Chinese Still Rebuff State’s Wheat

China will continue to close its borders to Washington wheat despite pleas from Sen. Patty Murray and a Spokane farmer, officials said Friday.

The Washington Democrat, who recently returned from a trade mission to Hong Kong and Beijing, said her meeting with Communist Party leaders repeated the farmers’ long-standing position that China was unfairly shutting them out of a lucrative market.

Sales of Washington wheat to China, which have been denied for years on a questionable concern about disease, would be worth $50 million to $100 million a year, Murray’s office estimated.

“You have to make the point over and over and over again,” Murray said from her Capitol Hill office. “Some day we’ll win on this.”

But Karl Felgenhauer, chairman of the Spokane-based Washington Wheat Commission, was less optimistic upon his return.

“I can’t say we made any headway,” Felgenhauer said, taking a break from spring planting south of Spokane. “It’s about what we expected.”

Sixteen Washington business leaders joined Murray on the trade mission, including Robert Waggoner, of RAHCO International, a Spokane mining equipment manufacturer.

Felgenhauer said China won’t accept white wheat from the Pacific Northwest because it fears the fungus, TCK smut, would be introduced in their country. The disease strikes winter wheat during long periods of snow cover, reducing crop yields.

Yet China accepts Canadian wheat, which often is contaminated by TCK, leaving Felgenhauer and Murray to believe the trade policy is purely political.

“Their heels are dug in on TCK,” said Murray staff member Ben McMakin.

Murray met with Vice Premier Li Lanquing, potentially one of the top two or three leaders in China and with a minister of foreign trade. She discussed the U.S. trade imbalance with China and the governments’ plans for Hong Kong, when the British lease expires June 30.

Murray said Chinese officials assured her they would keep Hong Kong open to international trade.

The city already is the United State’s eighth-largest agriculture market. U.S. officials believe many commodities make their way from Hong Kong into mainland China and the 400 million people living in the three closest provinces.

Murray’s China trip was criticized last month by Rep. Linda Smith, a Washington Republican who may challenge Murray for her senate seat in 1998.

Speaking to a lobbying group from the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, Smith said such visits are a waste of time because American’s have “lost face” with the Chinese government.

“We’re becoming a joke,” she said. “Americans are so greedy they’ll do anything for money.”

, DataTimes