Sino-Soviet Relations Improving : 2 Sides’ Gestures Ease Long Rivalry; U.S. Weighs Effect

It was not long ago that Chinese officials were denouncing the Soviet Union as “revisionist,” a betrayer of the socialist cause. Now, after years of antagonism, the Chinese are taking a different tack.

The Chinese now acknowledge the Soviet Union as a truly socialist country and say they look for “great achievements” under the new Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The change goes beyond rhetoric. It reflects substantial improvement in relations between the two countries.

For more than two decades, the two countries, which share a 4,000-mile border, had been locked in acrimonious ideological and geopolitical rivalry. In 1969, a series of border clashes brought them to the verge of war.

However, in the last few months, China and the Soviet Union have made a series of public gestures aimed at easing tension, gestures so numerous and dramatic that some analysts have been astonished.

Benefits for Both

“I am surprised,” a West European diplomat said. “I expected some evolution, but less far, less fast.”

To China, an improvement in relations with the Soviet Union means peace on its northern border while it devotes itself to economic modernization. To the Soviet Union, it offers a chance to reap some benefits from China’s open-door trade policy and to make sure that China does not go too far in military cooperation with the West.

“It’s already a big success for the Soviet Union just to have a China that appears neutralized,” one analyst said.

If the atmosphere between China and the Soviet Union continues to improve, some analysts say, it will be only a matter of time, perhaps three to five years, before the world’s two largest Communist parties re-establish friendly relations.

Moscow Talks Scheduled

Well before that, the two countries will probably begin exchanging visits at the highest levels of government. It is considered possible, for example, that Foreign Ministers Wu Xueqian and Andrei A. Gromyko will meet here or in Moscow within the next year. Only last week, the Chinese announced that a sixth round of talks aimed at improving bilateral relations has been scheduled for April 9 in Moscow.

Some diplomats believe that the rapprochement has already begun to have a significant effect on regional affairs. Some Asian officials are concerned by what they perceive to be a slight softening in China’s opposition to the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan.

Speculate on Theory

Other Asian officials theorize that China has been willing to tolerate Vietnam’s latest offensive against anti-Vietnam rebels in Cambodia in part because of a reluctance to disrupt the improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union provides military aid to Vietnam and is its most important ally.

No one here has suggested that China and the Soviet Union will resume the close relationship that they had three decades ago after the Communist Chinese takeover.

“It’s not going to be like the 1950s,” a U.S. official said.

In fact, some analysts say that for the time being, China continues to be much closer to the United States than to the Soviet Union. The United States continues to have high-level government contacts with China and to provide technology for China’s modernization program. In addition, the two countries have in the last year taken the first tentative steps toward military cooperation.

“The Soviets are very concerned about the possibility of military ties between the U.S. and China,” an East European official here said recently. “Combining U.S. technology and China’s labor force could threaten their security interests.”

But as a result of recent developments, the two superpowers have become jittery about each other’s improving relations with China.

“The West has now lost certain guarantees,” one analyst said. “Until now, we thought the geopolitical obstacles (between China and the Soviet Union) were so great that nothing could happen very quickly, no matter who was in charge of China. Now, these obstacles are being laid aside. It means that if there was a new leadership in China less favorable to the West and more favorable to the socialist camp, things could change very fast.”

Independence Asserted

The improved ties with the Soviets also enable China to maintain that it is pursuing an independent foreign policy, separate from that of both the superpowers. Although China has been saying this for years, its assertions were viewed with more skepticism when China was on friendly terms with the United States and barely speaking to the Soviet Union.

Although the Sino-Soviet thaw has become more noticeable in the last few months, most analysts believe that it dates back to late 1983. At that time, China had worked out with American officials an exchange of visits, first by Premier Zhao Ziyang to the United States and then by President Reagan to China.

At first, those high-level meetings seemed to indicate a new step by China toward closer ties with the United States. But soon after the Zhao and Reagan visits were arranged, China announced that Ivan V. Arkhipov, the Soviet first deputy premier, would visit Peking less than two weeks after Reagan’s departure. No Soviet official of that rank had been to China since 1969.

In scheduling the Reagan and Arkhipov visits, China set the foreign-policy course it has been following again in recent months: Rather than maintaining a cool distance from the superpowers, it has been actively cultivating relations with both.

