Solzhenitsyn warns US not to aid, arm China - TV interview

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel prize-winning Russian exile, is sounding a warning against American-Chinese relations just as he has criticized US policy with the Soviet Union.

In an recently taped interview in his Cavendish, Vt., home, which will be aired tonight (Oct. 26) and tomorrow on NBC's late-night ''Tomorrow'' show, Mr. Solzhenitsyn spoke with Rep. John Leboutillier (R) of N.Y., who has carried on a correspondence with the exiled author.

Says Mr. Solzhenitsyn: ''China is now comparable to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It needs everything. It needs . . . American help. If you hand China American economy and then weaponry, you might postpone a world denouement . . . for awhile. . . . But if you arm China, you will give China the second half of the Earth, the very half where America is situated and there nothing will help you.''

The Chinese, he says, have ''brutalized'' their people just like the Soviets. ''You know even less about China than about the Soviet Union and therefore this myth of . . . good communism in China. In 30 or 40 years you will read the 'Chinese Gulag Archipelego' and you will be stunned and you will say, 'Well, we didn't know.' But you must . . . find out, you must know today what is going on. It might be fraught with consequences, jeopardizing the very existence of the USA.''

Mr. Solzhenitsyn is critical of the Voice of America broadcasts to Russia, saying they do ''not provide the needed spiritual help for people.'' He said 'the greatest need of our people is to identify itself as a people.''