Chou En-lai's absence was not explained. There were rumors that his illness was worse. He turned up to preside at the dinner on the eve of October 1 even during the "cultural revolution," when he was hard-pressed by both the leftists and forces of Lin Piao. Both Chou and Teng have been under the fire of the Chiang Ching faction in massive political campaigns. As the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius died down, Chiang Ching's husband, Mao, took up the cudgels of criticism with an attack on the classic novel "Water Margin."
The hero of "Water Margin," Sung Chiang, was singled out for using any and all means to make Lu Chun-yi his second-in-command and consolidate the dominance of his capitulationist line. To the leftists - and this presumably means Mao as well as Chiang Ching - the sllccession of Teng for Chou is unacceptable. Teng, who was denigrated along with Liu Shao-chi in the "cultural revolution," was rehabilitated in 1973. Many others have crawled back in from the Communist cold since then. A sizable number of them turned up at the September 30 dinner, many with new posts as Teng Hsiao-ping powerholders.
Factionalism is demonstrated on political and economic levels. On the political level, both personalities and ideology are involved. Teng has become the dominant personality of Chou forces, who may be likened to old guard bureaucrats. He is bitterly hated by the leftists, who are personified by Wang Hung-wen, the young Shanghai leftist who didn't show up for the October 1 festivities. The leftists can never accept the transfer of power to Teng, just as the followers of Chou En-lai can never acquiesce in the rise of Wang or the thought of Chiang Ching as Mao's ideological successor. The struggle is literally one of life or death - of who will give the orders to more than 800 million people when Mao and Chou have passed from the scene.
On the economic level, workers have been striking and compelling the powerholders to send in the party secretaries and then the army. The workers themselves are divided. Wang Hung-wen's group has organized a city militia from among industrial workers. Teng and the powerholders rely on the old workers and urge them to educate the restive young leftists in the requirements of discipline.
In the March issue of Red Flag, Yao Wen-yuan wrote of the workers who were taking the evil bourgeois path. "Behind them," he said, "the cunning, slippery old bourgeois are laying their plans." In the April Red Flag, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao said of the bourgeois enemies: "They mislead inexperienced young people and encourage them to demand material incentives. They carryon this dirty business under the banner of socialism. They raise the banner of Mao to strike at the forces of Mao. They are like slave owners, the landlord class and the bourgeois class of the past."
Both sides attempt to use the words of Mao to support their ideology and their actions. So far Chou and now Teng have been able to twist Mao's instructions to benefit themselves. There is no certainty that they can continue to do so. Old workers and peasants obviously do not want the "pure communism," devoid of incentives and rewards, which Mao has peddled through the leftists. The young workers of Wang Hung-wen pursue the leftist ideology while they are in a minority which is subject to the control of the bourgeois-tainted older workers. What would hap pen, however, if younger workers inherited the favored positions of those who "work less and eat up more?"
There are other factionalisms - those of the PLA, including the remnant Lin Piaoists; those of former or present provincial political and military leaders; and those who would like to take the Chinese Communists back into the arms of the Russians. Then, too, there is the quiet but influential presence of those who work for the restoration of the Republic of China and the Constitution.
The quieting of worker resistance at Hangchow and in Chekiang province is only temporary. Conditions of the mainland are such that instability and continued struggle are inevitable. Mao himself warned that the battle might go on for a thousand years and that the triumph of Communism was far from certain.
Following is a day-by-day chronicle of Chinese Communist and related affairs during the period from August 16 through September 15:
AUGUST 16 - Factional fights within the leadership of Heilungkiang provincial organs broke out and reached such a stage that the authorities had to adopt "certain measures" to deal with the problems, radio reports from Harbin said. The reports did not say what kind of action was taken.
Peiping has sent "an estimated 1,000 technical advisers to Cambodia to help with reconstruction, the only foreigners believed to have been allowed into the country since April," Fox Butterfield reported to the New York Times from Hongkong.
President Suharto of Indonesia accused Peiping of supporting underground Communist movements in Indonesia and declared relations with the Chinese Communists will not be normalized so long as Peiping supports the revival of the banned Communist party.
AUGUST 17 - Private profit remains a powerful motive force in Red China despite intensive Communist efforts to eliminate it. A mass campaign against profit-seekers in the ranks of factory workers, commune farmers and Communist party cadres is running into problems, according to Hongkong-monitored provincial reports and travelers' accounts.
Peiping has been dropping hints to Manila's diplomats that it would like military facilities in the Philippines, Newsweek reported.
AUGUST 18 - Workers, demobilized soldiers and "five category elements" have been conducting anti-Communist activities in the Wuchang and Hankow area in central China, since the beginning of summer, according to information received in Taipei. The five categories include landlords, rich farmers, anti-revolutionary elements, rightist elements and bad elements.
