Diplomacy Swords into Sample Cases

By Strobe Talbott

Twenty years ago next March, China and the Soviet Union appeared to be on the brink of war after a series of skirmishes along their border. After nearly two decades of recurring tensions, trade has broken out across that 4,500-mile frontier -- a commercial boom that may be a prelude to a new rapprochement between the two Communist giants. The U.S. is following these developments with considerable interest. Ever since Richard Nixon made his historic opening to China in the wake of the 1969 border fighting, the American "strategic partnership" with China has been rooted largely in a shared antagonism toward the Soviet Union.

Last week seven American foreign policy specialists completed a rare visit along both sides of the still heavily fortified Sino-Soviet frontier. The two- week trip was organized by the New York City-based National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. The delegation was led by former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Arthur Hartman and former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General John Wickham. The only journalist in the group was TIME Washington Bureau Chief Strobe Talbott, who filed this report:

Mudanjiang remains ready for war. The military airfield outside this northeastern Chinese industrial city of 600,000 lifts security restrictions just long enough for a twin-engine prop plane from Beijing to deposit its passengers. They are whisked past the barracks of a People's Liberation Army (P.L.A.) unit. It is shortly before sundown, and troops are playing soccer, basketball, Ping-Pong and open-air billiards on the edge of the runway, not far from a wing of 70 Chinese-built MiG-21 interceptors, each sheathed in canvas to guard against corrosion in the heavily polluted air.

The mayor of Mudanjiang, Wang Shubin, wants to talk not about the soldiers but about local merchants, who have their own interest these days in the Soviet Union. Beijing and Moscow have authorized the Chinese province of Heilongjiang and the Soviet Union's Maritime province to conduct direct cross- border trade. Chinese and Soviet officials travel back and forth, comparing wish lists, displaying wares and negotiating barter deals. Since both countries have nonconvertible currencies and neither wants to expend precious reserves of hard currency, no money changes hands. The Chinese supply vegetables, prefabricated plastic greenhouses and textiles; the Soviets send back cement, seafood, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals and electrical machinery.

Almost all the traffic is by rail, along a line that Czarist Russia helped build in the late 19th century from Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, to the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, more than 300 miles to the southeast. The principal border-crossing point for the region is Suifenhe, five hours by the daily milk train from Mudanjiang, near the Ussuri River, scene of some of the fiercest fighting in 1969. Here too there are plenty of reminders of potential trouble. Green military staff cars dart about the streets, their horns blowing at pedestrians and the occasional horse-drawn cart to make room for P.L.A. officers on their way to the regimental headquarters of the specially trained border troops garrisoned on the outskirts of town. On a nearby hilltop are a high-frequency radio tower for combat communications and an early-warning radar that would help alert the MiGs in Mudanjiang to scramble in the event of a Soviet attack.

Today that possibility seems increasingly remote. Since last October, Suifenhe has conducted more than $130,000 worth of commerce with the nearest Soviet settlement, Pogranichny. "We think that city-to-city trade will help politically," says Deputy Mayor Li Baozhong. "It definitely benefits our people, who welcome a market for their goods and need the things we get from the Russians in return." Suifenhe is building a five-story international trade center in its main square to accommodate an expected increase in the barter transactions. With an eye to export, the town brewery puts Russian- language labels on its Seagull crab-apple juice and Polar Bear beer.

A small number of Soviets in Suifenhe help manage the rail traffic. Vladimir Dudin, 38, lives for days, sometimes weeks, at a time in a converted refrigerator car on a siding at the Suifenhe train station. He has a tiny black-and-white television that is not powerful enough to pick up Soviet broadcasts; he has to settle for such fare as the U.S.-made series Little House on the Prairie dubbed in Chinese.

Officials on both sides agree that the volume of trade along the border has always been inversely proportional to the degree of military tension. Recently "both sides have been trying to improve conditions," says Zhao Zhonghuan, deputy chief of staff for the Heilongjiang Provincial Command. "The Soviets seem to have withdrawn their forces somewhat. They've also cut back on the amount of time that their helicopters are operating along the border. In the past, their aircraft have violated our airspace, and we've lodged formal protests, but there have been no penetrations this year." One of his Soviet counterparts, General Oleg Ilin, confirms that view. "We have reduced our strength in this region and ceased all training maneuvers on the border," he says. Ilin is the No. 2 political officer, or commissar, attached to the Far Eastern military district, which has its headquarters near Khabarovsk, on the banks of the Amur River, another stretch of contested border.

In the 1970s Mao Zedong ordered the urban populations of northern China to "dig tunnels deep and store grain everywhere" in preparation for Soviet nuclear strikes. Now the vast network of tunnels beneath the streets of Harbin is being converted into a subway. Other shelters are already serving as underground hotels and shopping centers. In the meantime, citizens of Khabarovsk pour hot water for their tea not only from traditional Russian samovars but also from colorfully decorated thermos bottles imported from China. Plans are under way for a Chinese restaurant, staffed and supplied from across the river, to open later this year.

