As the failures of Communism pile up, Chinese everywhere recognize that only the Nationalism, Democracy and Social Welfare of Dr. Sun Yat-sen can assure mainland progress
Chiang Ching is in jail. So are the other members of the "gang of four" and the surviving leaders of the Lin Piao clique. Hua Kuo-feng is waiting for the other shoe of his dismissal to drop. The "four modernizations" have been abandoned in all save name. Teng Hsiao-ping is confronted by an angry "people's liberation army" that still holds the balance of power on the Chinese mainland. The honeyed words addressed to the Republic of China on Taiwan have turned to vinegar; threats to "liberate" the island province are heard once again. Mao's fictious and miracle-working heroes are being revived. And a new wonder boy has X-ray eyes than can read through walls.
Like London Bridge of another time and place, Chinese Communism is falling down. Marxism Leninism is dead. The shade of Mao Tse-tung is profaned. There is nowhere to turn except to the Three People's Principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The shining example — denied by the regime but accepted by the people — is the Republic of China on Taiwan, where the Three Principles have opened the way to a new China combining prosperity with freedom and democracy. In a sense, the new China is not new at all, but a continuation of that established by the Kuomintang and the National Government in the decade just after the 1928 defeat of the warlords and the unification of the country.
In a recent issue, the China News Analysis of Hongkong noted that from the late twenties to the Japanese war of 1937-45, China was "being modernized in a spirit of discipline and dedication, with the cooperation of Western countries. That was a time of unity and enthusiasm. Roads and railroads were built. A start was made on terminating the isolation which had been China's lot for 5,000 years and which continues under the Communists. Factories were constructed and the application of scientific methods to agriculture begun. Education was encouraged. The beginnings of enlightenment came to the masses of the population living on farms.
As the News Analysis sees things, there was a vast gulf between today and the period of Kuomintang tutelage: "The Kuomintang was not an all-pervading agency. Today there is a (Communist) party cell, a party branch, it is called, in every corner of the country, in every government office, every factory, every cultural organization, every great brigade (i.e., every small group of villages). The members of the cell are continually being called to meetings and are continually being indoctrinated, studying the latest policies and statements of the highest leaders and, last but not least, the PD (People's Daily) editorials, the voice of the party central committee. This party machinery is, at least in theory, highly mobilized. There was nothing comparable under the Nationalist government, where the head of the county was the lowest emissary of the government and even he had only a loose contact with his superiors compared with the present functionaries."
Today's control is total. "The residential, hu-k'ou, system is very much like the strictest form of serfdom in ancient Europe, with this difference that it extends to the cities too. Nobody may move from one place to another without a permit or rather a set of permits — a permit from the personnel department, and finally a permit from the security, i.e., the police. The work place is assigned from above, and anyone may be transferred abruptly from one end of the country to the other. Husbands and wives may be assigned to work in different provinces. Youngsters who have finished their secondary education are assigned to schools in a distant province. A man who has studied engineering may be made an accountant. Someone who has studied literature may be set to translate technical books. Such things often happen. There was nothing of this under the Nationalist regime."
San Min Chu I was another world — and a world away from the mainland practices of Communism. As the News Analysis puts it, "Sun Yat-sen drew up a grandiose plan for the modernization of China, 'Fundamentals of National Reconstruction,' a description of how democratic institutions should function and detailed plans with maps, for building railroads, regulating rivers and exploiting minerals. This plan, which was never carried out (until the Republic of China's reconstruction of Taiwan), could still serve as a blueprint for the modernization of China. Sun Yat-sen planned three periods of political life: the period of military operations, which came to an end in 1928, a period of political tutelage, i.e., rule by the KMT, and democracy. A national assembly was to have been held in November of 1937, the year in which the Japanese invasion started. It was convened in 1946, after the war, and the Constitution was promulgated on January 1, 1947. A new government was formed in June, 1948, only a few months before the final defeat."
Here and there on the mainland voices are raised for more than "learning from Taiwan in economics and politics." They are raised also for the return of the Three Principles of the People and the Constitution that never had a chance on the mainland because of Communist usurpation but that implemented the ideas of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Taiwan. These are voices that represent a billion people now aware that Communism has failed and failed and is now finished. The power struggle may go on. If it isn't Teng, there will be some other self-appointed dictator or warlord to try and hand on and continue the manipulation and misuse of what should be the world's most powerful country as well as its most populous. They cannot prevail for long, however, because they have lost the mandate of heaven. The people are no longer either with them or neutral; the people are against them and will in the goodness of time rise and declare themselves for the People's Principles and the Constitution of the Republic of China.
