Red Chinese want to improve their relations with the Soviet Union despite Russian intervention in Afghanistan and developing Peiping-Washington ties, U.S. scholar Ross Terrill said. Ending a month's visit to Red China, Terrill said a senior Red Chinese foreign policymaker told him a return to a more businesslike relationship with the Soviet Union is desirable and possible.
Rabies has broken out in at least three Peiping districts, with rabid dogs killing four people and infecting 91 since June 20. Three hundred people were bitten by rabid dogs in the first half of this year.
JULY 17 - The Soviet Union refused to issue a visa and obstructed Red China's delegate from attending the International Weightlifting Congress in Moscow.
An American specialist on foreign affairs thinks that the use of Communist China to counter the Soviet Union by the United States "may be a serious destabilizing factor." Robert A. Manning, who writes on foreign affairs for many publications, said in the Christian Science Monitor it is questionable how much the "(Red) China card" enhances American security.
Red China wants closer relations with all leftist political parties and movements that "show their independence" of Moscow, particularly in Western Europe, Portuguese Socialist Party Secretary General Mario Soares said in Peiping.
Two young Chinese mainland women killed themselves at the beginning of the year in protest at the way their superiors treated them, the China Youth newspaper reported.
Chinghai Province has become Red China's Siberia, a dreaded place to which the Communist regime banishes dissidents, political prisoners and undesirables, according to the Los Angeles Times. The desolate area in the far western reaches of the Chinese mainland has the greatest concentration of prisoners in Red China. Few of them ever return.
The Soviet Union is trying to exploit differences between Western Europe and the United States in an effort to destroy the Western alliance, a Chinese Communist commentary said.
The Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique reported that the movement of attacking former secret service officials launched recently in China mainland was aimed at Hua Kuo-feng.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader, rebuffed fresh efforts by Red Chinese leaders to lure him back to his homeland. The Dalai Lama's stand is unchanged, Rinching Sadutshang, the former god king's representative in New Delhi, said. There must be guarantees to the people that they will have the freedom to express their true feelings, Sadutshang added.
JULY 18 - Vietnam accused Red China of staging more than 500 attacks and ambushes on Vietnamese territory and killing or wounding more than 100 Vietnamese civilians over the past six months.
Red China has abandoned its goal of mechanizing agriculture by 1980 as impossible, NCNA reported.
A U.S. State Department official disclosed that there are six cases of Chinese from the mainland seeking asylum in the United States now being processed through legal channels somewhere on the west coast.
JULY 19 - People's Daily concluded that the "Ta Chai campaign" was an example of the failure of the extreme leftist route, Kyodo news service reported from Peiping. The paper was quoted as saying that "Ta Chai" was merely a model for reconstruction of mountain villages.
Wall posters and leaflets opposing Communist Chinese rule appeared late last month in the main cities of Tibet following an admission by Peiping that its Tibet policy had failed, an exile reported.
There is no room for dissent in Communist China. The political model is harsher and the social control is much tighter than in the Soviet Union, Piero Ostellino of Il Corriere Della Sera of Milan reported from Peiping.
JULY 20 - Red China's first business administration school will open next month, according to the Los Angeles Times. The project "reflects the growing recognition that many of (Red) China's economic ills can be traced back to poor management, especially in the middle ranks," Linda Mathews reported from Peiping.
Three persons including a Soviet citizen were convicted of spying for Russia in Red China's sensitive northeast border region and two were sentenced to death by firing squad, NCNA reported.
JULY 21 - Red China fired three sharp criticisms at the Soviet Union, accusing its old ally of unremitting espionage, spreading rumors about Red Chinese-Israeli contacts and threatening to drill for oil on Red Chinese islands now claimed by Vietnam.
Peiping leaders admitted that 3 million people were killed during the "cultural revolution" and that all victims, including families, friends and relatives of the purged, reached 100 million, Asahi reported from Peiping.
Red China reported that 72 persons died last month in the collapse of an oil rig in the Bohai Gulf and blamed the party leadership of the oil platform for the disaster.
