NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S.-China Ties Turn Sour Amid Tension on Key Issues

After months of trying to play down frictions with China, the Clinton Administration is now headed toward a broad series of disputes with the Beijing government ranging from human rights and arms control issues to the Olympic Games.

Underlying the confrontation are not only domestic factors in both countries but, some say, widening differences in global strategy between the United States and China.

On Wednesday, the Administration announced long-threatened economic sanctions against China for its sale of M-11 missile components to Pakistan. But that action, in the planning stages for months, is only one of several signs of the increasingly sour relations between Washington and Beijing.

“We’re very close to a hostile confrontation (with China),” said China specialist Richard Solomon of RAND Corp., the Santa Monica-based think tank. “There’s a nexus of pressures that are building. . . . Neither side sees it as in their national interest to drift back to a relationship of hostility. But we are drawing close to that sort of relationship again.”

China is increasingly irked by American congressional resolutions opposing Beijing’s effort to land the Olympic Games in the year 2000.

Clinton Administration officials are extremely unhappy with Beijing’s treatment of a leading dissident, Han Dongfang, who was stripped of his passport and denied permission to re-enter China after spending some time in the United States.

Amid all these other tensions, China has put off for several weeks a planned visit by Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, the Administration official assigned to discuss human rights problems between the two countries. Shattuck’s trip, originally planned for August, will not come until late September or October, after the International Olympic Committee makes its final decision on the site for the 2000 Summer Games.

Finally, by all accounts, Chinese officials have been infuriated by the Clinton Administration’s conduct over the Yinhe, a Chinese ship that U.S. officials have asserted is carrying into the Persian Gulf a shipment of dangerous chemicals to be used in Iran’s chemical warfare program.

China has adamantly denied the American accusations and publicly accused Washington of “bullying” tactics for sending U.S. planes and warships to track the Yinhe.

“They say, ‘We are a big country, the Americans can’t treat us like this,’ ” said one Asian diplomat who is in close contact with Chinese officials.

Under a compromise, the cargo of the Chinese ship is about to be inspected at a port in Saudi Arabia.

While insisting that the United States is still looking to maintain a “constructive” relationship with China, one senior Administration official acknowledged Wednesday that “there’s no question we have some problems (with China) coming together at the same time.”

Why is all this happening now?

To some extent, the confrontations are dictated by the calendar. Now is a good time for the United States to be publicly challenging China on some of the issues dividing the two countries--and vice versa.

When President Clinton took office, he faced a June deadline for deciding whether to renew China’s most-favored-nation trading privileges in this country, which permit Chinese goods to be imported into the United States at the same low-tariff rates enjoyed by most other countries.

The MFN benefits are of enormous economic importance not only to China, but also to many American companies that do business with China. And the Clinton Administration does not want to harm these companies by cutting off China’s MFN benefits.

Throughout the spring, disputes between the United States and China were minimized, postponed or handled as quietly as possible. Any public fight could have helped build up a constituency in Congress in favor of revoking China’s MFN benefits.

These timing factors affected China, too. It had every reason to be conciliatory to the United States and to avoid doing or saying anything that could jeopardize Washington’s renewal of its MFN trade status. The Beijing government made several goodwill gestures, such as releasing dissidents. In June, Clinton granted China a one-year extension of the trade benefits.

Now, the wraps are off. There won’t be another deadline for annual renewal until next June, and disputes between the two countries that might well have been smoothed over last spring are now being aired.

“The Chinese are testing the new Administration,” says James R. Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to China. “The Chinese aren’t sure how far we are going to go with them. . . . By now, they’ve gotten the message that (revoking) MFN is a bullet which we put in the gun and never fire. So they’re playing hardball on human rights.”

Some U.S. analysts also believe that lingering hard-line elements in the Chinese leadership would welcome a good fight with the United States, because it might help them in the internal jockeying for power in Beijing. And, with China’s 89-year-old paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, in frail health and a struggle to be his political successor looming, no one in the Chinese leadership wants to appear weak, particularly on issues that involve the military.

“Certainly, within the leadership in China, there’s a lot of tension now,” says Douglas Paal, who was director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council in the George Bush Administration.

The growing frictions between Washington and Beijing also reflect broader differences in long-range strategy. The United States is concerned about China’s power within Asia and its ability, through arms exports, to affect developments in the Middle East. The Beijing government, for its part, worries that the United States is trying to undermine its authority, both at home and abroad.

* CHINA PUNISHED: U.S. bans exports of satellites and related equipment. A8