Communism has left nothing for the people to believe in except the example of the Kuomintang as applied in China's smallest province, which is also the strongest and most prosperous in China's history. This was uppermost in the minds of the leaders and rank and file members of the Nationalist Party as they met in suburban Taipei at the end of March for what may be one of the most momentous conferences in party and Chinese history. Many calls have been made to compatriots of the mainland during the last 32 years. There always has been a good response but the time was not ripe: the enemy was too strong or the people were apprehensive that the price of anti-Communist revolution might be too high. These hesitations are being swept away by the force of events, by Communist failure not only to modernize but even to provide the amenities that the citizens of the poorest and most underdeveloped land have a right to expect.
The Kuomintang started its China building in the macrocosm of the mainland more than 50 years ago only to be interrupted by the Japanese and then by the Soviet-supported Chinese Communists. The work was never abandoned but the locale had to be transferred to the microcosm of Taiwan and there brought to a fruition which has realized the good life and implemented the freedom and democracy that Dr. Sun promised. In 1981, the Party stands ready to take up once more the obligations it accepted after defeating the warlords in 1928. This time the Kuomintang is prepared to complete the job and this time 1 billion mainlanders are waiting for the rallying cry and their escape from the hopeless Communist tyranny.
The record of the Communist regime and of related events for the period from January 16 to February 15 follows:
JANUARY 16 - A major squabble erupted between Red China and the incoming Reagan administration over inauguration invitations. Peiping accused Reagan of jeopardizing relations by inviting several high ranking Republic of China officials - in effect delivering a major diplomatic snub to Red China. In Taipei, official sources said at least five ranking officials had received invitations and were leaving for Washington to attend the inauguration.
Plagued by financial problems, Red China will be unable to attain its goal of US$1,000 per capita income by the year 2000, Teng Hsiao-ping admitted. Teng said per capita income of US$800-900 would be satisfactory.
Copies of Newsweek with a cover showing a statue of Mao Tse-tung being pulled down were removed from Peiping newsstands.
The Chinese Communist leadership is considering restoring the "presidency", a post abolished in 1968.
Red China's regime has ordered an all-out attack on rampant profiteering by officials and state-run enterprises that has been driving up prices and harming stability, People's Daily reported.
The Chinese mainland is experiencing a wave of violent crime that includes bombings, weapons thefts and murders of policemen. A bomb was discovered at Peiping's largest department store, according to diplomatic sources. The store had been robbed.
Red China has further tightened its foreign exchange controls by ordering that all foreign currencies deposited overseas be returned to the mainland.
JANUARY 17 - Red China said the mainland faces economic and social chaos unless the leadership of the Communist party is strengthened and ruthlessly crushes dissidents.
Peiping complained that inviting officials from the Republic of China to Ronald Reagan's inauguation would violate U.S. promises to keep relations with the Republic of China unofficial.
People's Daily warned against any attempts by capitalist countries to interfere in Chinese Communist internal affairs. The paper said that with mainland China's greater opening to the outside, increased study of Marxism and more propaganda on Communist ideology and morals are needed to resist bourgeois influences.
Teng Hsiao-ping labeled some young intellectuals on the Chinese mainland as criminals in a hardline speech and called for a crackdown on everything from underground newspapers to trade unions, according to a Peiping dispatch of the Toronto Globe and Mail.
JANUARY 18 - Red China called the proposed Dutch sale of two submarines to the Republic of China a provocation raising the chances that Peiping's dispute with the Republic of China over reunification will not be settled peacefully. Peiping accused the United States of inspiring the sale of the subs.
A Red Chinese newspaper indicated that if incoming President Ronald Reagan goes too far toward re-establishing official relations with the Republic of China, U.S.-Peiping diplomatic relations will be downgraded. The Kuangming Daily did not specify the limits of toleration.
In 1953, Red China's Mao Tse-tung is said to have proposed to the Soviet Union a plan for world conquest under which every nation except the United States would be Communist-dominated by 1973.
JANUARY 19 - A 1980 Chinese Communist exhibition shown in three U.S. cities left a trail of unpaid bills totaling US$2.3 million to banks and small suppliers, according to banking and convention sources in Chicago.
