By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 1998; Page A12

BEIJING, June 29—China trumpeted $2 billion worth of deals signed with U.S. companies today at the Great Hall of the People to mark President Clinton's visit, but many of them had been agreed to long before Clinton's arrival in China.

Contracts worth another $1.1 billion were signed with U.S. companies last week before Clinton's arrival, the official Chinese news agency said.

A huge component of the total -- China's purchase of 16 Boeing 737 passenger planes and a 747 jumbo jet -- was agreed to last year. The 17 aircraft, worth $800 million, were among a fleet of 50 that China agreed to buy during President Jiang Zemin's U.S. visit last October. Boeing said today, however, that a new letter of intent was signed to sell 10 additional 737s worth $400 million.

Clinton did not attend the signings; administration officials said that was to avoid any suggestion that American policy might be connected to the sale of American products.

China's is promoting the total figure apparently in hopes of defusing American frustration over the huge U.S. trade deficit with China, which hit $50 billion in 1997. At an American Chamber of Commerce dinner here Sunday night, administration officials and members of Congress warned that the huge deficit is politically "unsustainable." The contracts signed here would make only a small dent in the trade deficit.

China sought to highlight several purchases of American goods, nonetheless. Today, General Electric Co. signed a $161.7 million deal to sell an integrated steam turbine system to China's Huaneng Group, a Chinese government statement said. Chinese state energy giant Sinochem agreed to import 2 million tons of phosphate fertilizer worth $400 million from U.S. companies PhosChem, Cargill Inc. and Hydro Farmland. Dasibi Environmental Corp., a U.S. firm, signed an accord to sell air-quality monitoring equipment worth $5 million to the State Environment Protection Administration.

In addition, Atlantic Richfield Co. and Phillips Petroleum Co. signed a $30 million cooperative agreement to explore for coal-bed methane, a natural gas trapped in water deposits in coal seams. General Motors Corp. signed an agreement June 22 to make pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles here.

One Washington-area company, Bethesda-based Chindex International Inc., held a signing ceremony attended by Commerce Secretary William Daley to mark issuance of an Export-Import Bank guarantee of a $15 million loan that will enable Chindex to import medical equipment here.

The Chindex deal is the first Chinese-American joint venture in hospitals and today marked the formal opening of the facility, although it started treating patients some months ago. "It will serve as a model for China's developing health-care system, and it will serve as a showcase for American high-tech medical equipment and American-style patient-centered care," Daley said.

Chindex will import equipment including Acuson color Doppler ultrasound scanners; Lunar bone densitometers; PLC Medical Systems lasers used for heart surgery; Trex Medical/XRE Division cardiac-intervention imaging systems; and Johnson & Johnson ortho-diagnostic clinical laboratory equipment.