Visit Restarts High Sino-U.S. Trade Talks

U.S. Commerce Secretary Barbara Hackman Franklin arrived here Wednesday on a four-day visit to Beijing aimed at improving American economic ties with China before the Bush Administration leaves office.

Franklin’s visit marks the resumption of Cabinet-level Sino-U.S. trade talks, with the Chinese delegation headed by the minister of foreign economic relations and trade.

Such talks, held in a bilateral forum called the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, took place about once a year from 1983 to 1988. They were suspended by Washington in 1989 as part of sanctions against China for the army massacre in Beijing that ended the Tian An Men Square pro-democracy demonstrations.

President-elect Bill Clinton does not appear to have had any role in planning or approving Franklin’s visit. But Clinton has recently indicated that he hopes to see improvement in U.S.-China relations.

During the election campaign, Clinton was critical of Beijing’s human rights violations. In recent years, the Democrat-controlled Congress has sought to attach conditions to renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade status, which allows it to sell goods in the United States on the same terms as most American trading partners. Some observers believe Clinton may sign such conditions into law.

Franklin, shortly after her arrival here, took a tour of the Beijing Jeep Corp. Ltd., a joint venture between Chrysler Corp. and Beijing Automotive Works. She is scheduled to meet today and Friday with Li Lanqing, the Chinese trade minister.

Her delegation, which includes 19 government officials and seven corporate executives, is expected to promote a number of specific projects in China as well as seek to improve the overall climate for U.S. business here.

The makeup of the delegation raised eyebrows in Washington when the New York Times reported on it. The newspaper said 11 of the 19 government officials are lame-duck political appointees. The officials and executives are traveling aboard an Air Force jet that costs about $12,000 an hour to operate.

The U.S. officials who negotiated the trade deals that Franklin plans to discuss with Beijing traveled in much smaller groups and took commercial airline flights at considerably lower cost.

Such details have not affected China’s open delight over the visit.

“A senior Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade official said the government has attached much importance to the coming session (of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade) and is confident of its success,” the official China Daily reported.

Among issues of concern to China on the agenda, the newspaper reported, will be U.S. Customs investigations of alleged Chinese violations of textile quotas and the lifting of U.S. bans on high-technology exports to China.

Before Franklin left Washington, the Commerce Department sought to win approval for the export of a Cray Research supercomputer to China’s State Meteorological Bureau. But the Defense Department, fearing that the powerful computer might be used for weapons research, objected.

A spokesman for Minneapolis-based Cray, Frank Parisi, said Wednesday that, so far at least, the Bush Administration has not approved the export of the supercomputer.

The China Daily article reported that U.S. business ventures in China numbered 3,900 at the end of September, with a total investment of $6.34 billion. This makes the United States the largest foreign investor in China, it said. (Hong Kong’s investment exceeds that from the United States, but China does not consider investors from the British colony, which reverts to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, to be foreign.)

During Franklin’s visit, a contract will be signed for AT&T; to sell 27,000 computer-controlled switchboards to the city of Changchun, capital of northeast China’s Jilin province, at a cost of $4 million, the newspaper said.

The United States’ $13-billion trade deficit with China last year was second only to its deficit with Japan. This year’s deficit is expected to exceed $18 billion.

Times staff writer John M. Broder in Washington contributed to this report.