In the wake of the conviction of three alleged Soviet spies, Red China's leading newspaper launched a scathing attack on the Soviet Union, saying its KGB security agency never has stopped anti-Chinese Communist espionage.
Red China said its oil industry, the major sparkplug to overcome years of turmoil and propel the regime in to the modem industrialized era, is riddled with mismanagement, cover-up and accidents in which scores of people have died.
JULY 23 - The U.S. House of Representatives opened a series of four hearings on U.S. relations with Red China. The hearings are being held by the subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Subcommittee leader Lester Wolff said the United States may be drifting into a military alliance with the Communist China without adequately examining the strategic implications.
JULY 24 - Red China's leading newspaper reported that Soviet warships and airplanes based in Vietnam have been increasing their patrols in the South China Sea.
The Peiping area of the north China mainland is suffering from its worst drought in 100 years and more than 27,000 acres (l0,800 hectares) of crops have been seriously damaged, Peiping reported.
Peiping leaders and ranking party cadres are using their special rights to send their children to study in America, Asahi reported. The paper listed these examples: Teng Hsiao-ping's son has already entered an American university to study physics and his daughter is now living in Washington; "vice premier" Chen Yun's son has been admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; "vice premier" Po Yi-po has decided to send his daughter to the U.S. and "vice premier" Fang Yi will also send two children there; "foreign minister" Huang Hua's son is entering Harvard University as a freshman; two daughters of the late Liu Shao-chi will study in America.
The Chinese Communist newspaper Workers' Daily carried an article criticizing the "great leap forward" and the "cultural revolution," saying they were the two main factors bringing about the backward economic situation on the Chinese mainland.
JULY 25 - After two years of hard bargaining, the United States and Red China reached agreement governing Red Chinese textile exports to America. It established agreed levels of trade for five cotton products and for manmade fiber sweaters.
Teng Hsiao-ping's repeated claim of retirement is only a maneuver in trying to seize power from Hua Kuo-feng, an expert on Communist affairs said in Taipei.
Mao Tse-tung's secret service chief, the late Kang Sheng, already attacked since the end of the Mao era for having persecuted high ranking Communist party members during the "cultural revolution," was charged with having taken erroneous ideological positions as well.
Mao Tse-tung must bear responsibility for the disaster of the "cultural revolution," said party vice chairman Li Hsien-nien. Li is the highest ranking Red Chinese official to attack the legacy of Mao publicly.
Typhoon Joe ripped through the southern Chinese province of Kwangtung and killed 188 people, the Communist newspaper Ta Kung Pao reported in Hongkong.
The Chinese Communist regime has been using executions and troops to combat a rising wave of violent crime, according to the Los Angeles Times. Nearly 200 mainland criminals were executed last year, Linda Mathews reported from Peiping.
The widow of the late captain of the oil rig Bohai No.2, which sank November 25 with the loss of 72 lives, has charged that leading cadres responsible tried to cover up the true cause of the tragic accident.
JULY 27 - Hua Kuo-feng and five aging "vice premiers" will submit their resignations to the "national people's congress," party vice chairman Li Hsien-nien was quoted as saying.
JULY 28 - There's too much heavy industry and not enough housing. Traffic is a mess. There aren't enough vegetables in the summer and in winter cabbages rot in the streets. Shop clerks are rude and Hui minority people can't find enough white hats. If that isn't enough, Peiping has a long list of other problems, including a critical summer shortage of beer.
Communist party vice chairman Li Hsien-nien again has criticized "impetuous" and "leftist" errors of Red China's past, saying if one tries to run before walking "he will fall and sometimes break his nose."
Profit has become the main issue of all enterprises in Red China and all those losing money because of bad management must repay their deficits to the regime.
There is no longer doubt that the Chinese Communists are contemplating a second "punitive" invasion of Vietnam, a Manila newspaper reported.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that Chou En-lai was being criticized on the Chinese mainland by middle-ranking cadres and intellectuals who were victimized during the "cultural revolution."
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has predicted a difficult future for Red China's modernization program, Yomiuri reported. The main points: (1) Red China's economic modernization will be affected by the change of the Peiping leadership and by its increase in military spending. (2) The growth of Red China's national product in the next five years will slow down. (3) Peiping is unable to finish economic readjustment in three years (from 1979 to 1981). (4) Red China is unable to use imported equipment effectively, except for fertilizer plants.
