Sino-Soviet Summit Starts Today in Beijing

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrives in Beijing today for the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years, ending the long and bitter conflict between the two great Communist powers and realigning international relations around the world.

Gorbachev’s four days of talks with Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, the country’s senior leader, are expected to complete the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, which once were so tense that they brought the two nations to the brink of war, and to lay the basis for increased political and economic cooperation.

But the continuing protest by thousands of university students in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square, outside the Great Hall of the People where the talks will be held, is diverting the Chinese leadership’s attention from the historic meeting.

The demonstrators, including about 1,500 who began a sit-in and hunger strike Saturday, are demanding a dialogue with Communist Party and government leaders on ways to broaden democracy in China.

Soviet officials, embarrassed by the protesters’ demands for glasnost , the policy of political openness instituted by Gorbachev as part of increased democracy in the Soviet Union, refused to make any comment except to say that Gorbachev’s schedule had already been “finalized” when students pressed for a meeting with him.

Gorbachev, who left Moscow on Sunday morning and spent the night in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, is scheduled to arrive here today at noon Beijing time (8 p.m. Sunday PDT).

After his formal welcome in Tian An Men Square, Gorbachev will meet with President Yang Shangkun and then on Tuesday with Deng, Zhao and Premier Li Peng. Further talks follow Wednesday, and Gorbachev will visit Shanghai before leaving on Thursday.

Gorbachev is accompanied by his wife, Raisa; Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister; Alexander N. Yakovlev, another member of the party’s ruling Politburo who heads its Foreign Policy Commission, and Yuri Maslyukov, a Politburo alternate member, first deputy premier and the chairman of the Soviet State Economic Planning Commission.

Deng, speaking last week with visiting Iranian President Ali Khamenei, said that he and Gorbachev would “try to settle the disputes that have arisen between us over the past 30 years so as to normalize Sino-Soviet relations,” the official New China News Agency reported.

“While one cannot expect an overnight solution to all problems,” the English-language China Daily commented, reflecting the still cautious official opinion here, “it is nonetheless hoped that the summit meeting will put an end to most of the past grievances and open up a new era in relations between the two countries. . . .

“The major concern of the Chinese people while welcoming Gorbachev is still whether the two nations will really establish a new relationship based on the principles of peaceful coexistence.”

Although agreement has been reached on a declaration that will proclaim the two countries’ desire to live as “good neighbors,” hard talking is likely on at least two issues--the continuing conflict in Cambodia, where China and the Soviet Union have backed different factions and Moscow has supported the decade-long Vietnamese intervention, and the unresolved disputes over the 4,500-mile border between China and the Soviet Union through Central Asia and the Far East.

Soviet hopes, however, are high, and Moscow sees the summit as not only healing the long breach with Beijing but forming part of a system of non-confrontational, cooperative international relations based on what Gorbachev calls “new political thinking.”

“The summit meeting between Chinese and Soviet leaders can be a decisive point in international relations, contributing to world peace and reducing tensions,” Gennady I. Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a weekend briefing here. “That is our hope and our expectation for this summit, and we believe that the Chinese side shares it.”

Both countries, however, are stressing that their rapprochement will not mean the reconstitution of the old Sino-Soviet alliance formed to advance the Communist revolution worldwide.

‘Not Going Back to the ‘50s’

“We are not going back to the 1950s,” Evgeny M. Primakov, director of the Soviet Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, a major Kremlin think tank, said at a weekend briefing. “Times have changed, the world has changed, China has changed and we have changed. We respect and value very highly China’s independent foreign policy.”

Beijing underlined that independence over the weekend by receiving Ambassador Edward L. Rowny, arms control adviser to President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who briefed Chinese officials on Baker’s talks with Gorbachev in Moscow last week, and by announcing that ships from the U.S. 7th Fleet will visit Shanghai later this week.

The 7th Fleet’s port call was originally expected to begin Thursday, when Gorbachev is scheduled to visit Shanghai, but it was put off a day in an apparent effort to avoid embarrassing the Soviet president.

An official announcement of the port call is expected to be made by the Pentagon in Washington today.

In addition to a wide range of foreign policy questions, Gorbachev is also expected to discuss issues of domestic political and economic reforms with the Chinese leaders.

Expansion of trade, now about $3.25 billion a year, and other forms of economic cooperation, including joint development of frontier areas, the increased use of Chinese labor in the Soviet Far East and the re-equipping of Soviet-built factories in China, will also be discussed, according to Chinese and Soviet officials.

Extensive meetings, some of which began over the weekend, are scheduled between members of the large Soviet delegation--a cross-section of government and party officials, foreign trade specialists, newly elected members of the Congress of People’s Deputies and writers, artists and actors--and their Chinese counterparts.

“Normalization of relations will bring a growing number of exchanges, and for both countries this is a very important result of better relations,” Efimov said. “We have missed this relationship--we need it.”

The last Sino-Soviet summit was held in 1959 in Beijing between Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Nikita S. Khrushchev, then the Soviet leader.

MONDAY’S SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES Here is today’s official itinerary as provided by the Chinese government:

4 p.m.--President Yang Shangkun presides over a ceremony welcoming Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, to China in front of Great Hall of the People, facing on Tian An Men Square.

4:15 p.m.--Yang and Gorbachev meet inside the Great Hall of the People. Raisa Gorbachev attends a tea hosted jointly by the Chinese People’s Assn. for Friendship with Foreign Countries and the Sino-Soviet Friendship Assn.

7 p.m.--Yang hosts a formal banquet for the Gorbachevs, also in the Great Hall of the People.

Dan Rather will anchor the CBS Evening News from Beijing during the summit. Bernard Shaw will also anchor broadcasts from Beijing during Cable News Network’s International Hour (noon PDT), Newswatch (3 p.m. PDT) and CNN Evening News (10 p.m. PDT) throughout the week.