By Andrew Browne

BEIJING, November 4, 1997 (Reuters) - China said Tuesday that remarks by President Jiang Zemin to students at Harvard University last week had been mistakenly reported as referring to the Tiananmen crackdown.

"A small number of people have mistakenly interpreted what President Jiang Zemin said and a small number of the media made inaccurate reports," Foreign Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang told a news briefing.

Tang made no further comment when asked to clarify Jiang's use of the words "mistakes" and "shortcomings" in response to a question about the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Jiang's words appeared to refer to another section of a two-part question.

However, Tang hailed the trip made by Jiang, who returned to China Tuesday, as a turning point in Sino-U.S. relations.

"This trip is a mark that ends the turmoil in Sino-U.S. relations over the last few years and opens up a new future," Tang said. "President Jiang's visit to the United States has been very successful, attaining the goal of promoting mutual understanding ... and developing cooperation," he said.

Jiang made a triumphant return Tuesday from the nine-day trip that the government said had ended the turmoil in Sino-U.S. ties.

"This trip is a mark that ends the turmoil in Sino-U.S. relations over the last few years and opens up a new future," Tang said.

Relations went into freefall after the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters in 1989.

After being feted in the White House, and cheered in the citadel of American capitalism at the New York Stock Exchange, Jiang was given a red-carpet welcome by top leaders in Beijing's Great Hall of the People.

"Are you happy?" one reporter shouted.

"Very happy," Jiang replied in English.

Jiang left China amid apprehension about his likely reception in the United States, where China has taken the place of the former Soviet Union as the "evil empire" for a coalition of pressure groups and human rights activists.

But from Beijing's point of view, the first Sino-U.S. summit since the Tiananmen Square killings was a great success.

It was crowned with a commitment by President Clinton to a new "strategic partnership"-which for Beijing represented an acknowledgement of China's status as a rising economic and political giant.

A Chinese official Monday disdainfully referred to protests that dogged Jiang's every step as "noise pollution."

"Leaders of the two countries reached common understanding on prospect for relations between two countries and the goal of setting up strategic partnership relations," said the foreign ministry spokesman.

"This is the most important achievement."

He said Jiang had enjoyed "comprehensive contacts" with Americans from all walks of life and "constructively exchanged views" with the U.S. Congress.

Chinese state media focused largely on the pomp and ceremony of Jiang's visit, ignoring contentious areas of human rights and trade that clouded the summit from an American perspective.

Chinese television cameras lingered over Jiang's stroll on the White House south lawn, and a glittering dinner inside the presidential mansion.

The United States had been a solitary hold-out among major world powers by not re-establishing top-level contacts with China eight years after the Tiananmen crackdown.

Jiang craved a political breakthrough with the world's lone superpower to cap his domestic triumphs, including the successful handover of Hong Kong from Britain earlier this year. Last month, Jiang sidelined his major rivals to power at a Communist Party Congress.

Jiang left the United States with almost the same differences with the Clinton administration on human rights, trade and Taiwan that he had when he began.

But China experts said he may have forged a new realism in what is arguably the most important relationship in the post-Cold War world.

During his stay in the United States, Jiang danced the hula in Hawaii, wore a three-cornered hat in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and held blunt but fruitful talks with Clinton and congressional leaders.