THE PRESIDENT'S trip to China may give a great boost to his election hopes, but his desire for a "generation of peace" faces severe challenges from his Asian allies and from the fact that the Indochina war continues unabated. In recent months there has also been another "low profile" escalation of the Southeast Asian war.

Thai troops have begun to take a more active role in fighting in Cambodia, and U.S. sources in Bangkok suggests that the U.S. sources in Bangkok suggest that the U.S. is planning to raise its aid in the next year by $5 million for a total of $70 million, the Washington Post reported on March 5.

During the last two months the Chinese government has frequently expressed its concern over Thai involvement in Cambodia. On January 14, the People's Daily of Peking said that participation by "certain Southeast Asian countries" in the U.S.-backed aid consortium for Cambodia contradicted their support for Southeast Asian neutralization as expressed at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on November 27, 1971.

On January 18, the same newspaper attributed to U.S. Vietnam commander General Creighton Abrams's visit to Bangkok a desire on the part of the U.S. to arrange for the dispatch of more Thai troops to Laos and Cambodia.

Nine days later, a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry charged that the January 19 "border security" agreement between Cambodia and Thailand was "a cloak for 'legalizing' further and open invasion of Cambodia by the accomplice troops of Thailand."

On February 17, the People's Daily reported that Thai troops had taken part in fighting near Cambodia's ancient temples at Angkor.

The State Department and U.S. embassies in Bangkok and Phnom Penh have dismissed Chinese charges concerning the January 19 border agreement between Thailand and Cambodia. These sources report that the agreement set up a "Joint Commission on Border Control and Fisheries" which has been given a "vague mandate" to study the "border situation" and to make "recommendations."

"For Cambodia to the south," reported the Washington Post on March 5, "the North Vietnamese and Khmer communist forces control the major portion of the border with Thailand."

TENSION ON THE Thai-Cambodian border can only continue to mount because of an increase in Thai activity in Cambodia. Nevertheless, in the joint U.S.-China communique signed in Shanghai on February 27, the U.S. side stipulated that it will "progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes." Last week Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird emphasized that Vietnam is a focal point of tension in the area.

One other source of tension between China, Thailand, the U.S. and Cambodia is the distribution of drilling rights for off-shore oil on the continental shelf shared by Cambodia and Thailand.

The decline of growth in the Thai economy and the increase in activity on the part of anti-government guerrilla forces adds even further to the malaise of the Bangkok government. During fighting on the Plain of Jars in December 1971, Thai troops suffered "extremely heavy casualties," according to a London Times interview with the Defense Minister of Laos, Sisouk no Champassak.

The future of Thailand, of U.S.-Chinese relations, and the outlook for the solution of the Southeast Asian war are integrally related to the kind of policy the U.S. adopts in the next few months. The increased presence of Thai troops in Cambodia after the severe defeats suffered by the Cambodian army during December and January as well as those undergone by the Thai army in Laos during the same months are bad omens. Extensive participation by Thai forces in the Indochinese war, in addition to the presence of five airbases used by U.S. bombers in Thailand, will not solve the problems of the ailing Thai economy.

It is thus abundantly clear that if Thailand is to avoid further useless and unproductive participation in the Indochina war, an overall diplomatic solution for Southeast Asia will be necessary in the very near future. If such a settlement does not take place, the hopes for improvement in Sino-American relations based on reduction of "tension" in Asia may well fizzle.

THE OUTLOOK for a negotiated solution for the Southeast Asian war has become bleaker because of worsening relations between the U.S. and North Vietnam. The extensive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam during the week prior to President Nixon's visit to China has done nothing to improve chances for a rapprochement.

In the wake of President Nixon's disclosures of secret negotiations on January 25, Le Monde and other newspapers have concluded that the "real stumbling block" in the Vietnam peace talks is the kind of government that would replace the present regime in Saigon in order to organize elections.