Red China, accusing the Netherlands of undermining Peiping relations by allowing the sale of submarines to Taiwan, asked the Dutch ambassador to leave.
Over 500 Communist cadres at the inter mediate and lower levels deserted their posts or simply disappeared in the Peiping-Tientsin area prior to the trial of the "gang of four" and the Lin Piao clique, according to an intelligence report from the Chinese mainland.
JANUARY 20 - Angered by the proposed sale of two Dutch submarines to the Republic of China, Red China has broken off contacts with Shell over possible oil explorations.
Unemployed young mainland Chinese may have a harder time finding jobs and some workers may suffer reduced incomes in Red China's current economic readjustment, the China Youth News said. The paper also reported a call by Red Chinese youth leaders for a resolute fight against the tendency of worshiping capitalism and advocating bourgeois liberalism, against profiting at others' expense and putting profit ahead of everything, against the corrupt bourgeois idea that money is everything and against anarchism and extreme egoism.
JANUARY 21 - A Kuwait newspaper reported that Red China has contracted to buy US$2 billion worth of Israeli-made military and non-military equipment.
A mainland Chinese engineer studying in France asked for political asylum just as he was being escorted to a Peiping-bound airplane by Communist Chinese "embassy" officials, Paris police said. Engineer Fang Yu-cheng, 44, was studying at the French International Bureau of Weights and Measures.
The Los Angeles Times said in an editorial it would be "serious mistake" for the Reagan administration to approve arms sales to Red China, saying it "could push U.S.-Soviet relations past the point of no return."
JANUARY 22 - Red China's leading newspaper, in the latest slap at Maoist economics, said speedy economic growth isn't necessarily speedy and that the mainland has suffered great waste from misguided efforts. Since 1958, People's Daily said, Red China has suffered from serious blunders resulting from a craving' for the grandiose, impatience for success and consistent pursuit of rapid growth.
Communist China's economy has entered a long, harsh retrenchment and the glittering goal of modernization has receded into a twilight of economic woes, the Associated Press said in a Peiping dispatch.
JANUARY 23 - Some county Communist party committees are interfering in mainland Chinese local court cases, substituting their own opinions for the law, Peiping Daily said. The paper said some local party leaders did not accept the abolition of having party committees decide cases, contending that independent trials eroded party leadership.
A major earthquake struck Szechwan, mainland China's most populous province, causing serious damage and cutting off communications near the epicenter. The quake registered 6.9 on the Richter scale.
"Despite all the talk of the four modernizations, Red China's 800 million rural peasants still live in almost inconceivable backwardness", according to a Peiping dispatch in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The paper quoted official figures showing that a peasant's cash income is about US$60 a year.
JANUARY 25 - Yelling "Long live the revolution," Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, was dragged from the courtroom in handcuffs seconds after receiving a suspended death sentence to climax Red China's show trial. The verdict and sentencing of Chiang and her last-minute courtroom tantrums ended the 67-day, often tumultuous trial. Chiang's colleague in the "gang of four," Chang Chun-chiao, the former "mayor" of Shanghai and her closest collaborator, also received a sentence of death by firing squad suspended for two years. Former cotton mill worker Wang Hung-wen was sentenced to life and the fourth "gang of four" member, Yao Wen-yuan, received a 20-year prison term. Mao's political secretary, Chen Po-ta, was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. The five military defendants and their sentences were: former "chief of the general staff" Huang Yung-sheng, 18 years; former "air force commander" Wu Fa-hsien, 17 years; former "deputy navy commander" Li Tzuo-peng, 17 years; and former "deputy chief of staff" Chiu Hui-tzuo, the lightest sentence, 16 years.
Parker pens are treated as family heirlooms in Communist China, according to the Los Angeles Times. When the Parker Pen Company established a showroom and service center last month, some 4,000 people flocked to the opening, not to buy but to get their old Parkers repaired. The pens were marketed in China before 1949.
Peiping "mayor" Lin Hu-chia, whose administration was criticized for expanding unneeded industry, has been replaced, the "New China News Agency" reported.
Commenting on the long awaited sentencing of the "gang of four" and the six other defendants, foreign diplomats and legal experts in Hongkong agreed that the judgment exposed two basic weaknesses of the Communist regime, First, the conviction and sentencing of the 10 was a political decision and not based on due process of law. Second, the once tightly closed society is now showing cracks for the outside world to see.
