Taiwan Today

Tse-tung is dead ideologically as well as physically, although the Chinese Communists dare not bury him.

Liu Shao-chi, the "president" who was denigrated during the "cultural revolution" and died in a prison cell in 1969, has been rehabilitated. But the Chinese Communists dare not openly pin his mistreatment on Mao.

Teng Hsiao-ping is obviously the new Mao and has loaded the "central committee" of the Chinese Communist party with his supporters. But Hua Kuo-feng remains the official successor to Mao, perhaps because Teng is trying to be smart in the same wily way that enabled Chou En-lai to die in bed.

The changes in the Chinese Communist power structure were coming faster than ever as the mainland moved into 1980. If spring had come seasonally, it was winter once again in terms of the people's right to express themselves.

Teng Hsiao-ping knocked down Peiping's Democracy Wall with the remark that it purveyed rumors and falsehoods and that it shouldn't have been allowed to stay up so long. The opinions posted did not represent the views of the majority, Teng said. He wrote in an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook that Democracy Wall "carne to be controlled by people who preferred troublemaking to working at their jobs. Foreigners who regarded the activities at Democracy Wall as a barometer of the political climate were quite deceived." The "cultural revolution" created an excuse for anarchy, he said, and "even now some of our youth still bear traces of that poisonous influence." The wall, he claimed, was used to manipulate public opinion.

Teng not only trampled down the blooming of the wall posters, but also urged the termination of free speech and free debate. The Peiping underground press was obviously doomed. Its most promising editor was sent to jail for 15 years. Others have disappeared. Surviving magazines have also vanished.

Power was gathered into Teng's arms at a six-day meeting of the CCP central committee in late February. The last four faithful Mao adherents were dismissed with the charge that they had made grave mistakes. Purged were:

- Wang Tung-hsing, once the bodyguard of Mao, who had been a member of the politburo since 1969.

- Cheng Hsi-lien, former commander of the Peiping military region and also in the politburo since 1969.

- Wu Teh, leading figure in the Peiping munici­pal government during Mao's lifetime and a member of the politburo since 1973, three years before the death of Mao.

- Chi Teng-keui, party official from Honan Province and with the politburo since 1973.

Together with their disgrace came the re­habilitation of Liu Shao-chi, who was pilloried and disgraced by Mao Tse-tung and the radicals in 1969. He then was labeled a renegade, traitor, scab and worst enemy of Chinese Communism. The central committee of 200 members post­-humously ranked Liu as a "great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary" and placed him second to Mao in the Chinese Communist hierarchy.

Two of Teng's lieutenants were elevated to high position. Chao Tsu-yang, 61, became the youngest member of the politburo. He is considered the most likely candidate to succeed Teng if the latter retires in 1985, as he has said he would. Chao was disgraced during the "cultural revolution" as a tool of Liu Shao-chi and rehabilitated in 1971. He has recently been in charge of reviving the economy of Szechwan Province.

Teng also arranged for restoration of the Communist party secretariat, abolished by Mao, and placed Hu Yao-bang, 67, in the post of secretary general. Hu headed the Communist Youth league in the 1950s and was another "cultural revolution" victim. He was rehabilitated in 1975, criticized along with Teng in 1976 and then made chief of propaganda in January of 1979. He has been a politburo member since 1977. Teng himself held the position of party secretary general before he was dismissed along with Liu.

These are changes which mean a lot more than a change of faces in the Chinese Communists' unending game of political chairs. Whether or not a Teng hierarchy is portended, the Communist party dictatorship has been clamped back on the mainland. Those who were edging toward liber­alism and thoughts of democracy have been silenced along with the last of the Maoists still in positions of power. Teng has been called a realist but he is also a totalitarian no less intent upon having his way than was Mao. The mainland is to move in the direction that Teng indicates or heads will fall.

Yet Teng has already been wrong about nearly everything he has advocated since Mao's death.

