The politics and performance of the post-Mao Chinese government (1976 to the present) in the areas of foreign economic relations and Sino-American normalization are examined. Realizing that the four modernizations program for bringing up to date agriculture, industry, science and technology, and defense, initiated by Mao's successors in 1977, was too ambitious, China's current leadership is in the process of adjusting, reorienting, and retrenching the program into something more pragmatic, realistic, and attainable. Included among the topics discussed in this publication are: China's international trade and finance; China's capital construction and the prospects for foreign participation; China's hard currency export potential and import capacity through 1985; Sino-Japanese economic relations; China's grain imports; Chinese general agreement on tariff and trade; normalization of U.S. commercial relations with China; recent developments in China's trade practices; emerging functions of formal legal institutions in China's modernization; recent developments in China's treatment of intellectual property; U.S. firms in China trade; overcoming hindrances and impediments in U.S.-Chinese commercial negotiations; and the U.S.-China Joint Economic Committee. (RM)