CLINTON SHIFTING GEARS ON CHINA : MEETINGS PLANNED TO ADDRESS ISSUES.

Byline: Jodi Enda Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Faced with China's emerging military and economic might, President Clinton set the stage Sunday for a challenging new era of engagement with the Asian giant.

Clinton's agreement to visit Beijing and to receive Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Washington represents a concession that the previous hard-nosed approach toward China failed to stop human-rights abuses or win economic concessions, officials said.

Now Clinton will attempt the difficult alternative of persuading the Chinese to compromise on important economic and social issues without threats.

Human-rights advocates accused Clinton of capitulating by agreeing to frequent meetings with China's leaders without rights concessions. They said they would press Congress to force a reversion to a stance that places more emphasis on China's treatment of dissidents.

``The Chinese government's strategy to use trade to blunt human-rights criticism seems to have been vindicated today,'' said Mike Jendrzejcyk of Human Rights Watch/Asia. ``Both countries tacitly agreed to pursue economic and political interests without human rights intervening.''

Administration officials insist they will continue to pressure China on human-rights issues. But they say there is also an urgent need for engagement on other important concerns such as working to reduce trade barriers and to bring a greater level of security to Asia.

``I'm saying that human rights is very important. So is peace on the Korean Peninsula, nonproliferation, trade and many other issues,'' said Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord. ``And we're going to press all these issues.

``We believe that regular, high-level dialogue is the most effective way to make progress on all these issues, including human rights,'' Lord said.

Clinton and Jiang agreed to the summit meetings during a one-on-one session Sunday before the start of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation economic summit that brought together 18 Pacific leaders here.

In addition to an exchange of state visits by the presidents in late 1997 and 1998 - most likely with Jiang coming to Washington first - the two leaders agreed that Vice President Al Gore would travel to China during the first half of next year.

Gore will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Beijing since the Chinese government attacked pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

As a gesture of goodwill, Jiang gave Clinton photos and a videotape of the remnants of an American World War II bomber discovered recently in the Guangxi province, a remote, mountainous region in southern China. Jiang agreed to allow American investigators to inspect the wreckage of the B-24 bomber and the remains of soldiers inside to try to determine who they were and what happened to them.

Lord said he didn't know how many victims there were, only that it was more than one person.

Clinton had been pushing at the APEC summit for an agreement to eliminate tariffs on computers and other information technology by the year 2000. But as the Asian leaders gathered today at the former American naval base at Subic Bay, it was increasingly apparent he would fall short of that goal.

A number of APEC leaders expressed concern that American and Japanese companies would swamp their domestic industries without tariff protection. A senior Clinton administration official predicted that the decree issued at the end of the conference would call instead for ``substantial elimination'' of the high-tech tariffs.

Following APEC tradition, Clinton and the other national leaders attending the summit wore distinctive cream-colored loose-fitting Filipino shirts - called barong tagaloy - given them by their hosts.

Tonight, the president was scheduled to fly to Thailand for a state visit before returning to Washington on Wednesday.