The "four modernizations" are turning into a grandiose failure. The Communists do not have the money and no one in the world is prepared to give or lend it to them. The amount of money re­quired to "modernize" the mainland has been variously estimated at from US$300 to $500 billion. Quite probably a trillion dollars wouldn't be enough. The modernizers are thinking only of a few cities with some industrial know-how. But most of the mainland's billion people are living in a countryside where life goes on under primitive conditions that have changed little over the centuries. The Republic of China had barely scratched the surface of this problem in the years from 1912 to 1949, and there has been retro-gression since the Communist usurpation.

It was Teng who sent the Chinese Communist armed forces into Vietnam to punish those erstwhile comrades-in-arms for the invasion of Cambodia. The punishers were severely bloodied and compelled to withdraw without having accom­plished anything. Red China lost such military face as it had in this reckless adventure.

Teng moved to "normalize relations" with the United States. Now the United States is becoming aware that the playing of the Red China card couldn't even take the Soviet deuce. The Pentagon has warned that any attempt to modernize the Chinese Communist armed forces would be prohi­bitively expensive. Although the Red Chinese maintain they do not want American weapons, in fact they have no other alternative. What they are not given, they cannot afford to buy. Military shopping missions in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany have not placed an order; they have only looked and gone home empty-handed.

The "vice premier" went on record as favoring the blooming of another hundred flowers. He changed his mind almost as quickly as Mao, who identified his critics in the "hundred flowers" episode and then stamped them out. Teng has done the same. In taking over the politburo, he has made clear there will be no more nonsense about taking Red China's problems to the people.

There are those abroad who say that Teng cannot get away with it, that the processes of open criticism have gone too far and that the people can no longer be silenced. This loses sight of the fact that Teng has gathered all reins of power and punishment into his own hands. Mao was able to stage the "cultural revolution" against the better judgment of many around him. Teng is taking no such risk. He is merely returning to old-fashioned absolute dictatorship.

Another major goal of Teng is the seizure of Taiwan. On that, too, he has made no progress. Scarcely a day passes without mainland calls for unification talks or lesser contacts with the govern­ment and people of the Republic of China. These calls have fallen on deaf ears. The Republic of China has learned all the tricks of the united front in the past. People cannot be subverted; the government cannot be deceived. Chinese Communist talk of Taiwan has been something of a boomerang. Mainland people are learning more about the suc­cess and the good life of the island province: China's smallest and also the most prosperous in its history. They want to learn from Taiwan in economics and politics.

Teng Hsiao-ping has said that Red China can afford war because it is so poor there is nothing to lose. How, then, is an economic carrot to be placed under the noses of the people? In the cities, there is some encouragement for "market socialism." Endorsing the "dare to be rich campaign," People's Daily has quoted a provincial paper as saying: "The objective of proletarian revolution is to become political master in one's own house and to transform economic poverty into wealth. If socialism doesn't bring wealth to the people, why are we carrying out socialism? As the collective economy develops, the incomes of individuals should increase; in the end, the reason for enriching the col­lective is to enrich every single member of the collective. At the same time the collective economy is developing, commune members should be allowed to get rich through developing sideline occupa­tions."

A party secretary was quoted as saying: "So­cialism does not want people to be poor; it wants them to be rich; it wants to allow laboring people full, rich and abundant lives. It is not enough to solve the problem of daring to get rich; the masses should be mobilized to discuss the ques­tion of how to get rich."

This is all very well for a small minority of people in the big cities. It has no meaning for the countryside, where people living in terrible and hopeless poverty. The member of a rural commune has no money to buy a television set. He is fortunate to have warm clothing for the winter and enough to eat. A bicycle is the ultimate luxury. Those farmers who are living close to cities may be able to raise a pig or grow some vegetables for sale to urban dwellers. Those living in the deeper countryside have no such hope. Their poverty is abso­lute. They can develop sidelines only for each other. There is no money to buy. All that can be hoped for is a little barter. This is the countryside so bitterly resented by the young intellectuals who have been "sent down" to it. Teng, incidentally, tried to call off the send-down program and then was compelled to resume it. The cities have no work and no sustenance for the young people of the mainland.

