September 23, 1985

After a period of reassessment, China has unveiled an economic blueprint for the next five years that sticks firmly to the ''open door'' policies charted at the beginning of the decade by the country's pragmatic leader, Deng Xiaoping. Despite the troubles that have beset the Deng program in the last year, the new economic plan for 1986 to 1990 underlines the commitment to expanded foreign investment and trade. It also cautiously renews the effort to spur production by loosening central economic controls. The decision to grant wider autonomy to some 400,000 state and collective enterprises, announced last October, led to a free-for-all that caused a major crisis by the early months of this year. A huge borrowing spree, compounded by widespread corruption, led to a precipitate fall in the foreign exchange reserves to $11 billion in March from more than $16 billion.

A dispatch from Phoenix yesterday on Senator Barry Goldwater incorrectly described former Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. He is alive.

The Defense Department, in an effort to cut its long-range spending plan without reducing its nuclear weapons program, has approved sweeping cutbacks in projected spending on conventional military forces, according to Reagan Administration officials. In a process described as painful and divisive, senior Pentagon officials have been rewriting their five-year plan for weapons, personnel and operations in light of Congress' success in ending the Reagan Administration's military buildup. Delays in Purchases The cuts will mean long delays in the scheduled replacements of older tanks, aircraft, ships and missiles, the officials said in interviews over the last week. They will also sharply curtail efforts in the next five years to replenish stockpiles of ammunition and spare parts, key indicators of the ability to outlast an enemy in a conventional war, the Pentagon officials added.

In a move with broad implications for American eating habits and food assistance programs, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences has drafted a report calling for lower recommended levels of some vitamins and minerals needed to maintain health. The authors of the report said that it was based on the best available scientific data. But some nutrition experts, including people asked by the academy to read the report as part of its internal review process, expressed concern. They said the report on the Government's recommended dietary allowances could be used by officials to justify further cuts in food stamps, school lunch subsidies and other feeding programs. If, for example, the recommended allowances for vitamins A and C were reduced, school lunch menus might not need as much fruit and vegetables.

Joking that ''I hurt my arm bowling,'' Billy Martin, the embattled manager of the Yankees, showed up at Memorial Stadium today with a broken arm following an early-morning punching, kicking, grappling brawl with Ed Whitson, one of his pitchers. The fight, which began in a hotel bar but extended to the lobby and then outside before ending verbally on the third floor, was the second incident in 24 hours in which Martin was involved in the bar of the Cross Keys Inn, where the Yankees stay here. The incident early Saturday morning, involving a man Martin had been drinking with, was generally verbal, although Martin later acknowledged, ''I didn't get to him, but I wanted to.'' After Martin and Whitson returned to their rooms following their fight, a Yankee source said, Martin telephoned Whitson in his room and challenged him to go out to the parking lot and continue the fight, but the 30-year-old pitcher declined. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' principal owner, hadn't been able to receive reports on the first incident when the second occurred.