Red China's foreign trade is concentrated on a few industrial countries. Forty-five per cent of Peiping's two-way trade is with only six countries and 70 per cent of Red China's imports come from industrialized countries. The six are Japan, the United States, West Germany, Australia, Canada and Great Britain.
Thai Foreign Minister Sithi Sawetasila left for Red China for a five-day visit expected to center on the Cambodian issue.
JULY 29 - A bill to authorize operations by the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation in Communist China has met opposition on the floor of the House of Representatives. Representative Robert Bauman of Maryland said that the legislation is "another embracing of Communist China at a time when they have shown no great intention to abandon their past policies and certainly have not improved their record of human rights."
"Amoy University" has established a research institute to study Taiwan, about 90 miles off Fukien Province, NCNA said. The institute will concentrate on Taiwan's economy. It also will study politics, society, history, nationality, languages literature and higher education.
Weather has played havoc in many parts of mainland China from Hopei Province in the north to Hainan Island in the south, according to reports from Red China. Radio Hopei monitored in Hongkong reported grain harvests in the central mainland Chinese province dropped by a big margin this year because of serious drought, cold waves and hot winds. Radio Wuhan cited heavy rains and floods.
JULY 30 - Red China's political losers are treated brutally in Chin Chen prison No.1, Red China's "Bastille" and die place for the disgraced Chinese Communist party brass. Beatings, electric shock, starvation and other tortures are inflicted, Linda Mathew of the Los Angeles Times reported from Peiping.
A National University of Singapore economics professor doubts that Peiping can successfully carry out the four modernization programs under its present Communist ideology and system. "(Red) China must run away from Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, if it hopes to carry out the four modernizations," said Lim Chong Yah, head of the Department of Economics and Statistics at NUS.
Two massive portraits of Mao Tse-tung have been removed from the "great hall of the people," prompting speculation about further erosion of Mao's image. Preparations appeared to be under way for the removal of at least two more portraits.
Red Chinese "foreign minister" Huang Hua said Vietnam has intensified its "war of aggression" in Cambodia and is massing troops along the border and threatening Thailand.
JULY 31 - Five million abortions were performed last year in Red China and some were in voluntary, said Wang Lian-cheng, deputy secretary general of Red China's family planning association.
A fact-finding visit by representatives of the Dalai Lama was abruptly cut short following a demonstration of support and subsequent criticism from the Chinese Communist authorities. Journalists watched a crowd of about 2,000 emotional Tibetans gather to hear delegation members make impassioned speeches denouncing conditions in Tibet.
AUGUST 1 - A leftist Chinese magazine in Hongkong said members of the "petroleum faction" in the Chinese Communist party seem to be losing in the power struggle with Teng Hsiao-ping.
Red China is importing millions of wrist watches from Japan after removing them from the list of luxuries.
An ultraleftist Communist terrorist organization has emerged on the Chinese mainland, according to a Peiping dispatch of the Toronto Globe and Mail. The report said': "Modeled on violent extremists such as the Italian Red Brigades or Japan's Red Army, the Chinese group allegedly has plans to assassinate a number of (Red) China's top-ranking cadres and fight for the return of 'revolutionary political principles' undermined by the 'revisionists' currently running the country."
Red China marked the 53rd anniversary of the founding of the world's largest army and said it needed massive restructuring to meet future challenges, including the threat of a Soviet invasion. There were no military parades.
Red Chinese "vice premier" Chen Yung-kuei, Mao Tse-tung's handpicked peasant model during the "cultural revolution," has been accused of putting nine persons under illegal investigation, resulting in one death.
AUGUST 2 - Twenty people have been killed in a coal mine explosion in the southern mainland Chinese province of Kweichow. The Kweichow Daily reported the mine manager and one technical official had been arrested on charges of negligence.
The Peiping region has been hit by the worst drought in 105 years, with 336,200 acres of crops damaged and drinking water scarce for peasants and animals.