JANUARY 26 - Spared the executioner's bullet for two years, Mao Tse-tung's unrepentant widow began serving a prison term and was expected to undergo reform-through-labor.
Japanese correspondents in Peiping predicted political troubles in Red China following the trials of the Lin Piao-Chiang Ching cliques. They said the trials did not mean the end of the struggle between the Teng Hsiao-ping group and the "cultural revolutionary" faction, but start of a "wider and deeper" struggle between them.
Red Chinese "vice premier" Ku Mu warned that the regime will continue cutting back in large factories and similar capital investments for at least this year. "There will be cutbacks in investments in capital construction and in certain processing industries which consume large amounts of energy and raw materials and are not key industries for the time being," Ku said.
Mrs. Anna Chennault, widow of General Claire Chennault, made it unequivocally clear that she had not changed her assessment of Red China nor her support for the Republic of China after her trip to Peiping.
JANUARY 27 - Red Chinese youths sent to Sinkiang for labor are staging large-scale resistance movements resembling riots, Asahi reported.
When Red China's ultra-leftists held power, an old worker was arrested as a "counterrevolutionary" for picking up a bust of Mao Tse-tung by the neck to dust it, NCNA said.
The Peiping regime will use its fight against remaining leftist elements as a cover for another crackdown on democratic activists, according to a Peiping dispatch of the Toronto Globe and Mail.
JANUARY 28 - Anti-Communist pamphlets and handbills are being circulated on the Chinese mainland calling on the people to bury the Communist system, the Tokyo Shimbun reported.
Red China said for the second straight year it will slash military spending for the world's largest armed forces, although military leaders have already expressed concern about previous cut-backs. The military commission issued a directive to the military machine of 3.8 million, ordering it to cut back on spending and make better use of funds.
Rebellious students and jobless youths have held demonstrations around mainland China for several months, prompting a sledgehammer crack-down on dissent and civil disobedience, Western diplomatic sources reported in Peiping. In at least two provinces workers also have tried to form independent, Polish-style trade unions and break away from party leadership. Diplomatic sources reported at least 15 to 20 demonstrations have taken place since last fall.
JANUARY 29 - Peiping has issued new regulations to tighten control over hawkers. The regulations order fines and confiscation of goods and "ill-gotten gains" from street traders. Private buying and selling for profit is illegal except in few cases in which the state issues specific licenses.
Red China faces a powder keg of social unrest as millions of disgruntled youths and frustrated pioneers stream back to the cities from the countryside for spring holidays. Many don't want to go back. The problem is especially serious in Shanghai, where disillusioned pioneers resist return to rugged and impoverished Sinkiang areas in the far northwest.
Red China's leaders fear they may be facing a "second cultural revolution" because of student and military unrest, strikes, a rash of bombing incidents and the formation of secret anti-government cells, diplomatic sources said in Peiping.
JANUARY 30 - A Shanghai newspaper said small minorities in various places in mainland China are using the banner of democracy to run illegal organizations and publications and publicly oppose socialism and Communist party leadership.
Seven people accused of following Mao Tse-tung's widow in counter-revolutionary activities have been sentenced to prison on charges of plotting to topple Chou En-lai, Kunming radio reported. Their trial was among many expected to follow that of the Chiang Ching and Lin Piao cliques.
Red Chinese newspapers are full of stories that are a week or two old and this may be one reason their news doesn't attract readers, People's Daily said. Probably because of the lack of competition and the number of checkpoints along the way for news items, only a few perishable stories are printed promptly, the paper said.
Some Red Chinese medical workers smoke and spit in hospital wards, treat patients like footballs and exaggerate diagnoses to scare sick people, a commentary in People's Daily complained.
JANUARY 31 - A Japanese scholar who visited the Chinese mainland said the people were depressed and no longer talked about modernization. He asserted that Red China "has already lost hope." Professor Hidehiro Okada of Tokyo Foreign Languages University went to Peiping last December.
Red China told Japanese suppliers it has scrapped three major petrochemical projects in another move signaling that Peiping's modernization program is in jeopardy. The suspension notice involved the Nanking petrochemical complex in central mainland China, the Shengli petrochemical complex in Shangtung Province and the Tungfang chemical works in Peiping. The three projects would have been worth at least US$1 billion to Japanese contractors.
FEBRUARY 1 - Communist China is tightening patrols of its border with Hongkong to prevent the infiltration of saboteurs in the wake of growing unrest throughout the mainland.