A short novel, Basis, appearing in a Shanghai literary publication, recently became a mainland topic of conversation. The female secretary of a youth corps asks: "Since the system of socialism is so outstanding, why should the development of its productivity be slower than that of capitalism? Why can't its economic construction and scientific technology catch up with capitalism? Although I believe Communism will be attained and will win out over capitalism, I cannot understand why capi­talism should be more advanced in science and technology. How can this be? " A Japanese report from Peiping said that young people were confused by the brakes Teng had applied to democratization and freedom of thought. Peiping preaches modernization and pays lip service to experimentation and new ideas but its social and ideological concepts have not really changed. There has been no modernization of Communism.

These same queries were often posed with specific references to Taiwan. Why are the people there so much better off? How is it they can buy anything and everything without ration coupons? Why is it they can make at home the products which we prize so highly — all manner of electronics, textiles and garments for all, refrigerators, washing machines and a rapidly increasing number of automobiles? In Taiwan, the Board of Foreign Trade pointed out that the Republic of China's technology and wide range of products afforded a convincing response to the Chinese Com­munist attempt to wage economic warfare through the united front. The Communists have been resorting to these tactics:

- At a commercial united front meeting last December, they decided that their department stores in Hongkong and Macao would sell products made in Taiwan. But these were to be labeled "Made in Taiwan Province of the People's Republic of China."

- Many trading companies have been estab­lished in Hongkong under Chinese Communist auspices. These serve to carry out the united front in commerce. They buy products made in Taiwan, re-label them and sell them abroad at prices lower than those of goods exported by the Republic of China. Television sets from Taiwan but re-labeled by the Communists have appeared on the market in New York.

- The Communists made plans to display Taiwan electrical appliances at trade shows.

- Taiwan goods have been imitated on the mainland. These are of inferior quality but have been exported to Southeast Asian markets with the original labels to give Taiwan manufacturers a bad name.

Mao Tse-tung was a total failure. He killed millions of people. He failed to give the survivors a better life. He could not even win their hearts for Communism. In the "cultural revolution," he turned on his comrades, his supporters and the educated population of the Chinese mainland. He sought to shake up everything and bring about the emergence of a new Chinese in the Communist image. That, too, failed. His "great leap forward" was a nearly fatal step backward. Everything he touched was turned to dust and ended tragically.

Today Mao has been repudiated and con­tradicted in everything except his insistence on his total authoritarianism. The "cultural revolution" was not a revolution at all, but an attempt to fur­ther the cause of Maoism. Its success would have eliminated all systems of mainland thought except that of Mao. He tried everything, even going to the point of trying to get rid of Confucius, who has been held in mainland hearts for 2,500 years. He wanted to change human nature and he couldn't.

Yet Teng and his new Communist pawns are compelled to cling to the image of Mao be­cause they have nothing else. The millions of people of the mainland are well aware that Mao thought never had the content of magic claimed for it. They know that Mao brought them only pain and misery. Yet they are compelled to kneel at his shrine because to pull him down would be to empty Chinese Communism of all meaning. Teng et al are defending themselves and their assertion of the sacred right to rule.

The leaders and people of the Republic of China believe that their compatriots are not being deceived and that Chinese Communism is finished — dead but, like Mao, not yet buried. The Tengist determination to stamp out emerging democracy and budding freedom is going to be the law straw. Not only the younger generation is confused and disillusioned. So is the middle generation and the elders. This is a phenomenon and a process that extends from city to the deepest countryside. It represents not only a repudiation of Communism but also a return to the Chinese way — to the values and the goals that have brought Taiwan to the brink of status as a developed country and the vehicle of a real Chinese modernization in which classical China will be wedded to the science and technology of the West. China was once the most inventive land in the world. That is the spirit in which Taiwan Province of the Republic of China is setting the example for China and the Chinese.

