Window-Shopping for Weapons

The visit to Washington last week of Chinese Defense Minister Zhang Aiping was attended by a minimum of fanfare. His mission: to work out a deal with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to buy U.S. weapons. But the talks went little beyond the agreements made during Weinberger's trip to China last fall and Reagan's visit in April. The Chinese reaffirmed their interest in TOW antitank and Hawk antiaircraft missiles, but there were no specific commitments accompanying the "agreement in principle" reached last week.

In fact, the arms talks were shadowed by a sudden impasse in negotiations to sell nuclear-power-plant technology to the Chinese, the most substantive accord of Reagan's trip. The President had relied on statements from Premier Zhao Ziyang that Peking would comply with U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. But reports suggesting that the Chinese had aided Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program led Reagan to seek further assurances. Zhang, said one U.S. official, "blew his top." Even so, Zhang took off on a two-week tour of America's arsenal that includes F-16 assembly lines in Fort Worth and the space-shuttle complex at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.