Candlelit parties with "weird guests" swinging to "pornographic tunes" are the latest youth fad to sweep Shanghai, a city newspaper complains. The Wenhui Bao said police concern led, in one case, to 10-day detention of the swingers and confiscation of their sound equipment. Dance parties are not confined to homes and have hit factories and parks, where attempts by officials to disperse crowds have met with "attacks."
AUGUST 3 - Communist China wants to turn away from Mao Tse-tung's "empty talk" but the regime is not quite sure it can do without the myth of Mao, said Ross Terrill of Harvard's East Asian Institute.
Shuai Xiu-rong got pregnant without permission last year, refused orders to have an abortion and bore her second child. As punishment she was fined 300 yuan (US$200) and denied a rice ration for her illegal baby.
AUGUST 4 - Time's Peiping bureau chief, Richard Bernstein, reported that poverty remains widespread in rural areas of Communist China. After a recent tour of the countryside in Szechwan Province, Bernstein said he inspected a commune on the lower slope of Mt. Omei where peasant incomes average 44 American dollars a year, more than half of which is distributed in grain rather than cash. In many regions farm life is even harsher. Time said Hua Kuo-feng has become a target in the anti-Mao campaign.
A young woman attacked by four thugs ran screaming for help into a county courtroom in Kwangsi Province, but the presiding judge only helped the attackers undress her in public. She was stripped naked in broad daylight, kicked, beaten and insulted in front of a crowd of 1,000. The judge was never prosecuted, although he was expelled from the Communist party.
Former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance cautioned against forging a military alliance with Communist China.
More portraits of Mao Tse-tung came down from public buildings as Red China continued to dismantle the legend of the late "chairman." Using blow torches and a huge crane, workmen ripped down Mao portraits and huge Mao "quotations" from the massive "museum of the Red Chinese revolution" in Peiping's Tienanmen Square.
Seven Tibetans have been sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Katmandu, six for organizing an army with intention to "instigate armed rebellion against a friendly country" (Red China).
Peiping Daily lashed out at people who live together without being married and called for disciplinary sanctions against them.
AUGUST 5 - Ronald Oldenburg, professor of immigration law at the University of Hawaii said people on the Chinese mainland have a lot of difficulties in obtaining permission to go to the United States.
Death can be a tricky and costly business in mainland China. A group of chemical workers complained they succeeded in getting a fallen comrade cremated only after they bribed cremation workers with a bottle of wine.
AUGUST 6 - CIA report said Communist China's military force of 8 million, although the world's largest, is backward in weaponry and equipment. "They have few modem weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles or short-range tactical rockets. The air force consists largely of air defense fighters capable of making intercepts only in good weather during daylight hours. Naval forces are equipped primarily for coastal defense," the report said.
Vietnam accused Red China of 180 "armed provocations" in which "many" civilians were killed or wounded during the month of July.
After a dazzling decade-long career in which he amassed a personal fortune and a fleet of cars, the most successful swindler in Communist China has finally been nabbed by the law. People's Daily said the criminal's success underscored how riddled with corruption the bureaucracy has become in a regime which once boasted it was crime-free.
The temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetans, the Dalai Lama, has rejected a Red Chinese suggestion that he should return to his homeland and cooperate with the Communists.
Hsu Shih-yu, one-time supporter of Teng Hsiao ping, is rallying forces within the military against his former friend, an intelligence source revealed in Taipei.
AUGUST 7 - The Peiping regime has so isolated ordinary people on the Chinese mainland from foreigners that it will stall the progress of modernization, the Asian Wall Street Journal said. People shun friendships with foreigners, knowing they may get into trouble
Cholera occurred in Shanghai recently but local health authorities tried to cover it up, Yomiuri reported.
The New York Times said Red China has given significant assistance to Burmese Communists in their war against the government.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said she suspected Red Chinese-trained rebels of fomenting violence in India's troubled northeastern region.
Tsao Po-i, professor at the Institute of East Asia Research of the National Chengchi University in Taipei, said that one of the effective ways to solve the Chinese problem is to help mainland youths in their struggle for freedom and democracy.