The record of Chinese mainland and related events from January 16 to February 15 follows:

JANUARY 16 - Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has ruled out any "military alliance or such relationship" between Washington and Peiping despite the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

The Chinese Communist regime called for an increase in supervision over leading Communist party cadres in a bid to deal with persistent low morale among the rank and file. People's Daily lashed out at the ineffectiveness of party organs supposed to control leading cadres.

A defense of disgraced former Chinese Commu­nist "president" Liu Shao-chi has appeared in the Communist party theoretical magazine Red Flag.

JANUARY 17 - The United States should never sell arms to the Chinese Communists, accord­ing to a consensus reached at the annual meeting of the Asia and Western Pacific Defense Council in Washington. Lawmakers from the Republic of China, Japan, South Korea and the United States took part.

Red China is transporting military hardware on a large scale along the Karakoram Highway to bolster Pakistan's military preparedness, according to the Press Trust of India.

Red China's "state council" has ordered a big slash in the number of new office buildings and guest houses that can be built, the "New China News Agency" reported.

JANUARY 18 - The New York Times reported Teng Hsiao-ping said in a major speech that the clause in Peiping's "constitution" that guarantees a citizen's right to put up wall posters would be "eliminated" at the next session of the "national people's congress."

The resentment of the people on the Chinese mainland against the "people's liberation army" has grown to such a level that it worries the leader­ ship in Peiping. The Far Eastern Economic Review of Hongkong said a series of grievances has recently appeared in wall posters lashing out at a number of senior commanders of the PLA.

The U.S. Agriculture Department announced for the second day in a row a sale of 100,000 tons of American wheat to Red China by private export­ers.

JANUARY 19 - Red China broke off talks on improving its bitter relations with the Soviet Union because of the Russian invasion of Afghanis­tan. "Under the circumstances, it goes without say­ing that it is inappropriate to hold the Red Chinese-Soviet talks," a Red Chinese spokesman said. Negotiations were held in Moscow from late Sep­tember until early December.

Bribing in the form of presents is a current practice in Red China's factories when signing con­tracts with production brigades, according to People's Daily.

Red Chinese "foreign minister" Huang Hua arrived in Pakistan for a four-day visit to discuss the Soviet intervention in neighboring Afghanistan.

Several unconfirmed reports have been circulating in Peiping that Zhao Zi-yang, first secretary of Szechwan Province, is to replace Hua Kuo-feng as "premier" of Communist China, according to the New York Times. Another report said Zhao, 61, will be named "deputy premier" along with Wan Li, rust secretary of Anhui Province. Both Zhao and Wan are regarded as close colleagues of Teng Hsiao-ping.

JANUARY 21 - Retired Maj. Gen. Yukihisa Miyanaga, who was arrested on charges of spying for Moscow, also provided intelligence information for Peiping for more than a year, Yomiuri reported in Tokyo.

Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping that 32 miles of the Great Wall in the Peiping region has been demolished since the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s.

Peiping's Communist party press thundered at "naive people" who believe in Western style "bourgeois" democracy and political freedom, and said they will not be tolerated in Red China. The attack came in identical front page editorials published in three major Peiping newspapers.

Alarmed by the flourishing black market in Canton caused by the slight relaxation on impor­tation of commodities from Hongkong, the Kwangtung authorities announced stern measures to stamp it out. The Communists announced that Hongkong residents found dealing in private sales will face stiff penalties and confiscation of their goods.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said it is dangerous to use Red China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. Kissinger said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he does not feel happy with the notion of using Communist China to annoy the Soviets as a penalty for Soviet conduct.

JANUARY 22 - Red China's leaders are showing concern that the mental scars from 10 years of ruinous policies by Communist party radicals could lead people to doubt the party and the socialist system.

