By Clare Nullis

GENEVA, April 26, 1996 (AP) - For the sixth year in a row, China on Tuesday avoided drawing U.N. criticism of its human rights record, winning a massive lobbying campaign against the West.

After drawn-out procedural wrangling, the 53-nation Human Rights Commission upheld a motion by China to take no action on a mildly worded resolution that voiced concern at what it said were Chinese human right violations.

The vote was 27-20 with six abstentions. The no-action decision means the critical resolution, drafted by the United States and European Union, was not even debated.

For China, which won by only one vote last year when a more harshly worded resolution went to a vote, the commission's refusal to even take up the issue this year was a victory. Chinese diplomats - who had worked hard to enlist the support of developing countries - were jubilant.

"Confrontation is a Cold War syndrome," said ambassador Wu Jianmin. "Now the Cold War is over, why are these people still clinging to the Cold War thinking?

"It is a blasphemy of human rights," he said in reference to the Western resolution.

The U.S. State Department has accused the Beijing government of widespread repression, including imprisonment of dissidents and executions for petty crimes.

"The global Chinese campaign to stop the resolution from even coming to a vote was a response to its own abysmal record," said John Shattuck, a top U.S. human rights official.

Following Tuesday's vote, private human rights organizations vowed to continue their crusade to force Beijing to improve its treatment of its people.

"We lost another battle, but not the war," said Xiao Qiang, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights in China. "We will continue to raise human rights as long as the Chinese people are denied them."

Ever since China's brutal suppression of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Western nations and rights activists have lobbied in vain for the U.N. commission to condemn Beijing.

With the exception of last year's close call, China has fended off criticism with the "no action" procedure.

Some nations that voted with the West last year were replaced on the rotating commission by those who happen to be more sympathetic to China.

In a bid to make their resolution more palatable to the commission's developing country majority, the United States and Europe left the language this year deliberately mild.

The text expressed concern about reports of "the persistence of violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout China, including inadequate protection of the distinct cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious identity of Tibetans and others."

But it also welcomed progress in legal reforms in China and in government efforts to eliminate poverty.

The resolution stopped short of demanding a special investigator monitor rights abuses in China - a procedure used in the case of those branded the worst violators.

The China vote came as the commission's six-week session ended.