AST, in Irvine, which sells personal computers and Calcomp, a Lockheed Corp. subsidiary in Anaheim which sells computer graphics hardware.

Calcomp President William Conlin said Monday that he had just received a fax from his Hong Kong office, which staffs the company’s sales office in China. “They said we have two people there (in Beijing) now who are waiting for a private plane to show up and fly them out.”

Conlin said his Hong Kong office informed him that there will be a general strike in the British colony today in support of the pro-democracy movement in China and that the Calcomp office will close down.

He said he is not sure how Calcomp would fare if Congress embargoes sales of technological equipment to China but added that his principal worry now is for “friends and associates who are Chinese and are in China right now.”

At AST, spokesman Joel C. Don said the company believes that “it is just too soon to tell what is ultimately going to happen.” AST is a major player in China’s nascent market for personal computers, but a ban on sales would damage AST more than it would punish China, Don said, “because they can get PCs from Hong Kong and from other markets.”

Beckman’s Crittendon said that if the federal government does order a halt to technology transfers, “we hope it won’t affect medical instruments, which are very much needed in China right now.”