January 30, 1983

Secretary of State George P. Shultz left today on a 12-day mission to the Far East in which he hopes to ease the strains and disagreements that have arisen in Chinese-American relations. In advance of Mr. Shultz's first visit to the region since he took office last July, State Department officials stressed that they expected no significant agreements or announcements during the talks in Japan, China and South Korea. 'A Large Number of Grievances' But they said they were attaching particular importance to Mr. Shultz's four days of talks in Peking with top Chinese leaders next Wednesday through Sunday, the first such high-level talks in nine months. ''Both sides have accumulated a large number of grievances in the past few months,'' an American official said, ''and Shultz is hoping that some straight talk can at least clear up the misunderstandings and put us on a better road.'' ''I think this visit itself is a major step to broaden the relationship and to put it on a stable and sustainable footing,'' a senior official said.

Almost 10 years after the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration was created to unify efforts against narcotics, the Government is still struggling to find the best way to fight the growing problem of drug use and distribution. It has found that repeated crackdowns and changes in strategy have failed to produce long-term results, despite increased financing. The newest offensive against drugs encompasses the Reagan Administration's team approach involving several Federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Coast Guard and the Central Intelligence Agency. The money spent by the Federal Government to intercept drugs tripled from 1977 to 1981, according to a yet unpublished study by the General Accounting Office. But the amount of drugs seized represented just a small percentage of the narcotics believed to have been smuggled into the country.

DETROIT IMPORTED cars, once rare birds found at the curb of the avant-garde in university towns and in the multiple garages of the rich, have, in effect, today become the American car. They are not only the choice of some 30 percent of the car-buying public - it was less than half that 10 years ago - but they have also become the design and manufacturing ideal, the role model, of the domestic auto makers. With its sales and market share plummeting, Detroit responded to this challenge in 1980 with a four-year $80 billion spending program by the Big Three, the General Motors Corporation, the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation. Besides new factories and production tooling, the spending program, now at its halfway point, has unquestionably produced some timely new cars. At G.M., these include the front-wheel-drive J-cars, the Chevrolet Cavalier and its cousins from the other divisions, as well as the Acars, the Chevy Celebrity and its Oldsmobile, Buick and Pontiac derivatives.

MOUNT LAUREL TOWNSHIP ''FINALLY,'' Ethel Lawrence said, ''here is the highest court in the state defending the constitutional right of poor people.'' There was a tone of weary pride in her voice, the kind that comes with the end of a long, painful conflict. The end of that conflict was the ruling two weeks ago by the state Supreme Court that held that municipalities must work actively to provide housing for the poor. The beginning was in 1968, when Mrs. Lawrence was a 41-year-old housewife who did domestic work in nearby Moorestown. Although she did not live in the Springville section of Mount Laurel, she had relatives and friends there, and was concerned about the conditions they were living in.

EVERY afternoon at around five o'clock Frank Rothman looks at the numbers. That's almost second nature for the chairman and chief executive of MGM, who occupies the same chair from which Louis B. Mayer and, later, Irving Thalberg, once examined the rising box office receipts that established Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as one of Hollywood's most powerful studios during the 1930's. These days, though, Mr. Rothman is dealing with numbers of a different kind - motion picture budgets that must be kept low enough to satisfy the tight spending limits imposed by the company's bankers but not so low that they turn away the high-priced talent vital for future box-office success. It's a tough task and one that has left the legendary MGM lion whimpering rather than roaring. Last year, despite MGM's two hits - ''Rocky III'' and ''Poltergeist'' -the film company's 17 movies averaged only $9.3 million in rental income per film, well below Universal's $25.9 million and far down on the list of major studios. And, its share of the motion picture market, though up from 1981, still lagged behind the likes of Warner Brothers, Columbia and Paramount.