Pointing the Lance

It is beginning to look like another long, hot summer in the troubled relations between China and Russia. For the past few months the two nations have been engaged in a vituperative duel over the Chinese capture of a Soviet helicopter that strayed across the border into Sinkiang last March. The Soviets claim that the helicopter, with its three-man crew, was on a medical rescue mission when it lost its bearings over the Altai Mountains. The Chinese insist that the chopper "carried arms and reconnaissance equipment" and was involved in "espionage activities." Since their capture, the luckless Soviet crewmen have been paraded through border towns as centerpieces of anti-Soviet rallies. Now Moscow is worried about reports that China will give them a public show trial and sentence them to long prison terms as spies.

Whether the Soviet intrusion was accidental or not, Peking's angry response could hardly have surprised the Russians. In January, three Soviet diplomats and two of their wives were expelled from Peking after being caught redhanded, according to the Chinese, in the act of making contact with a pro-Soviet Chinese agent (TIME, Feb. 4). That alleged bit of espionage intensified an already lengthy campaign of anti-Soviet propaganda by Peking's press on every subject from Russia's economic assistance ("plunder") to disarmament ("a swindle") to Moscow's policies in Southeast Asia ("a fond dream of building a greater Russian empire").

Hostile Attitude. The Russians have countered by adopting a tone of injured good will. "The interests of world socialism demand that Soviet-Chinese relations be those of friendship and good neighborliness," said Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Minsk last week, adding, however, that "the Maoists have become the open enemies of Communism." But despite Peking's "hostile attitude," said Gromyko, Mos cow remains "ready to normalize" relations with the Chinese.

Peking is unconvinced. One reason is that the Soviets have recently engaged in harassment of Chinese shipping near the Manchurian border. Late last month the Russians threatened to prevent Chinese boats from using the Ussuri and Amur rivers at the point where they converge. The Soviets claim that the border between the two countries is formed by the narrow Kazakevicheva Channel, which joins the two rivers about 20 miles south of their actual convergence near the Soviet city of Khabarovsk. In a stiff diplomatic note to Peking, the Russians said that they were "ready as before" to allow Chinese ships to bypass the Kazakevicheva Channel during the summer months, when it becomes too shallow for navigation. But, they added, the Chinese must first recognize "the Soviet Union's sovereign rights and territorial integrity"--that is, agree that the actual border is determined by the Kazakevicheva Channel and not by the two rivers.

This, however, is precisely what the Chinese will not accept. In fact, they have a good case according to international law, which states that unless otherwise specified, boundary lines should follow the principal navigation channel --in this case, the main streams of the Ussuri and Amur rivers. Some observers believe that the Russians, in raising this new dispute, hope to catch an errant Chinese fisherman or two as potential hostages for the helicopter crewmen, or else goad Peking into a border incident that Moscow could then exploit for propaganda purposes.

Whatever happens next on the Kazakevicheva Channel, Peking seems more worried about long-range Soviet global strategy. Last month Premier Chou En-lai told Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of his alarm over Moscow's growing power and influence in South Asia, especially in India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. A secret 1973 circular sent by the Communist party to provincial Chinese army officers, which has only recently been available in the West, charges the Soviets with conducting an anti-Peking diplomatic offensive on a front from Japan through Southeast Asia and all the way to the Persian Gulf. "We can see very clearly," this document concluded, "that the activities undertaken by the Soviet revisionists in Asia form a great strategy of blockade; it is a scheme to recklessly surround China and point the lance in our direction."

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