Two Harvard China specialists have described the current thaw in Sino-American relations as inevitable and long-overdue, but surprising nevertheless.

"Historians will conclude that our new contact with Peking is less surprising than the fact that it has been so long delayed," John K. Fairbank '29, Higgins Professor of History and director of the East Asian Research Center, said in the New York Times yesterday.

"It's inevitable, astounding and delightful- and outrageously overdue," said James C. Thomson Jr., lecturer on History and from 1964 through 1966, the China expert on the National Security Council staff.

The two men commented in the wake of the Chinese government's warm reception last week of the visiting United States table tennis team and of the American government's subsequent relaxation of trade restrictions.

Last Tuesday, Premier Chou Eu-lai told the visiting table tennis players that their trip to China had "opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American peoples."

The same day, President Nixon an nounced a relaxation of the 20-year embargo on trade with China, a plan for expediting visas for Chinese visitors to the United States, and three other moves designed to improve relations.

Fairbank, who studied in China during the 1930's, said in an interview that the Chinese and American moves are diplomatically significant because they are symbolic of the countries' differing national styles.

"The American five-point proposal for bringing the Chinese into world trade is very symbolic because we consider economics to be the essence of the real world," Fairbank said.

The Chinese symbol is their warm reception of the visiting American table tennis team, he added. "The Chinese are the people who have always stayed home. They still call China by its old name- 'Chung-kuo,' which means 'middle country.' "

"The Chinese may be poor and weak, but in their view it's a privilege to come to Peking- a privilege extended only to foreigners they feel are qualified to appreciate it," Fairbank said. The Americans are now qualified to visit, he added, because "we're starting to treat the Chinese at least as well as we treat the Russians- which isn't much."

Thomson, who grew up in China during the 1930's and 1940's, said he was "surprised that Chou went as far as he did" in his meeting with the table tennis players. "I was astounded also by the quick-footed response of the Nixon administration," he added.

Both Fairbank and Thomson predict-

ed that further contacts between the United States and China in the near future would be limited to a small amount of trade and occasional exchanges of journalists, scholars and cultural groups.

Thomson said "present euphoria" concerning the improved Chines-American relations is premature. "In the midst of a diplomacy of smiles and cordiality, we have to resist the desire to see in it a completely new era. It's going to be rocky- but the euphoria is fun anyway."