Delay Stunned Peking

Diplomats here say that this tactic was obscured to some extent by an event beyond China’s control. In May, less than 24 hours before Arkhipov was scheduled to arrive here, the Soviet Union stunned China by delaying his trip.

The delay was announced in the same week that the Soviet Union pulled out of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and it appears to have been part of a general toughening of the Soviet attitude in the early months of Konstantin U. Chernenko’s leadership. China responded with new anti-Soviet invective, at one point attacking Chernenko personally for what it called his anti-Chinese attitudes.

Nevertheless, late last fall, just when the United States and China began making plans for ships of the U.S. Navy to call at Chinese ports, and for the United States to provide help in modernizing China’s navy, the Arkhipov visit was rescheduled.

During a one-week stay last December, Arkhipov signed a series of agreements to upgrade economic, scientific and technological cooperation between China and the Soviet Union. And some U.S. officials, looking back, say that his visit was more significant than they realized at the time.

‘Unimportance’ Overstated

“I think maybe we overstated the unimportance of it,” one U.S. official told his colleagues recently.

U.S. officials say that there were several reasons for discounting the Arkhipov visit. Because it had been scheduled seven months earlier and then postponed, the trip itself seemed anticlimactic; the economic protocols that were signed were exactly what they and other diplomats had expected.

Most importantly, there was no clear indication during Arkhipov’s visit that longstanding points of friction between China and the Soviet Union had been removed.

For the last several years, China has spoken repeatedly of what it calls the three obstacles to normalization of relations with the Soviet Union--Soviet troops on the border with China, Soviet support of Vietnam’s military action in Cambodia, and the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan.

Withheld Afghan Comment

There was one sign of a change in policy at the time. During Arkhipov’s trip, China let the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan slip by without comment. This apparent softening of China’s position greatly upset some Asian officials, among them the Pakistanis. Other diplomats viewed it as no more than an effort to avoid embarrassing Arkhipov while he was in China. Since then, China has said its policy on Afghanistan remains the same and has excoriated the Soviet Union for its “armed intervention” there.

But after Arkhipov returned to Moscow, there was a marked shift in China’s attitude toward the Soviet Union. The Chinese press began to publish favorable articles about the Soviet Union. Chinese newspapers announced that border trade between the two countries will increase this year. Chinese officials placed wreaths at the tombs of the “fallen heroes of the Soviet Red Army, who gave their lives in the war against fascism.”

In early March, a delegation of Chinese legislators traveled to Moscow, the first group to make such a visit in more than two decades.

Thus the stage was set for a dramatic public display of improved relations between the two countries. After the death of Chernenko and the selection of Gorbachev as his successor, both countries seized the chance for such a display.

Gorbachev Overture

In his first speech after assuming power, Gorbachev called for a “serious improvement in relations” with China. His remarks strongly underscored the contrast between Gorbachev and Chernenko, who had not mentioned China last year in his inaugural speech.

China announced that its emissary to Chernenko’s funeral, Vice Premier Li Peng, carried a message of congratulations from Hu Yaobang, the party general secretary, to Gorbachev as head of the Soviet party.

Gorbachev met with Li and asked him to send regards back to the Chinese party secretary. It was the first known cordial exchange between representatives of the Soviet and Chinese parties in a quarter-century.

Li also carried an indirect assurance to Moscow that it was not to be overly concerned about China’s military cooperation with the United States.

“China is not aligned with nor does it establish strategic relations with other countries,” he told Gorbachev.

A West European diplomat in Peking said, “The selection of Gorbachev seemed to precipitate something (among the Chinese). They took three or four different steps at the same time.”

U.S. Weighs Impact

Now, U.S. and other Western officials are scrambling to figure out how far the improvement in Sino-Soviet relations will go--and what has happened to the three obstacles.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Michael H. Armacost, under secretary of state for political affairs, have both said recently that the United States is not particularly concerned about renewed friendship between China and the Soviet Union.

But in a series of meetings here in March, sources say, Armacost asked three different Chinese officials about the possibility of a resumption of ties between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties. All three reportedly told him that there will be no party-to-party relations until the political disputes over Afghanistan and Cambodia and the question of troops on the Sino-Soviet border are resolved.

Still, U.S. officials say they would not be surprised to see further moves toward re-establishing party ties.

Chinese officials have told some Western diplomats that they should not attach too much importance to the message Hu sent Gorbachev.

“They said it was just a protocol measure,” a West European said. “We don’t believe it.”