TNAG-1257-FCO40-1590-Third-countries-and-the-future-of-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 95

CONFIDENTIAL

SINO/SOVIET RELATIONS

1. The Russians and the Chinese were inevitably keen to give a very different impression of the progress of the Sino/Soviet negotiations. In Moscow, where the representatives of the Far Eastern Department of the Soviet MFA were pointedly friendly and forthcoming in manner, I was told that there had been great progress in many areas and that the Chinese invitation to Kapitsa to visit Peking was a great mark of favour. Sino/Soviet relations

were not what they should be but the picture was improving fast.

2.

The Chinese Embassy in Moscow and the MFA in Peking said on the contrary that such progress as had been achieved was only on minor issues, and even then (for example on trade) relations were still far below what they had been in the 1950s. Progress on the three main topics was still a pre-condition for improvement of relations. The Counsellor in the Chinese Embassy in Moscow emphasised that the border question was a package, containing three elements (the Sino/Soviet border, the Sino/Mongolian border and SS20s) which the Chinese regarded as indivisible. The repre- sentatives of the East European Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences repeated the standard line that there would be no potential for significant improvement in trade with either the Soviet Union or Mongolia until the major obstacles were removed, and there was no evident prospect of this. Kapitsa had been invited to Peking simply because he had angled for an invitation and was too senior now to pay informal visits as he had previously.

3. The DCM at the US Embassy in Peking, Mr Freeman, gave an objective assessment which I found very interesting. In his view the Chinese were alternating and balancing their contacts with the Soviet Union and the US. One of the benefits of President Reagan's strong anti-Soviet posture was that the Chinese were now resigned to President Reagan and prepared even to accept his policy on Taiwan, but they still needed to make gestures towards the Soviet Union. However the Sino/Soviet agreement on international issues (much trumpeted by the Russians) was very superficial, and the Chinese had no real interest in most international issues outside their own immediate neighbourhood except perhaps for Angola, the Middle East and Somalia; on these there were major differences between China and the Soviet Union, but there were of course areas also of general agreement as there would be even between China and the US. Mr Freeman speculated that there might be some possibility of a deal over Soviet troops in Mongolia, which was the most important area of the border for the Chinese as being that which most directly threatened Peking (the Chinese academics confirmed this) but produced no evidence that a deal might be in the offing.

CONFIDENTIAL

14.