JANUARY 23 - India is taking a serious view of Chinese Communist arms pouring into Pakistan and has made an official complaint, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

Red China is getting ready to export its man­ power, with battalions of laborers being shaped up to ship overseas under contract to Japan and European companies that are building highways, rail­ roads and airfields throughout the Third World, according to a report in Business Week.

Chen Hsi-lien, a once-powerful Chinese Com­munist soldier politician, has been ousted from the post of commander of the Peiping military region, diplomatic sources said in Peiping.

JANUARY 24 - State Department Spokes­man Hodding Carter III denied the United States is selling arms to the Chinese Communists.

The U.S. Congress approved a resolution giving Red China the most-favored-nation trade status denied to Moscow. A number of members rose in the House of Representatives to speak out against the resolution. Edward Derwinski said, "I am curious how this measure fits the admini­stration's human rights policy."

A riot involving over 200,000 unemployed workers occurred at Lanchow, capital of Kansu Province, last November 16 and resulted in the arrest of some 2,000, according to an intelligence report reaching Taipei.

America may put a communications satellite into' stationary orbit for Red China in three or four years, U.S. President Carter's science adviser, Dr. Frank Press, said in Peiping.

Teng Hsiao-ping called for "concrete" interna­tional unity against "Soviet hegemonism" and predicted the 1980s will be a "decade of trouble."

Peiping suffered 20,000 casualties during its in­vasion of Vietnam in February last year, Singapore Deputy Premier and Education Minister Dr. Goh Keng Swee said. He said Vietnam suffered 40,000 to 50,000 casualties.

The "Bank of China" will issue "foreign ex­change coupons" to foreigners for use inside Red China to limit the circulation of foreign currency.

One more activist has been sentenced in Red China. Mrs. Wei Yue-hua, repeatedly convicted of causing trouble since 1962, was sent to a "re-education through labor" camp.

JANUARY 26 - Austerity will mark the Lunar New Year in Red China. Unlike previous years, the people will not receive "year-end bonuses" from their employers under a decision of the regime.

JANUARY 27 - The reshuffling of Red Chinese civilian and military leaders is continuing in the provinces. General You Taizhong, a deputy commander of the Peiping military region, has been named head of the Chengdu (southwest) mili­tary region, People's Daily said.

Chiang Ching, widow of Mao Tse-tung, has twice asked her captors to put her and three top lieutenants on public trial, according to an intel­ligence report reaching Taipei.

A former American ambassador to Thailand said U.S. recognition of Red China is likely to intensify world turmoil. William R. Kintner, U.S. ambassador to Thailand in 1973-1975, said President Carter's move would not contribute to world peace.

Peace talks between Red China and Vietnam moved to the brink of rupture, threatening a re­sumption of the one-month war the two countries fought in February and March last year. The Red Chinese "foreign ministry" announced that its chief delegate to the negotiations, Han Nianlong, was "too busy" to attend any more talks with the Vietnamese.

JANUARY 28 - Red China's Communist party newspaper called for tougher discipline and less privilege-seeking and bureaucracy within the party in order to implement the modernization program. People's Daily said in a front-page editorial after an 18-day meeting of the party's disci­pline commission that party members should fight against factionalism, bureaucracy and anarchism and obey the Communist leadership.

The Chinese Communist party is preparing a formal and public denunciation of Kang Sheng, "Peiping's Beria," who directed secret police work until his death in 1975, Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping. Wade said Kang is believed to have helped engineer the rapid rise of Mao's successor, Hua Kuo-feng.

JANUARY 29 - The London Daily Mail reported Leonid Brezhnev has delivered a warning to the United States against arming Peiping with nuclear weapons. The warning was given during his meeting in the Kremlin with former French Pre­mier Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

People's Daily leveled another blast at young people seeking capitalist-style freedoms and life styles. In an editorial urging law and order to boost Red China's unity and stability, the newspaper also said some people are too soft-hearted toward criminals.

JANUARY 30 - Teng Hsiao-ping has urged abolition of Red China's four big freedoms­ — speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big character posters.