AUGUST 19 - The New York Times said Red China has begun "what appears to be an important drive to end factional bickering and labor unrest." Fox Butterfield, quoting "unusually candid (mainland) broadcasts," said factional strife had disrupted production.
Chile reported Peiping has started a counter attack against Soviet Russia in Latin America, using radio, magazines and newspapers.
Swiss Red China specialist Ernest Kux compared the unrest in Hangchow to the critical eruptions during the "cultural revolution" years and reported that the unrest was spreading to other provinces.
Chou En-lai is "not in the best of health," according to Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Khieu Samphan. There also were indications that the health of Mao Tse-tung may have deteriorated.
The people in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, bounded on the north by Soviet-oriented Outer Mongolia, appear fully organized into militia forces capable of carrying out combat operations. This was one of the impressions of the region a Japanese reporter gained from a trip there.
AUGUST 20 - Strikes and turmoil at Hang chow in Chekiang province can be traced to power struggle between the "radical" and "moderate" factions in the Maoist leadership hierarchy, a Taiwan expert on mainland affairs said.
Moscow newspapers reported that purges and deportations had taken place in Red China follow ing worker and peasant uprisings growing out of economic problems in several provinces.
Peiping's anti-Soviet polemics heated up with claims that Moscow was twisting Karl Marx's theory to suit its "revisionist" purposes. A lengthy "New China News Agency" commentary charged the Kremlin with mutilating the thesis on the period of proletarian dictatorship as expounded by Marx in his book, "Critique of the Gotha Program."
Chinese Communists have agreed to turn the Portuguese province of Macao into an "autonomous region," a Hongkong newspaper said.
AUGUST 21 - The Soviet Union accused Red China of being in league with "the most sinister forces of reaction" in "doing everything to prevent the consolidation of peace and security in Europe and all over the world."
Exiled Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn condemned Red China as a regime just as bad as Soviet Russia.
Peiping-Moscow struggle for influence in Indochina is intensifying. Almost every Hongkong report from visitors to the region gives this indication. So does Peiping's propaganda war with Moscow. Most of the reports indicate that Peiping seems to be trailing the Soviet Union in the struggle.
The Chinese Communists will conduct a census in October, the China News of Taipei reported. An expert on Chinese Communist affairs said the regime seeks a reliable figure on population with a view to curbing further expansion.
Unrest at Wuhan has been mounting since early summer, dealing a telling blow to the trouble beset Maoist regime, Taipei sources said.
AUGUST 22 - The hard life in a "people's commune" on the Chinese mainland begins at first light daily and ends at dusk, according to Henry Brandon of the Sunday Times of London. Sunday is a day to engage in plowing private plots, Brandon said. Brandon, the Washington correspondent of the Sunday Times, visited five communes during a trip to the Chinese mainland.
Peiping accused Soviet Russia of being "super sea overlords" and seeking "sea hegemony." Hsin hua" said the Soviet Union has "unilaterally put a large fishing area in the Far East under its control, extending as far as more than 400 nautical miles from its coast."
AUGUST 23 - Income per capita in free China is five times more than in the Communist held Chinese mainland, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taipei. The 1974 contrast was US$697 versus US$119.
The Hongkong Star said once married, a man and a woman on the Chinese mainland cannot always live together. One of them may be needed in Peiping, while the other has to serve the regime far away in the countryside.
The Soviet Communist party called on all true Communists to "smash Maoism" and declared that anyone who remained neutral on Mao Tse-tung's theories was serving what it called Red China's anti-socialist aims.
Factional strife on the Chinese mainland is beyond control of the Peiping leadership, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Li Chang-hao said in Taipei. "Textile workers of Hangchow and Hsuchow, miners in Heilungkiang, steel workers of Wuhan and Kwangchow and farmers in Szechwan and Yunnan are resisting Chinese Communist suppres sion and exploitation," Gen. Li said.
Peiping Radio acknowledged that army troops had been sent into factories in the troubled provincial capital city of Hangchow in Chekiang province.
AUGUST 24 - The Soviet Union is stepping up its warnings that world peace is being increasing ly threatened by Red China's alleged preparation for war and its struggle against detente. The latest warning came in a 20-page editorial in Kommunist, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party Central Committee.
AUGUST 25 - Floods hit four provinces in central mainland China earlier this month, resulting in many casualties and heavy property damage, according to intelligence sources in Taipei The sources said the devasted area included southern Hopei, western Anhwei, Honan and northeastern Hupei.
Radio Peiping revealed that Wang Ping-nan, once considered a big shot in Red China's "foreign ministry," has been reinstated. Wang, who was "vice foreign minister," was ousted by the Red Guards during the "cultural revolution."
AUGUST 26 - U.S. News & World Report said that the current disturbances in Hangchow may spread to other parts of the mainland. A report from the Tokyo bureau of the U.S. magazine called the turmoil in Hangchow a "virus."
