A Sino-Soviet summit within this year has been put on the agenda. This is plain meaning of Mr Gorbachev’s proposal to that effect in an interview to the Chinese weekly Liaowang (Outlook). On the face of it, the Chinese response has been cool. To begin with, the Chinese official news agency Hsinhua did not even report the proposal, though it carried Mr Gorbachev’s comments on a number of subjects, and officials at the foreign ministry in Beijing refused to comment on it. A couple of days later an official was quoted as having said that “Chairman Deng Xiaoping has made quite clear the condition for a high-level meeting between China and the Soviet Union” and having added that “at present, it is the strong hope of the international community that Vietnam will withdraw its troops from Kampuchea.” Even a casual perusal of this statement would suggest a significant shift in the Chinese position. For, so far the Chinese used to list three conditions for normalization of relations with the Soviet Union – Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, reduction in Soviet military deployment along the Chinese border, and pressure by Moscow on the Vietnamese in order to compel them to move out of Kampuchea. Apparently, the first two conditions have now been dropped. Though it is not beyond the Chinese to reinstate them again, if for some reason they decide to take up a tougher line, a couple of points can be made in connection with the Chinese response to the Soviet proposal. First, it represents a softening of their earlier position. Secondly, it looks as if the Chinese have convinced themselves that the Soviet deployment along their frontiers no longer constitutes a serious threat to their country’s security. Thirdly, like the rest of us, they too appear to be persuaded that it is only a matter of time before an agreement is reached among the interested parties on Afghanistan.
There can be no doubt that the Chinese are serious about the Vietnamese withdrawal from Kampuchea. But they must know as well as anyone else that, as in the case of Afghanistan, such a withdrawal will have to be accompanied by an end to the aid that they and others are giving tothe Kampuchean rebels, including the Khmer Rouge, and that both issues will require extensive negotiations, possibly finder UN auspices. In Afghanistan the hope of some kind of order after the Soviet withdrawal has come to focus on the 73-year-old deposed King Zahir Shah. Prince Sihanouk is being cast in a similar role in Kampuchea. And surely if the Soviets are willing to accept Zahir Shah in Afghanistan which borders their own, they cannot be reluctant to accept Prince Sihanouk in faraway Kampuchea. The more serious issue is whether or not the Chinese are prepared to pay their part of the price for the Vietnamese exit from Kampuchea. That price must be the termination oftheir intervention in Kampuchea via aid to the rebels and the threats they hold out to Vietnam from time to time. So far there has been no indication that they recognise the price and are willing to pay it.