NEWS ANALYSIS : Policy Split in U.S. Threatens China Relations : Diplomacy: The question of improving ties has reemerged as a partisan issue.

With the disclosure of a secret top-level mission to Beijing only a month after the Tian An Men Square massacre, the Bush Administration’s gambit to cultivate public acceptance for improving Sino-American relations appears to have backfired.

China is now rapidly becoming a divisive and partisan issue in American politics again, making it especially unlikely that the two countries can return to the close relationship they enjoyed in the late 1970s and throughout most of the ‘80s. Both Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and Ron Brown, the Democratic Party chairman, have upbraided Bush for his overtures to the Chinese leadership.

Such criticisms are likely to increase as a result of the announcement Tuesday that the Administration is clearing the way for the export of U.S. satellites to be launched in China and for the continuation of loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to China.

“We could have a polarized China policy, the way we had a polarized Central America policy over the past few years,” said one unhappy U.S. official. “China policy is deteriorating into a partisan issue, in a way that it has not been for a long time.”

For President Bush, a failed China policy would be particularly painful, because he has long prided himself on his ability to deal with Chinese leaders and nurture the ties between the two countries.

Bush served as U.S. envoy to Beijing during the Ford Administration, at a time when, by his own admission, then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger called the shots. Bush later emerged as a crucial intermediary between the United States and China during the 1980 election and in the early days of the Reagan Administration, during a period when Chinese leaders feared that Reagan might seek to upgrade U.S. ties with Taiwan.

The revelation this week that National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger paid an unannounced visit to China at the beginning of July demonstrates that within weeks after the June 3-4 violence in Beijing, the Bush Administration was engaging in clandestine talks with the Chinese leadership.

Officially, the White House now maintains that the purpose of this secret July trip was to convey American outrage over what had happened.

“It (the trip) allowed the President to know he told them how he felt, in a form they understood. He could satisfy himself that the Chinese knew exactly how the United States felt about this,” one senior White House official said. The official acknowledged that this initial Scowcroft trip had no noticeable impact on Chinese policy.

One knowledgeable U.S. official admitted, however, that there was another purpose as well. At the time, Bush had just imposed a series of sanctions on China--including U.S. support for a freeze on World Bank loans and an end to high-level official exchanges between U.S. and Chinese leaders.

“He (Bush) wanted to personally indicate to the Chinese that he didn’t intend to tear up the relationship,” this official explained.

Scowcroft and Eagleburger visited China again at the start of this month, and this time their visit was publicly announced at the time they arrived in Beijing. U.S. officials explained that one aim of this trip was to prepare Congress and the American public for reconciliation with the Chinese regime.

Administration officials apparently assumed that six months after the upheavals at Tian An Men, Congress and the American public would be ready to improve, at least gradually, the strained ties with China.

But they apparently misjudged how strong the public reaction would be. In recent days, not only Democratic leaders but also some leading members of the policy-making elite--including former U.S. Ambassador to China Winston Lord, a longtime aide to Kissinger and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations--have lashed out at the Administration’s policy.

Meanwhile, Administration officials Tuesday found themselves still further on the defensive, forced to rely on what they called the President’s right to conduct foreign policy in secrecy.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater defended the secrecy surrounding the initial Scowcroft trip, saying Bush “feels that he has, within his constitutional responsibility, the right to conduct relations with other countries in the best way he sees fit.”

“And that will, from time to time, involve him in making trips, making contacts, talking to people and keeping it secret,” Fitzwater told reporters.

Fitzwater also refused to divulge with whom Scowcroft and Eagleburger met in Beijing last July.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.