BEIJING — A senior Chinese trade official called on Saturday for a compromise between the United States and China that could make a trade deal easier to reach this spring. But it could also lead to a more fragile agreement, which could fall apart quickly should trade frictions rise again.

Over the past year, the most contentious issue in the countries’ trade talks has been the Trump administration’s demand for what it calls an enforcement provision, which would allow the United States to monitor China’s behavior and put penalties in place if the Chinese violated the deal.

The Trump administration has pressed China to accept an agreement allowing the United States to unilaterally reimpose tariffs if it concludes that China has not gone through with structural changes to its economy. In the past month, the administration has also pushed for a broader enforcement mechanism, which would include the right to reimpose tariffs for any category of goods in which imports from China surge.

In exchange, the Trump administration would roll back at least some of the tariffs it placed on $250 billion of imports from China that it imposed last year, penalties that have strained ties between the governments, rocked financial markets and thrown the future of companies that operate in both countries in doubt.