CHINA

Beijing Offers to Buy More to Avert Sanctions: China’s vice minister of trade, Tong Zhiguang, said his country is prepared to buy more U.S. wheat and phosphate fertilizer, continuing a buying binge in the hope of avoiding U.S. trade sanctions. Zhiguang, who will lead a delegation to the United States and Canada this month, was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying the group would shop for wheat and fertilizer. The agency did not indicate how much the group would buy. Several other Chinese delegations have visited the United States in the last month and placed orders for millions of dollars worth of jet engines, oil drilling equipment and cars. The shopping spree is part of an effort to dissuade Washington from attaching conditions to the annual renewal of China’s most-favored nation trade status.