"WTO accession negotiations continue and while some progress has been made, more negotiations will be necessary to resolve differences," the administration said in a statement released after a US-Sino summit in Beijing.

A senior US trade official told reporters that while China had come forward with a number of new proposals designed to speed up Beijing's decade-long effort to join the 130-member world trade club, the offers did not go far enough.

"It falls short of the end points that we would be looking for," the official said. "We need to see additional movement across all areas."

Washington has taken the lead role in negotiating China's accession to the WTO and US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky is accompanying president Bill Clinton on his state visit toChina following a two-day round of US-Sino trade talks in Beijing last week.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said China had put on the table its first-ever proposal for opening up the nation's telecommunications market and had amended its plans for providing limited access to foreign financial service providers. He also said China had made progress in its efforts to reduce both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, but he quickly added that none of those steps had been enough to address Washington's concerns about China's still widely-closed economy. "We're a long way from reaching a point where we're moving forward in all those areas," the official said.

China maintains it has already made major concessions in providing market access to foreign firms but says it cannot do much more for now because major reforms designed to modernise its ailing economy have created too much uncertainty. Beijing is facing the daunting task of reforming its inefficient state enterprise system, which hasalready caused millions of Chinese to lose their jobs. Asia's financial crisis has put additional strains on China's mostly export-oriented industry and put pressure on Beijing to devalue its currency, the yuan, in a bid to bolster the competitiveness of its exporters.

So far at least, Beijing has resisted the pressure, and Chinese officials have indicated they want to see some reward for providing an island of stability in the battered Asian region.

China is by far the fastest-growing of the United States' top-10 trading partners. But concern over the ballooning US trade deficit with China is running deep in Washington, and the United States is eager to pry open China's closed markets at a much faster pace then Beijing is willing to concede.

"Until China reaches a point where they are prepared to undertake the kinds of reforms that all major trading partners are looking for, the pace of progress in WTO negotiations is likely to be slow and uneven," the official said.

According to Washington, the UStrade shortfall with China is likely to reach $60 billion this year, up from an already whopping $50 billion in 1997. China maintains those figures are exaggerating the true trade deficit since the data excludes US exports to Hong Kong that are re-exported to mainland China. The next round of US-Sino trade talks is scheduled for the week of July 20 in Geneva.