United States Foreign Relations China

Plans to allow the San Diego Zoo and other American zoos to import giant pandas for display and research--hailed in January as a breakthrough in international efforts to save the endangered species--have become a victim of Chinese bureaucratic infighting and may die. A key agency of the Beijing government has branded the agreement suggested by the U.S.

Indonesian President Suharto arrived in Beijing on Wednesday on a visit that highlights recent gains by China in breaking out of the diplomatic isolation it fell into last year. The visit by Suharto, who brought along an entourage of more than 100, coincides with visits by Thai Prime Minister Chatchai Choonhavan, Argentine President Carlos Menem and five U.S. congressmen. The U.S. group, headed by Rep. Michael G.

In the year since the Bush Administration blocked U.S. military sales to China after the crushing of democracy protests at Tian An Men Square, Israel has emerged as the most important foreign supplier of advanced military technology to China, officials in the Bush Administration and Congress say. According to these sources, Israel increasingly is providing China with military technology that China is unable to obtain from the United States. Some U.S.

U.S. and China relations have long stumbled over human rights, trade and arms reduction. Add to that list of differences, the Boy Scouts of America. Hoping to someday end China's decades-old ban on Scouting, a group of San Fernando and San Gabriel valley Scouts are heading eastward today to show educators in four of China's largest cities what U.S. Scouts do, including such activities as Native American dances and flag salute ceremonies.

It was one of the regular staples of President Clinton's campaign for the White House: attacking the Bush Administration for "coddling the dictators of Beijing." Along with that denunciation came Clinton's oft-proclaimed endorsement of congressional efforts to make the annual extensions of China's trade benefits in this country conditional on improvements in Beijing's human rights, trade and arms-export policies.

Gov. Chris Patten said Monday that during his scheduled visit to Washington next week, he will plunge into the U.S. debate over policy toward China by lobbying personally for preservation of normal Sino-U.S. trade ties. Any action by Washington to end China's most-favored-nation trade status would not only cause economic damage to the United States, China and Hong Kong but would also harm efforts to promote political liberalization in China, Patten told a group of U.S. reporters here.

Showing obvious pique about a summit gone awry, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji on Friday sharply criticized President Clinton for refusing to approve a proposed deal aimed at bringing China into a global trading regime.

In a case that has attracted high-level interest in the Reagan Administration and Congress, China is preparing to put on trial soon a Chinese student from the University of Arizona who is accused of undermining China's Communist Party through his work with a U.S.-based group working for democracy in China. According to informed sources, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Han Xu told Secretary of State George P. Shultz early this month about the planned trial in Shanghai.

The White House announced Wednesday that President Bush will meet with China's Premier Li Peng in New York City on Friday, an action that will give the Chinese regime its most significant boost toward regaining the international respectability it lost after the Beijing massacre of pro-democracy dissidents in 1989.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced Sunday that he will visit China later this month, effectively ending one of the last of the American sanctions imposed after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tian An Men Square in 1989. Baker told a press conference marking the end of the Middle East peace conference that China, with almost one-quarter of the world's people, is too big for the United States to continue to ignore, regardless of its dismal human rights record.