When East Meets East

China woos Moscow's friends and neighbors

Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Leonid Ilyichev offered a less than optimistic view of the chances for an improvement in Sino-Soviet relations when he arrived in Peking earlier this month for the fifth round of talks between the two nations. Said he: "We never lose hope." True to form, there were no signs last week of any breakthrough in the two-year-old negotiations. But if detente between the Communist world's two biggest rivals has been stalled, Peking has had some measure of success recently in wooing Moscow's friends and neighbors.

Since the rift between China and the Soviet Union began more than two decades ago, it has always been assumed that Moscow would mend fences with Peking before its East bloc allies did. But so far all attempts at rapprochement have foundered. The Chinese complain about the "three obstacles" of Soviet foreign policy: Moscow's support for the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, continuing Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the massive troop buildup along the Chinese border. The Soviets, for their part, have been irked by the apparent warmth in U.S.-Chinese relations following the Reagan visit to Peking last spring, and accuse the Chinese of trying to pick a fight with Viet Nam. In June the Chinese foreign-language weekly Beijing Review went so far as to say that it was "unreal and impossible for Sino-Soviet relations to return to where they once were in history."

If those relations are prickly, a steady stream of high-ranking officials from Peking has fanned out across Eastern Europe during the past four months. President Li Xiannian traveled to Rumania and Yugoslavia. China's Minister of Foreign Trade, Chen Muhua, made well-publicized visits to Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria. The good feelings have been reciprocated. Last August, Hungarian Deputy Premier Jozsef Marjai became the highest-ranking East European official to visit China in nearly two decades. Peking has also played host to the Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland.

The envenomed exchanges with Moscow have been in marked contrast to what Peking has had to say about Soviet allies in Eastern Europe. The Chinese press has published glowing accounts of Hungary's economic experiments and praised Rumania for its independent foreign policy. East Germany seems to have been singled out for special treatment. One of China's most able diplomats, Ma Xusheng, the former director of the Soviet Union and East European affairs department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was recently posted to East Berlin as Ambassador.

The Chinese have also tried to spruce up their image. Radio Peking broadcasts 18 hours of programming daily to Eastern Europe, and the quality of the languages spoken by Chinese broadcasters has improved, as has the content of the programs. "It used to be just propaganda a few years ago," said an East European journalist. "But now the picture we have of China from radio broadcasts is really very like the way China is."

The Chinese are careful not to portray their new Ostpolitik in terms that might offend Moscow. Still, Soviet diplomats in Peking have reportedly complained that China is trying to drive a wedge between the Soviets and their allies. Whatever the motive, the bold gambit in Moscow's backyard may reflect China's growing self-confidence in international affairs.

But there has also been, from the Chinese point of view, a welcome change of attitude within the Soviet camp. Said an East European observer: "We ourselves never thought that in the Sino-Soviet dispute the fault lay solely with the Chinese."