China to Renew Party Ties With East Europe Nations

The Chinese Communist Party will soon begin to re-establish formal party-to-party relations with virtually all the ruling Eastern European Communist parties, whose leaders have received approval from Moscow for the move, according to informed Eastern European sources.

The first Eastern European Communist party to resume ties with China will be East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party, these sources said, to be followed in order by the Communist parties of Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.

All these nations are members of the Soviet Bloc. None of their Communist parties have had links with the Chinese party since the rift between China and the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. The renewed links will mark a dramatic change in the Communist world, where party-to-party relations open the way for dialogue on questions of Marxist-Leninist ideology and are considered at least as important as diplomatic relations.

Soviet leaders apparently hope that these party ties with Eastern Europe will be the first step in a process eventually leading to links between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties. Chinese leaders, however, may try to create a situation in which the Eastern European Communist parties are somewhat more independent of the Soviet Union.

Honecker to Visit

The first indication of the new links will come next week, when China will announce that East German leader Erich Honecker, who is both the head of state and head of the ruling Communist party, will visit Peking in October.

Honecker will be received not only by President Li Xiannian, the Chinese head of state, but also by Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. The actual re-establishment of party-to-party relations may come during Honecker’s trip or sometime afterward, the sources said.

But Honecker’s trip is expected to be only the start of a series of visits by Eastern European leaders. According to the current schedule, Janos Kadar, the Hungarian party chief, will be next and may visit China by the end of this year. He will be followed by Poland’s Wojciech Jaruzelski, probably next year, and by Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia.

The Bulgarian party, the most pro-Soviet in Eastern Europe, will be the last on the list, the sources said. In addition, after relations with all these Eastern European parties are restored, the Chinese are said to be willing to establish links with the Communist Party of Cuba.

Gorbachev Approval Seen

One source said he believes that Soviet Leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev gave his assent for Eastern European parties to renew their relations with the Chinese when he attended a series of party meetings in East Germany, Hungary and Poland earlier this year.

“The biggest change has been in Moscow, not here,” the source said. “The Chinese were ready. The Eastern Europeans were ready. Until Gorbachev, in Moscow they always said to wait, wait. The question was always, who would be the first (to resume relations with the Chinese party), would Moscow be first or vice versa?”

Another Eastern European source said that the Chinese Communist Party has been gradually laying the groundwork for its Eastern European initiative by quietly sending officials from the party’s international liaison department to Chinese embassies in Eastern Europe.

At the moment, the only Eastern European Communist parties that have ties with Peking are those of Romania and Yugoslavia.

Romanians Kept Ties

The Romanian party never broke off relations with China. The Yugoslav party restored ties after a 1977 visit to China by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. Then-Chinese party Chairman Hua Guofeng first greeted Tito at the airport as “president,” but later, in a banquet toast, called him “comrade”--the signal that China was ready to resume party ties.

Albania’s ultraleftist Communist Party, which sided with the Chinese during the Sino-Soviet dispute, broke off relations in 1978, after the death of Mao Tse-tung and the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping.

Since becoming the Soviet party leader last year, Gorbachev has emphasized his eagerness to improve relations between the Soviet Union and China.

Most recently, in a speech in Vladivostok on July 28, Gorbachev suggested that the Soviet Union was willing to withdraw “a substantial part” of Soviet troops in Mongolia, along China’s northern border. He also offered a territorial concession in the protracted dispute over the Amur River along the Sino-Soviet border.

Sino-Soviet ‘Obstacles’

Despite these overtures, one Eastern European source familiar with the Chinese viewpoint said that the continuing Chinese objections to the Soviet support of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the deployment of Soviet troops along China’s borders preclude any formal relations between the world’s two largest Communist parties.

Furthermore, this source said, even if these so-called “obstacles” were to be resolved and party-to-party ties were restored, there would never be a return to the “fraternal” relations of the 1950s.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to comment Friday on a Japanese newspaper report saying that one Chinese soldier was killed and another was injured July 12 during a shoot-out with 13 Soviet soldiers along the Sino-Soviet border in Xinjiang province.

One Eastern European source said he had been told there was some sort of border incident in Xinjiang last month, but he did not know whether anyone had died. There have been several similar incidents since the bloody border clashes between China and the Soviet Union began in 1969.