The deals signed at a ceremony attended by US commerce secretary William Daley and Chinese foreign trade officials included the 1.2 billion dollars sale of 27 boeing aircraft to the civil aviation administration of China.

General Electric Co signed an agreement to sell the Chinese utilities company Huaneng Group 161.7 million dollars worth of power turbines, a company statement said.

Boeing China president Ray Bracy said ten of the aircraft are new orders worth about 400 million dollars. The remaining 17 have been carried over from a 50-plane deal signed in October during Chinese leader's Jiang Zemin's trip to the United States last fall. Clinton's visit has set a good precedent for future commercial cooperation with China, said Bracy. We are pleased.''In other deals, China's Sinochem agreed to import 400 milliondollars worth of phosphate fertilisers from US Phoschem, Cargill Trading and Hydro Farmland.

International Business Machines Corp signed an accord with China Great Wall Computer and Shenzhen Kaifa Technology Co to invest an additional 76.8 million dollars in their joint venture. IBM holds an 80 per cent stake in the company. Smaller contracts included accords for Sino-US joint exploration of coal bed methane, an environmentally friendly fuel resource and the import of air quality monitoring equipment.

Other companies announced new contracts just ahead of president Clinton's arrival in China last Thursday. General Motors Corp signed a 230 million dollars agreement with first Auto Works Jinbei Automotive Co to manufacture light trucks. And Motorola and Lucent Technologies signed contracts for telecommunication equipment sales valued at more than 408 million dollars.

Japan endorses Sino-US strategic partnership

Japan today endorsed the US-China strategic partnership in Asia as agreed to at theSino-American summit talks in Beijing saying it would help stablise the region. Cabinet affairs minister Kanezo Muraoka, who is also the chief spokesman for the Japanese government, told a press conference that Japan welcomed the outcome of the Beijing talks between US president Bill Clinton and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin.

The discussions were positive, constructive and productive, he said.Chinese president is due to visit Tokyo this autumn and his talks with Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto are expected to go over most of the Asia-related subjects Clinton and Jiang Zemin had covered at their summit. Muraoka said it was imperative that the three Asian powers - America, China, and Japan - work together to maintain cooperative relations among themselves in the interest of Asian stability.

He hoped both the US and Japan would further improve their relations with China. Japanese reports from Bejing said president Clinton in his talks with the Chinese leaders tried to allay Chinese suspicionthat the revised US-Japan mutual security agreement was not to contain China nor was it directed at China. The revised provisions in the US-Japan defence treaty were worked out jointly by Clinton and Hashimoto in April 1997. China had immediately protested against it saying it could not accept any international military role for Japan in support of any possible US actions and demanded exclusion of Taiwan from the scope of the US-Japan security treaty. Neither Japan nor the United States has met that demand specifically, beyond saying the agreements were not country or area-specific.