Up the Amur, at Blagoveshchensk, officials are negotiating a deal under which Soviet hydroelectric power will be exchanged for Chinese goods and produce. In April 76 Chinese peasants, accompanied by interpreters, crossed the border at Suifenhe to spend six months demonstrating to Siberian farmers their techniques for planting, growing and harvesting. The Chinese were greeted with a brass band and welcoming banners when they arrived in Pogranichny. The Inner Mongolian town of Manzhouli is talking about a similar arrangement with Zabaikalsk, just over the strip of border that is still patrolled by Soviet guard dogs and marked by watchtowers and electrified fences. Says Manzhouli Mayor Xu Shaoan: "Our Soviet neighbors would like to learn to produce melons the way we do here."

There is another product in high demand but short supply on the Soviet side these days, thanks to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's antialcohol campaign. As a result, Chinese traders make room in their sample cases for bottles of mao-tai, a fiery 120-proof sorghum liquor -- not to sell but to lubricate negotiations with their Siberian hosts. Says Dimitri Krolov, a Soviet regional trade official who joined the train in Zabaikalsk: "Business is booming. We manufacture what they want, they grow what we want."

Chinese agriculture has benefited dramatically from ten years of Leader Deng Xiaoping's "modernization" program. Beijing has abolished the commune system in favor of individual and family farming, and has introduced incentives for high productivity as well as a limited but thriving free market for produce. By contrast, Soviet agriculture is still mostly collectivized, centrally planned and inefficient. It is one sector of Soviet life largely untouched by Gorbachev's perestroika (restructuring).

The priority on domestic economic reform in both countries is the principal reason for the improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. Both Deng and Gorbachev are looking for a peaceful international climate that will make it easier for them to divert resources to the industrial, agricultural and consumer sectors. The Chinese welcome Gorbachev's declared willingness to rely less on the threat or use of force in Soviet foreign policy. Says General Wang Zhenxi, deputy director of foreign-army studies of the Chinese Military Science Academy in Beijing: "Should Gorbachev's domestic reforms be successful, it would be helpful for world peace and stability." But, he quickly adds, "so far we've seen nothing to demonstrate that the Soviet Union has abandoned its strategic goal of hegemony."

"Hegemony" is the Chinese catchall word that denotes the U.S.S.R.'s penchant, especially during the 1970s, for throwing its military weight around in the world. The principal examples -- what Chinese officials call the Three Obstacles to normalization of relations between the two countries -- are the Soviet Union's deployment of more than 50 divisions along the Chinese northern border, its occupation of Afghanistan and its support for Viet Nam's occupation of Kampuchea. Gorbachev, who is eager to hold a summit with the 83- year-old Deng, has been making, or at least hinting at, concessions on all three issues. Last year the Kremlin removed one division from the Mongolian People's Republic, a Soviet satellite on China's border. In May Moscow began bringing its forces home from Afghanistan. The Soviets have also been nudging Hanoi to withdraw from Kampuchea.

Chinese officials, especially those in the military, remain skeptical. General Jiang Hongji, a retired divisional commander and former military attache in Moscow, says the Soviet pullback "doesn't count for too much in a military sense," since the division that was withdrawn could return on short notice. General Chai Chengwen, first deputy chairman of the Beijing Institute for International Strategic Studies (BIISS), a think tank connected with the National Defense Ministry, says, "The Soviet Union is looking for excuses to delay its withdrawal from Afghanistan." From Deng on down, Chinese spokesmen say that Kampuchea, still occupied by Moscow's Vietnamese allies, remains the main obstacle.

Nonetheless, General Chai predicts that "if the Soviets continue their domestic reforms and accompanying adjustments in foreign policy, eventually the Three Obstacles will be eliminated and Sino-Soviet relations will be normalized." That could mean, he says, not only a Deng-Gorbachev summit but an exchange of high-level military visits as well. Americans, he adds, should not be alarmed: "For Sino-Soviet relations to be transformed into a more moderate and relaxed state would benefit all humanity."

Cheng Feng, a strategic-affairs expert at BIISS, offers similar reassurances. "You Americans seem to think that Sino-Soviet normalization would be a kind of hell for you, that it's a terrible beast lurking out there in the future," he says. "You shouldn't worry. We've had several hundred years' experience with the Russians. You can rest assured that we will be realistic in our dealing with them now."

Meanwhile, the view from Red Square is optimistic. A foreign policy official of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee predicts that Gorbachev will visit Beijing by 1990: "Two years to remove the two remaining obstacles -- that is a challenge for us, but one we can meet." If so, traveling salesmen will have paved the way for the General Secretary.