AUGUST 8 - A Chinese trans-Siberian train from Moscow was pelted with rocks and numerous windows shattered last month in Soviet territory outside Mongolia, Western diplomatic sources reported in Peiping.
The Dalai Lama has postponed a tour of Tibet by a delegation of his followers.
AUGUST 9 - Red China's communes, once hailed as the embodiment of Communism, are quietly fading away. Colina MacDougall, a British China watcher, reported in the Financial Times. She said the land distribution movement which now prevails in many places may be an unauthorized local initiative but will be hard to stop.
The Communist Chinese press gave the regime's chieftains a tongue lashing on failure to restrain their spoiled children from terrorizing the people. The newspapers also reported the conviction and jailing of three youths who relied on the high positions of their parents to harass, detain, assault, blackmail and rob a woman.
Red China reported an oil find in the vast Inner Mongolia region of the north.
AUGUST 10 - Disagreement surfaced among Red China's top leaders over whether or not Mao Tse-tung made serious mistakes. Mao's handpicked successor, Hua Kuo-feng, made a bid to draw the line on how far the current administration's repudiation of the "cultural revolution" should go. He seemed determined that Mao's prestige should not suffer too much in the process.
Muriel Hoopes, an 81-year-old woman in Shanghai and widow of Tu Yu-ching, former president of St. John's University, wants to return home after suffering a 3D-year ordeal of jail and beatings in Red China. Linda Mathews of the Los Angeles Times reported the woman wants to regain her American citizenship and see her homeland before she dies.
AUGUST 11 - Konsin Shah, representative in the United States of the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, warned that Communist China has been following two-faced diplomacy in relations with the United States. In an interview with Human Events weekly, Shah pointed out that while talking of amelioration of relations with the United States, Peiping's internal propaganda has never changed. "They are fighting for Communism and oppose the capitalist world," he said.
Hua Kuo-feng has openly admitted that the Communist party committed "pretty big mistakes" between 1958 and 1966 and made "grievous, serious errors" during the "cultural revolution."
A mainland Chinese policeman was recently arrested for having tortured a young worker to death, Workers Daily reported.
The Chinese Communist party brushed aside objections by Hua Kuo-feng and took new steps to limit the cult of personality surrounding Mao Tse-tung. A directive issued by the "party central committee," possibly over the objection of Hua, said "there have been too many portraits, quotations and poems of Mao in public places."
Nieh Feng-chih, commander of the Nanking Military Region, has defied Peiping's order to replace 12 ranking officers under his command, according to a mainland report.
AUGUST 12 - A powerful Indian Communist faction and onetime staunch political ally of Red China, attacked Peiping for siding with the United States.
AUGUST 13 - The Los Angeles Times predicted that Red China's demaofication movement will be intensified.
Top German businessmen find Peiping the most expensive city in the world. They say they have to cable home for more expense money.
A commune member in remote south-central mainland China was executed for murdering 13 persons after he convinced them they would die and "fly to heaven and become immortals."
Red China's press tried to link Hua Kuo-feng to the "cultural revolu tion" and blamed one of his associates for the death of 141 people during the political upheaval.
AUGUST 14 - People's Daily carried an article criticizing Hua Kuo-feng with a metaphor implying that Mao Tse-tung was "an emperor" and Hua is "a eunuch," the World Daily News of Tokyo reported.
AUGUST 15 - The Peiping regime has adopted a new measure to prohibit intellectuals from going abroad because of the "brain drain." From 200,000 to 300,000 intellectuals have left the Chinese mainland in recent years. The regime has now prohibited scientists, researchers and college teachers from going abroad.
Red Chinese have plundered Buddhist monasteries and temples in Tibet, a spokesman of a five-member delegation of Tibetan exiles said in New Delhi on return from a tour of their homeland.
Armed with fly swatters, spades, brooms and pesticide sprayers, about one million people in Peiping took part in a campaign to rid the city of mosquitoes and rues.
Authorities in fertile Hupei Province have told the 100,000 people guarding the imperiled banks of the swollen Yangtze River to brace for a greater flood. Several provinces along the mighty Yangtze, Asia's longest river, have been flooded by heavy summer rains.