Red China cried folly over the release by the U.S. Congress of a memorandum purportedly written by Mao Tse-tung outlining plans for promoting world revolution. The document was "clearly falsified" and "fantastic in content," NCNA said.
Chinese Communist party "chairman" Hua Kuo-feng was ousted from power during an extended meeting of the country's top leaders late in 1980, a left-wing Hongkong magazine reported. After being criticized for various "mistakes," Hua offered to resign.
The Communist party said its leadership over Red China should never be questioned and stepped up political indoctrination at a university where dissent broke out recently.
FEBRUARY 2 - Victor H. Li (Li Hao), professor of law at Stanford University and president-designate of the East-West Center m Honolulu, said there is no doubt that the guilt of the "Peiping 10" was determined in advance and that the verdict was reached not by the presiding judges but by key Chinese Communist party officials.
Red Chinese army troops have been helping local governments patrol the streets to keep law and order for the last year, NCNA said.
In job fitness tests for 13,000 Peiping scientists and engineers whose education was interrupted by the "cultural revolution," only 50 per cent passed, NCNA said. The tests are aimed at forcing the specialists to learn on their own or lose their jobs.
Hua Kuo-feng remained in seclusion, almost a political nonperson, eclipsed as spokesman of the 38 million-member Chinese Communist party by its "general secretary," Hu Yao-pang.
Several thousand students in Kaifeng, the capital of Honan Province, staged demonstrations to call for "human rights, liberty and democracy" in early January, Yomiuri reported.
FEBRUARY 3 - In the famed gardens of Soochow, some marble stools and stone rockeries were smashed to make pebbles for cement pavement. In a former sacred place of Buddhism in Shanghsi Province, ancient temples were torn down to obtain timber for furniture. NCNA called for education and punishment to stop the destruction of cultural treasures.
FEBRUARY 6 - The Communist party chief in Red China's remote northwestern province of Kansu has been replaced, according to a radio report.
Recent reports from provinces and press articles speak of underlying social tensions that are causing concern to the authorities despite assurances by Red China's leaders that the regime is stable and united. Articles and radio broadcasts from widely separated areas during the last month or so have warned bluntly that there are "counter-revolutionary" elements seeking to create chaos, while some people "even clamored for what they called 'the second great cultural revolution'."
FEBRUARY 7 - The first appearance of Hua Kuo-feng since September 27, 1980, at a Peiping party in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, was aimed at creating an impression after the trial of the "gang of four," an Ankara report said.
A United Nations mission which visited Red China in response to a Red Chinese request for international disaster relief reported more than 20 million people in two provinces (Hupeh and Hopei) are seriously affected by crop losses caused by drought and floods.
FEBRUARY 8 - A top-secret document of Communist China has revealed that military modernization is "the weakest link" in modernization and that its air force was too weak to take part in the "punitive campaign" against Vietnam.
The Communist party linked dissident activists to the "gang of four" and accused dissidents of trying to start another "cultural revolution." Denunciation of the democracy movement, embittered and driven underground by a crackdown last winter, appeared in People's Daily.
FEBRUARY 9 - The Red Chinese intend to bring back into line the ministry responsible for building missiles and aircraft, which is still under "leftist" influences. People's Daily reported serious vacillation in the Number Seven Machine Building Ministry toward the policy of economic "readjustment."
Regardless of what happens to contracts al ready concluded, it is almost certain that no new mainland Chinese purchases of large-scale plants will materialize for quite a few years, Japan's Jetro Organization said.
FEBRUARY 10 - Saburo Okita, a Japanese special trade representative, arrived in Peiping for talks on a rash of contract cancellations for which Japan wants compensation. Okita is a former foreign minister.
FEBRUARY 11 - Teng Hsiao-ping, under heavy pressure from Yeh Chien-ying and his military faction, is likely to drop his hand-picked Hu Yao-pang as Chinese Communist party chairman, according to an exclusive report in the Sino Daily Express of New York. The report from Hongkong said there are indications Teng is gradually losing control of the military.
A few years after Western countries dreamed of a trade bonanza with mainland China, they have found the market is not there, the oil is not there and the economic partnership is not there. The disillusionment has led many Western countries to expand trade relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Many of them opened new commercial offices in Taipei last year, according to Michael Parks, Peiping correspondent of the Los Angeles Times.
