Taiwan Today

MARCH 16—The largest mass purge within the Chinese Communist party is under way. Targets are the 1.8 million members who entered the party during the "cultural revolution," according to Japanese press reports from Peiping. Another firm warning to "bad" Communist party cadres was published in Peiping. The call came from Huang Ke-chang, one of the secretaries of the central committee's disciplinary group. The State Department gave general approval for U.S. manufacturers to sell Red China various categories of military equipment, including cargo aircraft such as the C130 transport. MARCH 17—Teng Hsiao-ping may soon yield his post of "senior vice premier" to a protégé 15 years his junior, Peiping diplomatic sources said. But the 76-year-old Teng will hold on to his job as "deputy chairman" of the Chinese Communist party. Thirty members of parliament urged the Indian government to recognize the Tibetan government in exile in India as the de facto and legal government of Tibet. Thousands of women on the Chinese mainland have been forcibly sterilized or tricked into such operations as a part of the regime's drive for population control, according to the Los Angeles Times. Maoism represents a serious problem for the present Peiping regime, and the current Chinese Communist leaders may like the idea of dismantling Mao Tse-tung's mausoleum, the Toronto Globe and Mail said. "Foreign minister" Huang Hua sidestepped the question of whether Red China will continue to support Communist movements in countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Huang said: "This is a sensitive question and cannot be discussed with the press." The United States and Red China have signed a broad agreement providing American assistance in designing and building major hydroelectric and flood control projects on the mainland. MARCH 18—Teng Hsiao-ping is proving as autocratic as Mao Tse-tung despite the Western judgment that pragmatism and moderation now rule in Peiping, the London Sunday Observer said. Chinese Communist party members are beginning to doubt the socialist system and Communism and are beginning to "long for capitalism," a reliable Red Chinese source said. MARCH 19—Juvenile delinquency and youth crime are rampant on the Chinese mainland, especially in big cities. A bank holdup in Peiping was not reported in newspapers. It is not safe to walk at night in Shanghai and Canton. Red Chinese are resorting to severe punishments. Rapists are sentenced to death and the executions televised, said Die Welt of Bonn. Former Foreign Minister Dr. Ruslan Abdul Gani said Indonesia should not rush to normalize relations with Peiping because Red China's Southeast Asian policy has raised many doubts. Afghan troops have captured "Red Chinese agents" operating in the eastern province of Kunar and will parade them on television in Kabul soon, Information Minister Majid Sarbiland said. An overseas Chinese staged a demonstration in front of the "New China News Agency" office in Hongkong recounting his experience with Communist persecution during his stay on the Chinese mainland following his return from the United States in the early 70s. Pan Pi-yun said three brothers were killed and another crippled by the Chinese Communists. MARCH 20—Red China wants President Carter to drop his ban on sales of weapons and defense-related technology to the Chinese Communist armed forces, a well-informed source said in Peiping. The shortage of electric power is so severe in mainland China that up to 20 per cent of its productive capacity cannot be utilized, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Red China and the Soviet Union concluded the 22nd session of their routine navigation talks on boundary rivers and reached agreement on some topics, the Chinese Communists reported. MARCH 21—The majority of the Chinese people on the mainland are looking for food rather than politics, the Hungarian agency MTI reported from Peiping. The MTI report said young Chinese "are eyeing the Chinese Communist party with growing distrust." Members of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's ruling party accused Red China of aiding guerrilla movements fighting for independence in troubled northeastern India. Cardinal Franz Koenig, archbishop of Vienna, who returned to the Vatican from a 10-day visit to Communist China, said he did not see any immediate possibility for "normalization of relations." Vietnam again proposed to Red China that the third round of their peace talks be resumed in Hanoi July 15. A replacement for Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book has been published in pamphlet form, the "New China News Agency" said. MARCH 22—Basic shortages are common on the Chinese mainland against a background of disillusionment, politicking, factionalism, crime and corruption, according to an article in World Business Weekly. Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping that bitter words of criticism almost certainly meant for Mao Tse-tung appeared in the Communist Chinese press after the posthumous rehabilitation of two more early leaders of the Chinese Communist party condemned by Mao. They were Chu Chiu-pai, general secretary of the party in 1927-28, and Li Li-san, who took effective charge of the party apparatus from 1928 to 1930. Three American magazines, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and Time, have received permission to open news bureaus in Peiping. This will bring the number of U.S. correspondents in Peiping to 15. MARCH 23—U.S. General Richard G. Stilwell (retired), former commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said U.S. recognition of Red China has a negative effect on American security interests in Northeast Asia. British Defense Secretary Francis Pym arrived in Peiping to confer with Red Chinese leaders on possible military technology sales, including the Harrier vertical takeoff jet. Turmoil created by Mao Tse-tung's "cultural revolution" has caused many people to doubt "the superiority of socialism," a Peiping newspaper said. MARCH 24—The Washington Star has raised the question of whether Teng Hsiao-ping is being forced out. Peiping's new retirement policy may be a coverup for Teng Hsiao-ping's scheme to get rid of his adversaries, the Washington Post reported. MARCH 25—Peiping is steadily giving up the fiction that the disaster of the Mao era was entirely the fault of the "gang of four" and not of Mao Tse-tung himself, Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping. Britain