Intellectuals on the Chinese mainland now fear that another anti-rightist movement, like the one putting an abrupt end to the "100-flower" movement in 1957, is coming back, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Britain is ready to sell Harrier jump jets to Red China at any time Peiping decides to buy them, the minister of state for trade said.

JANUARY 31 - The population of the Chinese mainland has surpassed one billion, Red Chi­nese "vice premier" Kang Shien said. Kang said the population could increase by 200 million more by the year 2000.

Afghan officials announced they had captured two Red Chinese military agents, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported.

Both Mao Tse-tung and the present power-holders in Peiping have become targets of attack in underground publications and wall posters, according to recent intelligence reports from the mainland.

Vietnam formally asked Red China to resume the stalled negotiations for improving relations.

Red China will boycott the 1980 Olympic Games unless they are moved out of Moscow, the Red Chinese "foreign ministry" announced.

People's Daily plans to publish an English edition by October 1. The paper has a circulation of 6 million in Chinese.

Peiping Daily published an attack on wall posters. It said they undermined democracy and the legal system and should not be allowed.

A wave of death sentences is continuing in Red China, where 14 new capital sentences have just been handed down by courts in Szechwan Province and Inner Mongolia.

FEBRUARY 3 - The Peiping area is suffer­ing from drought on a scale "rarely seen in the last 45 years," People's Daily said. In the five-month September-January period, Peiping and its environs had only 30 millimeters (1.1 inches) of rain, about three inches less than in the same time span a year earlier.

Farmers in Peiping's rural districts still appeal to fairies and witches for medical help, the Pei­ping Daily, organ of the municipal government, complained. The newspaper cited the case of a Communist party member who with his wife sold medicine allegedly given by a fairy. He was punished with a "serious warning" along with two other party members who carried out superstitious activities, the newspaper said.

FEBRUARY 4 - Secretary of Defense Harold Brown does not see Peiping as an American ally against the Soviets, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Japanese construction firms are hiring hundreds of laborers from the Chinese mainland for jobs abroad, and French and Italian outfits may use thousands more before 1980 ends, accord­ing to U.S. News & World Report.

Commercials soon will make their debut in Chinese Communist radio and television. The "central radio station" announced that it would broadcast "art-advertising evenings" with commer­cial breaks in between musical sequences. The two central television stations are planning foreign and domestic commercials.

FEBRUARY 5 - The New York Times editorially cautioned the Carter administration against moving too close to Red China.

Chinese Communist troops on the Hongkong border use vicious dogs to hunt down escapees, Hongkong sources said.

Red China has taken away the duty of pro­tecting top officials from the "8341 unit," formerly Mao Tse-tung's palace guard troops that played a crucial role in the arrest of the "gang of four." People's Daily said the assignment of guarding Communist leaders and maintaining Peiping's security has been given the "57003 unit."

The "standing committee" of Red China's "national people's congress" opened a meeting to discuss a report in which Teng Hsiao-ping urged a halt to Red China's guaranteed right of free speech.

FEBRUARY 6 - Tadashi Ito, Kyodo News Service former correspondent in Peiping who recently revisited the Chinese mainland, said youths have lost their "vitality" and the people are "decadent." He feels the prospect for Red China is "dismal and fading."

Peace talks between Red China and Vietnam have collapsed and Vietnam's chief negotiator will be recalled, Peiping diplomatic sources said.

The Chinese Communists have sent hefty reinforcements in men and materials to the Vietnam frontier in the last month, creating more tension and an "extremely serious" situation, Hanoi said.

FEBRUARY 7 - Kyodo News Service re­ ported from Peiping that Chang Chen and Liu Hua-ching have been named "deputy chiefs of staff" of the Red Chinese army. Chang has been deputy chief of the Wuhan military region. Liu has been deputy chief of the navy since 1972. In addition, Kyodo said, there were major personnel changes in seven of Red China's 11 military regions.

