Congress Gets Pitch on China Trade Status : Human rights: The President seeks extension of most-favored-nation benefits for a year. But some want tougher plan.

The Clinton Administration began Tuesday to try to sell Congress on a proposal to have the President extend China’s most-favored-nation trade privileges for another year--but to make any further renewals after 1994 conditional on improvements in the country’s human rights practices.

The proposal, which both Administration officials and members of Congress said is subject to change, was outlined in a series of briefings by Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord. Some Democratic legislators made it plain Tuesday that they are not ready to endorse President Clinton’s approach and may seek to toughen it over the next few days.

“I haven’t even seen a draft. . . . They have 48 hours. I’m here,” said California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), after attending one of the briefings. He indicated that Congress might go ahead and pass its own legislation on China’s trade benefits, with or without Clinton’s backing.

Under Clinton’s proposal, the conditions on any renewal of China’s trade benefits would be imposed through an executive order rather than an act of Congress. And, according to both Administration and congressional sources, the conditions will be confined to human rights. Clinton will not require similar improvements in China’s trade and its arms-export policies as a condition, the sources said.

Instead, the Administration will resort to other approaches, separate from MFN, to try to obtain better access for American companies to China’s market and more restraint in its sales of dangerous missiles and other weapons.

During last year’s campaign, Clinton attacked the George Bush Administration for “coddling” the Chinese regime in the wake of its bloody repression of the 1989 Tian An Men Square demonstrations for democracy.

Clinton’s approach to China policy is a notch tougher than that of the Bush Administration, which repeatedly resisted all efforts by a Democratic Congress to attach any conditions to the annual renewal of China’s trade benefits. China, and many in the American business community, had sought to win an extension of China’s MFN benefits without any conditions at all.

“For the first time, a President is conditioning MFN on human rights, and that’s a pretty significant step,” a senior Administration official maintained.

But the President’s policy toward the MFN benefits is also weaker in three respects than the one advocated by Congress over the past three years.

* First, during the Bush Administration, the Democratic Congress wanted to impose a series of conditions on China’s MFN renewal through legislation--which is considered much more lasting and difficult to change than a presidential executive order.

* Second, the conditions Clinton wants to impose on China’s MFN benefits involve only human rights, leaving out the language on trade and arms exports that Congress had approved under Bush.

* And third, the wording of the human rights conditions Clinton set for China is reportedly weaker and less detailed than in the legislation that Congress passed and Bush vetoed.

“What we have had to do is admit as a given the importance of China in the world,” another senior Administration official told reporters Tuesday.

A country with MFN trade privileges has the right to export its goods to the United States under the same low tariff rates paid by most other countries.

In 1990, a year after the Chinese regime summoned army troops and tanks to repress pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, Congress launched efforts to impose conditions on China’s trade benefits. But each time Congress approved legislation restricting the MFN status, Bush vetoed the measures.

Since Clinton’s election, China, other Asian governments such as Japan and many members of the American business community have urged Clinton to abandon his campaign positions and grant China an unconditional extension of MFN benefits.

The strategy of Administration officials has been to try to reach agreement with Capitol Hill on a unified approach to China, in which congressional leaders would hold off from pushing their legislation and join with the Administration in supporting a new executive order imposing conditions on a renewal of MFN benefits.

Administration officials said Tuesday night that they hope to be able to work out a deal and to make public their final executive order by Thursday.