OBSERVERS of the annual Most Favoured Nation trading status congressional bunfight will know that sticks with which to beat China come in various sizes and many colours.
But above Tibet, prison labour, unfair trading, and political prisoners, one issue has emerged to capture the imagination of most people both in the State Department and Capitol Hill.
Nowhere was the current mood better summed up than in a speech by Democrat Representative Edward Markey this week. ''To every major trouble spot in the world,'' he told the latest debate on the MFN issue, ''the Chinese have become the K-Mart of international nuclear commerce.'' Mr Markey's effort to push through a resolution reversing President Clinton's renewal of MFN failed, but the brilliance of his metaphor reflected a growing concern in Washington. China, he said, was supplying nuclear weapons components to Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Algeria and Pakistan.
Ironically, the weapons issue had no place in the MFN debate - the President never linked renewal to arms sales - but the fact so many congressmen had cause to mention it was no coincidence.
The China-and-arms theme emerged quietly earlier in the week, when a State Department official told The New York Times that the United States was getting so concerned about the apparent sale of M-11 missile technology to Pakistan that sanctions might well be threatened.
No new evidence of the covert arms shipments was offered, and in a subsequent press briefing, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry refused to offer any, other than to hint that new intelligence had been gathered.