May 27, 1994

It never occurred to Susan Addelston that one day, her 1948 camp yearbook might be of interest to anyone but her. And, well, maybe her mother. Yet there it is, mounted, labeled and catalogued, a thing to be looked at, puzzled over and commented on, an item in an exhibit at the Jewish Museum filled with the artifacts of summers in the woods and by the lake. It is all on display: the trunk and the duffel bag, the plaque made for color war and the hand puppet made in arts and crafts, the name tags sewn into T-shirts and the letters home to Mom and Dad, full of tales of homesickness and complaints about the food.

Now that President Clinton has decided to keep China in the family of America's most favored trading nations, despite that country's human rights violations, sighs of relief are coming from much of Corporate America and from many individuals -- certainly those who think about China as a source of inexpensive consumer goods. China is booming. And that means big business for American companies like Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, which together sold $2 billion in aircraft to China last year, and AT&T, which describes China -- not the United States -- as its fastest-growing market. These companies were loud voices in the lobbying effort for an extension of China's trade privileges. China Is 'Critical for Us' "If 'most favored nation' had not been extended, we would have been impacted greatly; it is critical for us to be successful in China," said Susan Berman, a spokeswoman for AT&T, which expects to collect $3 billion in revenues from its China operations by the year 2000, up from $500 million last year and $250 million in 1992.

Normally, conflict is what makes news. But what makes the way economic policy is developed in the Clinton Administration newsworthy is the remarkable absence of conflict among prominent officials with strong ambitions, personalities and opinions. President Clinton's health and welfare policies are being put together in an atmosphere of continual bickering within the Administration, the unhappiness underlined by a spate of unauthorized disclosures by disappointed officials hoping to change preliminary decisions. Foreign policy seems so cacophonous at times that it is often unclear who stands where and what the President thinks.

NEW YORK CITY 17 IN BRONX FACE EXTORTION CHARGES The Federal Government charged 17 people with running a sophisticated extortion ring in the South Bronx that required drug dealers to pay for the right to sell heroin. The gang grossed more than $100,000 a week for seven years, the authorities charged, killing and torturing those who did not cooperate. A1.

THERE are places in this concrete-cornered, plasticized city where children, urban kids, can meet nature. How are you, park squirrel? Hi, pigeons. But these natural encounters are not always the most natural thing in the world. The two worlds clash -- and, most often, merge merrily -- at the new Prospect Park Wildlife Center in Brooklyn, the first New York City zoo totally aimed at children. A regular visitor there is my son Roy, who at the age of 6 is convinced he knows all he will ever need to know about everything. Recently, he was given the chance to feed a quarter's worth of granola-like gunk, dispensed from a vending machine, to some lambs. A Kodak moment! I squeezed my trusty Ph.D. ("Push here, dummy") camera in anticipation.