BUSINESS ABROAD: China Bound

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BUSINESS ABROAD China Bound If a Korean truce is signed, many a British businessman apparently expects the U.N. to lift its embargo on Chinese trade at once. Last week, in hopes of getting into China first, 16 visiting Britons signed "a business arrangement" in Peking with the Communist China National Import & Export Corp. for the exchange of $84 million worth of goods.

The British agreed to sell such strategic items as metal, machinery, chemicals, electrical equipment and communications and transport equipment. In return they would get such articles as vegetable oil, egg products, tea, silk and handicraft products. A similar deal had been signed a month earlier by a French delegation.

The British Foreign Office and Board of Trade explained, in some embarrassment, that they had known of the visit to Peking but disapproved of it. The mission had been sent by an organization known as the British Council for the Promotion of International Trade, headed by leftish do-gooder Lord Boyd Orr, onetime head of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. But the fact remained that the council represented some 50 firms, including such industrial stalwarts as Austin Motor Co., Ltd., Crompton Parkinson Ltd. (electrical manufacturers), Brush Electrical Engineering Co., Ltd., Tube Investments, Ltd. and John Lysaghts, Ltd.