What was going on when I was born?

If skies are clear early tomorrow morning, residents throughout much of western North America should be able to see the creation of the first artificial comet. Because of its timing, scientists have dubbed it the Christmas Comet. The artificial comet is to be produced in the southern sky by the release of barium vapor from a West German spacecraft 70,000 miles above the Pacific off Peru. The barium, acting as a dye, is intended to trace the flow past the Earth of the solar wind, a thin gas blowing outward from the Sun at a million miles per hour.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1984 International Chinese-Soviet cooperation pacts have been agreed on by Peking and Moscow, China announced. The four agreements include the first long- term trade pact that the two Communist powers have negotiated since their break a quarter of a century ago. (Page 1, Column 6.) Knives and forks for China, instead of the chopsticks that have been used for 3,500 years, have been urged by one of China's leaders. (1:5.)

At Mayor Koch's request, police patrols were sharply increased on the city's subway system for the holiday crowds yesterday as detectives hunted a gunman who shot four teen-agers on a subway train in lower Manhattan Saturday. The strengthened patrols for stations and platforms, involving more than 3,000 city and transit police officers, began yesterday afternoon and were to continue until midnight tonight, according to Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward and Transit Police Chief James Meehan. The object, they said, was to ease public fear and provide added protection for an anticipated crush of more than 3.5 million subway riders making final holiday shopping trips, visiting friends and traveling to and from Christmas Eve church services. In announcing the strengthened patrols, Commissioner Ward and other police officials cited Saturday's shooting as one cause of public fear. ''We're doing it because of the shooting and the fear that riders might have,'' Mr. Ward said through a spokesman, Alice T. McGillion. ''It does not mean that we think this guy is going to strike again, but this is a heavy traveling time and we're dealing with a public perception of fear.''

Treasury Department experts envision some changes in the Administration's tax revision plan. Page 33. WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - President Reagan's budget and tax proposals have touched off a clash between the Administration and state officials, who contend they would lose billions of dollars in Federal support when they are being asked to take greater responsibility for domestic programs. The Administration defends its proposals as necessary and fair. One budget proposal tentatively approved by Mr. Reagan as part of his effort to reduce the Federal deficits in the next three years would eliminate the Federal revenue-sharing program, which has provided $74 billion in all-purpose fiscal assistance since it was established in 1972.

The French voted in 1981 for a Socialist program of jobs, growth, nationalizations and the redistribution of wealth. They elected politicians talking of a new era of creativity and fairness, a time of generosity, of human warmth and solidarity. Midway through President Francois Mitterrand's seven-year term, barely anyone suggests French Socialism has worked out as planned: - The Socialist Government hired more civil servants, shortened the workweek, lengthened vacations and nationalized 11 industrial sectors and 36 banks, but unemployment increased. - The Government decreed more benefits for the retired, the elderly and families, but wage earners for the most part lost purchasing power. - The Government spent money to build schools, to promote culture and the arts, and to develop new technology, but the French wound up with an economic austerity program that tightened even the state's subsidies of medicine and hospital care.

Nearly 3,500 years after Chinese first took up chopsticks to eat their rice, they have been urged by one of the country's leaders to consider switching to Western- style knives and forks. A report Saturday on the Peking radio said that Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Communist Party, had made the suggestion during a recent inspection tour of Inner Mongolia. More Knives and Forks ''We should prepare more knives and forks, buy more plates and sit around the table to eat Chinese food in the Western style, that is, each from his own plate,'' Mr. Hu was quoted as saying. ''By doing so we can avoid contagious diseases.''

A highly specialized test has found no evidence that William J. Schroeder's artificial heart was the cause of the strokes he suffered 10 days ago, Dr. Allan M. Lansing, the chief medical spokesman for the artificial heart team, said today. The test, a scan of radioactive blood elements that had been injected into Mr. Schroeder's bloodstream, showed no clots in his artificial heart or in the arteries in his chest, neck or brain, Dr. Lansing said in an interview. Another member of the Humana heart team, however, noting that the unusual test had never been done on an artificial heart patient, privately expressed caution about interpreting the results. A Medical Mystery The cause of Mr. Schroeder's strokes is thus something of a medical mystery, because blood clots had been suspected as the cause. His physicians at Humana Hospital-Audubon feared that finding such clots in the artificial heart might delay progress of the program.

China announced today that it would sign four new cooperation agreements with the Soviet Union, including the first long- term trade pact that the two Communist powers have negotiated since their break a quarter of a century ago. The agreements will also establish a joint commission to monitor cooperation in two other fields - economic matters and science and technology - that will be the subject of separate accords. Like the trade pact, the commission will resemble arrangements that existed three decades ago. A Foreign Ministry spokesman announced the agreements after three days of talks involving Ivan V. Arkhipov, a First Deputy Prime Minister, who is the highest-ranking Soviet official to visit China since 1969. Mr. Arkhipov headed the huge Soviet aid program here before the rift caused Moscow to withdraw its aid and bring thousands of experts home in 1960.

Most times, especially when the molten Caribbean sun beats down, it can be downright somnolent in this British-style democracy, the only country in Central America with a Privy Council. But the speed with which Belize's political landscape was rearranged recently was something else again. It was a development as sudden, and for some supporters of Prime Minister George Price, the father of the country, almost as traumatic as the never-forgotten hurricane that leveled Belize City 23 years ago. On Dec. 14, the day of the first national elections since independence three years ago, this Commonwealth country was under the control of Prime Minister Price's 20-year-old center-left Government and his People's United Party. Less than 24 hours later, the Price administration was out and Manuel Esquivel, a 44-year- old junior-college physics teacher - whose more conservative United Democratic Party had never won a general election - was busy drawing up a Cabinet list. He took office two days later.

Voters in all but six of India's 22 states began casting ballots today in the first stage of a general election in which Rajiv Gandhi hopes to achieve a parliamentary majority that will solidify his hold as Prime Minister. Balloting in some states is to take place on Thursday and Friday in the three-stage election, whose first results will not be known until some time on Friday. Mr. Gandhi's Congress-I party is generally favored to win a comfortable majority in the lower house of Parliament. The party now holds a two-thirds majority in the house, and although at least one pre-election poll indicated that it might better that record most politicians and commentators believe it will achieve somewhat less.

Vietnam may not agree to release inmates of ''re- education'' camps for resettlement in the United States unless Washington promises to curtail what Hanoi describes as anti-Vietnamese activities among exiles in America, officials here told two American Congressmen this weekend. The Foreign Ministry statements have raised an unexpected obstacle to a Reagan Administration plan, announced in September by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, to admit 8,000 to 10,000 inmates of the camps. Many of the inmates were imprisoned because of their ties to the United States or the American-backed former Government of South Vietnam. On Saturday Phan Doan Nam, an assistant to Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, met with the two visiting Congressmen, Stephen J. Solarz, the Brooklyn Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the committee. Mr. Nam told them that ''over the last few months'' Hanoi had concluded that Vietnamese living in the United States and Western Europe were supporting and organizing attacks on Vietnamese abroad and plotting subversion at home.

Thousands of mourners stood in line in bitter cold today to view the body of Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov as preparations were made for a Red Square funeral Monday. The mourners were bused from offices and factories around Moscow to marshaling points near the city center.