A Peiping sanctioned campaign against elitist bureaucracy among officials has come under severe criticism by the military. The Liberation Army Daily said "some people" are carrying the campaign to an extreme in their effort to "change our socialist system and cancel the Chinese Communist party's leadership."
Mao Tse-tung is making a limited ideological comeback as Red China's pragmatic leadership halts the relentless criticism of Mao and says his thoughts are the magic weapon for modernization. Leaders, including Teng Hsiao-ping, are making a strategic retreat from their recent campaign to topple Mao from his pedestal and discredit his ideas of political purity and upheaval, the Associated Press reported from Peiping.
FEBRUARY 12 - Red China has promised to pay compensation for Japanese companies' losses caused by Peiping's unilateral cancellation of contracts, but the Japanese side doubts Peiping's sincerity and ability, Japanese correspondents reported from Peiping.
Red China has asked the Japanese government for long term credits at low interest which would enable it to refrain from canceling contracts with private Japanese firms as planned, Peiping said.
Teng Hsiao-ping gave the clearest indication yet that Hua Kuo-feng had been ousted as Communist boss of the mainland. "It often happens that changes are made among the personnel leading a party in one country or another," Teng told a group of visiting French journalists. "What is so strange about that? "
Following Japan and West Germany, the United States has become another victim of Red China's economic failure. The Washington Post reported Red China has canceled or deferred indefinitely all large-scale mining and petrochemical projects undertaken by American firms as part of a reassessment of its ability to pay for modernization.
Red China's regime called on banks to tighten controls on loans as it sought to fight budget deficits and inflation by cutting capital spending and reducing the money supply.
Ku Mu predicted Red China's crude oil output in 1985 may be 10-20 per cent less than the present 100-million-ton level, Japanese news dispatches from Peiping said. Red China earlier estimated its oil output in 1985 at 240 million tons.
Behind an obviously worried Communist hierarchy's warnings of harsher crackdowns on dissidents, there is a growing problem for Peiping in dealing with Chinese youth on the mainland, according to Business Week. The weekly said some 12 million to 15 million jobless Red Chinese young people enter the job market each year.
FEBRUARY 13 - Many youths on the Chinese mainland seem to have lost confidence in Communism, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor based on many interviews with mainland young people.
Red China has 26 million unemployed, a marked increase over the 1979 figure, an informed source said in Peiping. Two years ago, Red Chinese sources put the number of unemployed people at 20 million people.
Red China has approached the International Monetary Fund about the possibility of loans, according to financial sources in Washington. Peiping is believed to want the money because of balance of payments problems.
The Peiping regime will be asked to payoff a debt of about 800,000 U.S. dollars owed to American suppliers and bank loans of 2.5 million dollars in connection with its first trade exhibition in the United States last year, according to the Washington Post.
FEBRUARY 14 - Red China has told Japanese oil importers it will reduce its oil shipments to Japan sharply this year from the promised 8.3 mil lion tons.
A Soviet expert on mainland Chinese affairs has questioned the information that Lin Piao died in an air crash while escaping to the Soviet Union, Kyodo reported. The Japanese agency was re porting an interview in Moscow with Leonid Gudoshnikov of the Institute of the Far East attached to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He was quoted as describing as "most reliable" a Hongkong newspaper report that Lin Piao and his followers were killed and then put on board a plane with time bombs which later exploded.
Red China registered a trade deficit of 568 million U.S. dollars in 1980 compared with a deficit of 1.87 billion dollars in 1979, a Hongkong Communist newspaper reported. The Chinese-language Ta Kung Pao said last year's imports totaled 18.616 billion dollars, up 19.8 per cent, while exports were 18.048 billion dollars, up 32 per cent.
Japan's Red China fever is cooling rapidly not only in business but also in the government. Some government officials are now complaining that Peiping is lacking international common sense and has been "asking too much" from Japan.
The departing American ambassador to Peiping, Leonard Woodcock, said Communist China faces a decade of enormous economic and social problems, including tensions from the "displacement of millions upon millions of workers."
A Shanghai newspaper said some members of Red China's elite Communist party are resisting central policies by supporting illegal organizations and publications, staging slowdowns and spreading gossip.
FEBRUARY 15 - Red China may before long fall from oil-exporting status to that of oil importer. This is the observation of major trading companies and oil business circles in Japan.
Japanese trading firms and machinery makers are reported to have decided to form a united front to "get tough" with Communist China in their forthcoming negotiations to seek compensation for contracts signed and then unilaterally canceled by Peiping.