is unlikely to sell its Harrier jet or make any other big arms sales to Red China, British sources said. Red China showed its newest major oil field to foreigners for the first time. Geologists said the 10-million-ton-a-year field has good potential but that mainland China never will be another Middle East. Petroleum geologists from around the world visited the Renqui oil field on the North China plain. MARCH 26—The Madrid evening paper El Alcazar reported that American scholar Robert Scalapino has cautioned that if the United States chose to establish a united front with Red China and Japan against the Soviet Union, the 1980s will be filled with risks. The State Department published its list of military items—including cargo aircraft and helicopters—that will be considered on a case-by-case basis for sale to Red China. It does not include so-called "lethal" military hardware or ammunition. Red China considers the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union as a result of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan to be "irreversible," but fears that Washington will display "vacillation and hesitation." Troubled with growing domestic demand and energy shortages, Red China is planning to reduce its oil exports. Fang Wei-chung, "vice minister" of the "state planning commission," said the Chinese Communists would not be able to increase their oil exports to Japan after 1981 because of increasing domestic demand and static output. Columnist Jack Anderson said Red China has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting targets in the United States. Anderson said the CSS-X-4 has a range of 7,800 miles. MARCH 27—The Chinese Communist party newspaper stepped up the campaign to downgrade former secret police chief Kang Sheng, Mao Tse-tung's close adviser, who was buried with honors after his death in 1975. People's Daily charged Kang libeled Liu Shao-chi three times. The Chinese Communist air force commander deplored the lack of service discipline in a People's Daily article. MARCH 28—Teng Hsiao-ping plans to use the impending trial of the purged "gang of four" to denigrate Mao Tse-tung, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review. Technical incompetence, inefficiency and bad management are listed by young workers of the Peiping Heavy Machinery Plant as major obstacles to Red China's modernization, NCNA reported. Hua Kuo-feng, who has to visit the United States before President Jimmy Carter goes to Red China, won't get to Washington this year, American officials said. MARCH 29—Red China will implement strict foreign exchange controls that will bar the use of Red Chinese currency by foreigners, Peiping said. A man was sterilized and his wife fired from her government job for having a third child in defiance of Chinese Communist birth control policy, Kyodo news agency reported. Malcolm Toon, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1979, said the United States should be very careful about the development of relations with the Peiping regime, which will turn hostile some day. Red China is developing a more powerful and efficient space rocket, making advances in solid state electronics crucial to sophisticated space flight and pursuing plans to launch communications, weather and possibly other satellites, U.S. space officials who have recently visited the mainland said. MARCH 30—The "four modernizations" program has been prompting a big smuggling business on the Chinese mainland, Newsweek reported. The magazine said sinologists link the illicit traffic to the rising expectations of many of Red China's 1 billion people. Collisions, derailments and other accidents have marked the Tan-Zam railway's history and today a third of the rolling stock is out of order. The Star of Johannesburg said that in three years Tanzania and Zambia will have to start paying through the nose "for the Red Chinese-built railway system which is clattering across Africa like an "engineer's nightmare." Mrs. Anna Chennault, an executive of the National Republican Committee, said Communism is not a system the Chinese want and that Chinese living in the Free World should bear the responsibility of planting democratic rule in the Chinese mainland. Teng Hsiao-ping hinted that the trial of the "gang of four" could begin by the end of this year. He also said he will make no more overseas trips. MARCH 31—What the Chinese Communists want of the United States is joint participation in a "united struggle against hegemonism," Peiping's code word for the Soviet Union, the Washington Post said. A group of Chinese mainland intellectuals has publicly recognized the Soviet Union as a genuinely socialist country for the first time since the Sino-Soviet schism 20 years ago. The break with tirades against "Soviet revisionism" came at a national symposium on contemporary Soviet literature at Harbin. APRIL 1—Red China has limited the tenure of office for chairmen of the Chinese Communist party to a maximum of three five-year terms, a Hongkong pro-Communist magazine reported. The mausoleum of Mao Tse-tung reopened after being closed four months. His remains were on display as usual. Teng Hsiao-ping told a Japanese delegation that Red Chinese enterprises have been "plagued with bureaucratism." April Fifth Forum, one of the leading Chinese mainland underground political magazines published during the 1979 civil rights agitation, has suspended publication, the chief editor announced, citing warnings from Communist party authorities. Authorities in Canton have broken up 346 criminal groups, seized 1,769 weapons and convicted 1,541 persons in the past four months, Red China's news agency reported. An official in the Carter administration said U.S. military sales to Red China would be a response to the Soviets but would not foreshadow an alliance. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke told the House of Representatives Asia subcommittee: "Neither we nor Red Chinese seek such an alliance. Nor do we anticipate any joint Red Chinese-U.S. military planning." The recently sacked vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party and former bodyguard of Mao Tse-tung, Wang Tung-hsing, is under investigation, a Hongkong leftwing magazine, Cheng Ming, reported. APRIL 2—Wreaths of flowers appeared in Tienanmen Square to mark the anniversary of the April 5, 1976, riot against the regime of Mao Tse-tung. Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned the United States that to look upon the Chinese Communist leadership as an ally and to regard the Russian people as a foe would be disastrous for the world. APRIL 3—"Vice premier" Po Yi-po has admitted one blunder after another in Red China's industrial modernization, citing the import of large plants from the West. Red China has launched a big experiment to turn "state farms" into complexes engaged in not only agricultural but also in industrial and commercial activities. APRIL 4—Peiping's Communist party leaders have decided to complete an overall review of all party members on the Chinese mainland within this year, according to intelligence sources on the mainland. Mao Tse-tung's palace guard known as "Unit 8341" has been disbanded on the eve of the fall of its long-time commander, Wang Tung-hsing, according to an intelligence report. A Canton newspaper has warned visitors from Hongkong that they will be punished for breaking laws and even executed. Most Red Chinese weapons are technically inferior to those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact nations, Drew Middleton said in the New York Times. APRIL 5—Teng Hsiao-ping will remain in his post for another two or three years, Kyodo news service reported from Peiping. The fourth anniversary of the riots that swept Tienanmen Square and brought about the second disgrace of Teng Hsiao-ping passed without incident. APRIL 6—Most publications advocating human rights on the Chinese mainland have been forced to close since the Peiping regime shut down Democracy Wall last December, according to intelligence sources on the mainland. APRIL 7—An American columnist warned of the possibility of rapprochement between Moscow and Peiping as a result of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. James Weighart wrote in the New York Daily News that there are signs that the Chinese Communists "are moving toward improving their relations with the Soviet Union." The Soviet Union blasted Red China for "provocations and incitement, blackmail and threats." But an article in Pravda also stressed Soviet readiness to resume suspended talks on normalizing relations with Peiping. Per capita income of farmers on the Chinese mainland last year was 85 yuan (about US$56.70), the Nihon Keizai of Tokyo reported. Red China is training "thousands" of Laotian refugees in three "refugee farms" on Hainan Island in preparation for attacking Laos, which is under control of the Vietnamese Communists, the World Daily News of Tokyo reported. APRIL 8—There will be an easing of tension between Red China and the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the initiative will come from Peiping, scholar and author Lucian Pye said in Hongkong. APRIL 9—There was a wave of violent and even gruesome crimes recently in Fukien Province and at least five people were executed in Amoy in the last two weeks, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. A purge is in the offing as Teng Hsiao-ping and his followers are meeting stronger resistance to their "modernization" policies, the Baltimore Sun said. APRIL 10—U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield told American businessmen that Red China is poor and they should not have illusions about the mainland market. APRIL 11—The Chinese Communists have declared virtually anything not printed in the newspapers to be a secret. People's Daily called on the people to follow the regulations strictly. Teng Hsiao-ping said the "gang of four" will be brought to trial as early as possible but said their crimes were so atrocious they could be convicted "with our eyes closed." He said Wei Ching-sheng, the 29-year-old political dissident sentenced to 15 years in prison last October, hasn't shown repentance. Teng also said he hopes President Carter's break with Iran won't benefit the Soviet Union. He implied this could happen by drawing world attention away from the Russian intervention in Afghanistan. Teng Hsiao-ping reaffirmed his regime's adherence to the Maoist three worlds theory of international relations at a meeting with President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. APRIL 13—People's Daily urged the people to step up their prospecting for gold. Prospecting has developed rapidly in more than 12 provinces and autonomous regions. Red China called on Iran and the United States to find a peaceful solution to their dispute to avoid giving the Soviet Union a pretext for intervention in the Persian Gulf area. A pilot commune based on the agricultural model used throughout China during Mao Tse-tung's time and now outlawed as an "ultra-leftist error" is continuing to function and claims its workers earn more than three times the average wage. APRIL 14—The Carter administration may provide Red China with non-nuclear weapons, including Cruise missiles, in the event of a Red Chinese-Soviet conventional war, Aviation Week and Space Technology said. After hitting a peak of 1.6 million deadweight tons in 1978, purchases of second-hand vessels by Communist China slumped last year to 0.7 million DWT, figures from Lloyd's of London showed. The standing committee of Red China's "national people's congress" recommended a change in the "constitution" to outlaw freedom of speech and the press and the right to display wall posters of political protest. The committee's recommendation is expected to be acted on by the full session of the congress in June. The 120-member committee endorsed cancellation of Article 45, which reads: "Citizens enjoy freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration, and the freedom to strike, and have the right to speak out freely and air their views fully." An American scholar believes Red China's political pendulum is now swinging toward the far right but soon will swing to the other side. The political climate will change and Red China will be in flux, said Richard Baum, professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles. APRIL 15—The Peiping regime admitted that the life, security and health of workers in mainland industry and mining have been totally ignored. The U.S. State Department expressed concern over reports that Red China has approved a series of measures limiting civil liberties. Negotiations on an aviation agreement between the United States and Red China opened in Peiping following eight months of delay. The Chinese Communist party sees no possibility of repairing its tattered relations with the Soviet Communist party, general secretary Hu Yao-bang said.