Nobody Buys

Sino-American trade exhibits

It has been a curious sight. Red flags fluttered in the breeze from the top of 26-ft.-high wooden arches set incongruously near downtown San Francisco, Chicago and New York. The arches have been beckoning passers-by to the first traveling trade show of the People's Republic of China in the U.S. The exhibit opened last week in Manhattan for the capstone stop of its tour. Now that dancers, diplomats and musicians have exchanged visits, China and the U.S. are getting close-up looks at each other's products at trade fairs in the two countries.

Commerce between the two nations is still relatively small. China sent the U.S. $1 billion in goods this year, while the U.S. shipped $3.5 billion to China. In contrast, American exports to Taiwan, which is about one-fiftieth the size of China, amounted to $3 billion in just the first eight months of this year. While businessmen and bureaucrats have been eying products and exchanging visiting cards at the shows, the traveling exhibit has so far resulted in disappointingly low sales.

Last month 240 American companies went to Peking to promote their products in the fields of transportation, drilling, power generation, agriculture and the manufacture of consumer goods. Although some 200,000 Chinese visited the exhibition, many American businessmen complained that they were not the high-ranking bureaucrats they had expected. Sales made at the show were a small $21 million, and contracts for $3.8 million more were under negotiation at the close of the fair. Grumman International, for example, displayed buses, fire engines and light aluminum trucks, but it received no orders. Said Burt Stern, Grumman's senior vice president: "We found little overt interest in our products. We know it takes time, and we hope that some of the information we gave out will drift back into the right places. Maybe something will happen from there." Still, Chinese curiosity about American products was strong. Stacks of product brochures vanished in minutes. General Electric alone distributed 5 1/2 tons of literature during the 13-day show.

Crowds in U.S. cities have been equally curious about the traveling Chinese show. Western eyes are delighted by fine Peking porcelain vases, trays made of glowing cinnebar lacquer and Ching dynasty emperors' robes of embroidered yellow silk as thin as a breath of air. Visitors have also been intrigued by a large dragon vase that is said to be able to determine the severity of an earthquake by the way a set of balls rolls from the dragon's mouth into those of the eight toads below.

American businessmen, however, have been less enthusiastic about products other than handicrafts. More than 4,500 buyers representing 2,646 firms showed up at the various stops, but they have been slow to place orders. Said John Krafft, assistant vice president of the international banking office of San Francisco's Bank of America: "I wasn't overly impressed with the range and quality of products that were shown. I expected to see more light industrial exhibits, a step up from the handicrafts that everybody knows about. The Chinese definitely need a great deal of education on how to market products here."

The Chinese point out that they still cannot produce many of the goods that Americans might want to buy. Li Chuan, the leader of the trade delegation, said candidly, "We are not another Japan. We want to export our things to America to be able to import the technology we need." One conclusion: developing U.S.China trade could be a long march.

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