China seeks E. European trade

Press, 19 August 1978, Page 8

China seeks E. European trade

NZPA-Reuter Bucharest. The Chinese leader, Hua Kuo-feng, will today begin a ! tour of three key Rumanian industrial centres, under-' I lining plans for a big in-i crease in economic co-oper-ation and bilateral trade. Western diplomats said! that China and Rumania, a! : maverick member of the So-viet-led Warsaw Pact and; Comecon economic grouping,! intended, raising turn-over I between the two countries from about S4OOM in 1976 to! about $B5O million yearlv bv 1980. Mr Hua, the first Chinese Communist Party chairman to visit Europe for more than two decades, will tour a plant in Ploesti, centre of Rumania s oil industry, an engineering works in Brasov, and the naval dockyards at the country’s main Black Sea port of Constanta. Mr Hua is said to be seeking technology for offshore oil! searches and Rumania wants to diversify its energy sources. Big crowds were again expected to turn out for Mr Hua. providmg a colourful if highly organised welcome as they have done since he arrived in Bucharest on Wednesday for an official five-day visit.

Rumania, while formally, an ally of Moscow, has increasingly pulled away from 'he Soviet orbit. It is the only member of the Eastern bloc to maintain close ties with China, and relations with Israel. Diplomats said that Mr Hua’s trip had clearly angered the Kremlin as a form of Chinese encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence. The visit has presented tricky problems for President Ceausescu, who while anxious to stress his neutrality in the Sino-Soviet ideological feud, is clearly concerned not to give, offence to Russia, from! whom much of Rumania’s oil supplies now come,; Western diplomats said. Mr Hua, in a speech soon after arriving, launched a thinly disguised attack on the Soviet Union and the United States, accusing them of trying to infiltrate and undermine other countries. Western diplomats said that the Chinese leader would almost certainly have liked to hi 1 out against the surer-Powers. especially the Soviet Union, in even more forthright terms, but had probably used milder language in deference to the Rumanian President.