The Chinese Communist regime is facing "a host of difficulties and troubles," according to an article in People's Daily.

Soviet Russia has deployed SS-20 medium­ range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nu­clear warhead along the border with mainland China, Asahi reported in Tokyo.

Anti-hegemony, the return of Taiwan to the mainland and the "four modernizations" are the three major tasks for the Chinese mainland people in the 1980s, Teng Hsiao-ping said.

FEBRUARY 8 - Alfonso Castillo, columnist of Colombia's newspaper El Espectador, called the Chinese mainland a "paradise of boredom and industrial backwardness" in an article criticizing the Colombian government decision to recognize Red China.

The "standing committee" of Red China's "national people's congress" has warned that counterrevolutionaries and enemy spies are still at large on the mainland.

Colombia announced it has established "diplomatic relations" with Red China.

FEBRUARY 9 - Hua Kuo-feng may soon be forced to relinquish his post as premier as part of a nationwide campaign to separate politics from administrative affairs, according to Peiping sources. Cited most often as a possible replacement for Hua as "premier" is Zhao Zi-Yang, 61, the party chief of Szechwan Province.

FEBRUARY 10 - Shanghai has recruited new police officers from surrounding counties and put them on duty after two months' training. The Shanghai newspaper Liberation Daily reported that the force was bolstered to "uphold social order."

It may sound like New York or Chicago, but it happened in Peiping last week. Two men wearing white surgical masks and sunglasses and armed with a homemade weapon held up a central branch of the "People's Bank" and escaped with the equivalent of US$700.

FEBRUARY 11 - U.S. visas have become a hot item in Red China, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune. The waiting period for those with brothers and sisters in the U.S. is more than six years.

Red China has appointed a new "ambassador" to the Soviet Union. He is Yang Shou-cheng, formerly ambassador to Mozambique.

Red China failed to curb its population growth rate last year. People's Daily said the population, growth rate was the same as in 1978, or 12 per 1,000.

Former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said he has never believed the United States can or should play the "Red China card."

Nobel Prize winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that to regard Red China as an ally, the West would commit "another betrayal, not only of Taiwan, but of the entire oppressed Chinese people." He said it is mad to think that having supplied Red China with American arms, the West could defeat the Soviet Union.

FEBRUARY 12 - The New York Times reported that the small human rights movement in Red China appears to have come nearly to an end.

The widow of Mao Tse-tung and other members of Red China's toppled "gang of four" apparently will not be eligible for public trials under a decision by the "national people's con­gress."

Vietnam named a new head of delegation to the stalled peace talks in Peiping. Vice Foreign Minister Hoang Anh Tuan replaces Vice Foreign Minister Dinh Nho Liem, who returned to Hanoi.

A Japanese professor who recently visited the Chinese mainland said "the Szechwan dogs barking at the sun" has become a historical term because the people there are suffering from food short­ages and have no surplus food for pet dogs. Keizo Tsuchiya, a professor of agricultural economics at Kyushu University, said he didn't see a dog in Szechwan, Shanghai or other places and that this reflected the severe food shortage on the mainland.

FEBRUARY 14 - Drought is spreading rapidly in the northern Chinese province of Shensi, according to intelligence from the mainland. The drought has affected 60 per cent of Shensi farms.

Red China released its most detailed population projections to date, concluding that the only way to avoid an intolerable population explosion is to persuade couples to have only one child. Scientists said that if each couple had three children, mainland China would have 4.26 billion people 100 years hence, roughly equivalent to the population of the world today.

FEBRUARY 15 - There is a confidence crisis on the Chinese mainland, according to a Peiping dispatch in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Many mainlanders are posing the question: "Is Marxism the answer? If so, why are we so poor."

The Peiping regime has raised the foreigner's cost of installing a telephone set by 127 times since January without advance notice, Kyodo reported from Peiping. The charge was raised from about US$10 to US$1,273.