It was a decidedly odd way for bill clinton to hear the news. At about 8 a.m. on Nov. 15, the president was stepping into the shower in his hotel bathroom in Ankara, Turkey, where he was preparing for a summit of European leaders. A whole continent away, in Beijing, his China negotiators, Char-lene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling, were huddling in another bathroom—the women's room on the first floor of the Chinese Trade Ministry. It was the only private place they could find to make a cellular-phone call. Just hours before, they had told Clinton that the news looked grim; there was little chance of a deal on China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
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