The London Times correspondent in Peiping reported that the spread of literacy under Communism has lowered standards of education.
Political factionalism between radicals and conservatives continues to hamper Chinese Communist industrial production and bring soldiers into factories to restore peace, Time said.
AUGUST 27 - Commenting on Chinese Communist labor unrest, the Christian Science Monitor pointed out in an editorial that Red China is far from tranquillized and the mainland Chinese people far from fully indoctrinated.
AUGUST 28 - A famous 600-year-old Chinese novel, "Water Margin," has come under fire, Radio Peiping reported. The popular work of fiction based on 108 rebel characters who took to the mountains against the administration was criticized in an article as a "negative lesson" to teach people about "capitulationists," the radio said.
Factory disturbances in Hangchow spread to neighboring counties when peasants wanted to give up farm work to "earn more money," NCNA disclosed.
Peiping's drive to fulfill its fourth 5-year plan this year and set the stage for a long-range development program is running into problems. Economic realities are clashing with political policies, a basic conflict that has plagued Peiping since the days of the "great leap forward" almost 20 years ago. This clash is disrupting production in urban and rural areas.
Chou En-lai, who is 77, was treated in a Peiping hospital recently for a "cancerous growth in his prostate gland," a Hongkong report said.
AUGUST 30 - Thousands of persons in Chekiang have been quietly arrested since last April as a result of the spread of the so-called "pro-Chiang wind," intelligence sources in Taipei said. The "pro-Chiang wind," a reference to nostalgia for the pre-1949 government, picked up new strength after the death of President Chiang Kai-shek April 5.
U.S. Representative Edward Derwinski (R.-Ill.) said upon his return from a trip to the Chinese mainland that Red China is a tightly controlled society where the people do not even have the freedom to converse with other people. He described the trip as a carefully conducted and controlled tour.
Peiping is oppressing about 50 million non Chinese living within its borders, according to a book which has just appeared in the Soviet Union. The book said Peiping had "virtually wiped out" local autonomy for minorities and that publications in their languages had been "in fact suppressed."
AUGUST 31 - People's Daily called on mainland Chinese to attach importance to a cur rent debate on the 13th century novel "Water Margin." A commentary in Red Flag, the Chinese Communist party theoretical journal, said the book could serve as a "teacher by negative example" against "capitulationism." The center of debate is Sung Chiang, formerly portrayed as an able and sensible leader of the peasant rebels. He is now adjudged a traitor who betrayed the rebels' cause.
Soviet intervention in Angola will set off a large-scale civil war, the "New China News Agency" said. NCNA accused the Soviet Union of supplying the Angolan People's Liberation Movement with large quantities of arms "including armored cars and missiles."
SEPTEMBER 2 - "More than one American intelligence source sees (Red) China's current troubles as a forerunner of potential upheaval when Mao Tse-tung or Chou En-lai dies," u.s. News and World Report said.
Neues Deutschland, official organ of the Communist party of East Germany, accused Peiping of preparing for World War III.
The Third World is surging ahead toward the goal of crushing the old international economic order, "New China News Agency" said in a lengthy commentary issued on the eve of the seventh special session of the United Nations.
SEPTEMBER 3 - The Soviet Union accused Peiping of seeking to use developing countries as stepping stones to world domination.
Peiping branded the Soviet Union a "super merchant of death" seeking to move into areas where American influence is fading. It urged developing nations at the U.N. General Assembly special session to become self-reliant and beware of Soviet "exploitation" and takeover from U.S. or other Western "imperialism and colonialism."
Chinese Communists have indefinitely postponed introducing a new system of transliterating Chinese characters into the Western alphabet, officials said in Peiping. A "foreign ministry" spokesman said the changeover had been postponed and no new date set. No reason was given.
SEPTEMBER 4 - People on the Chinese mainland are still relying on wild plants as a source of food, according to a Maoist broadcast monitored in Taipei. The same broadcast in the same breath said there was a bumper rice crop on the mainland this summer. Observers said the call for consumption of wild plants contradicted the harvest report.
People's Daily disclosed for the first time that the new radical campaign against "Water Margin," a classic of Chinese literature, was ordered by Mao Tse-tung himself. The Communist party newspaper said cadres of all levels should obey Mao's "recent instruction" to study and criticize the novel.
SEPTEMBER 6 - The Soviet Union said Peiping is trying to undermine the United Nations and replace it with a new organization which it could dominate. This theory is expounded by the Soviet news agency Novosti in an article distributed by the Soviet mission at the United Nations.
SEPTEMBER 8 - Radical leftist leaders of the Chinese Communist party are mounting a campaign against pro-Russian elements and capitulationists in the name of Mao Tse-tung, the London Daily Telegraph correspondent reported from Peiping.
Peiping said Russian diplomats were recently barred from attending wreath-laying ceremonies at the tombs of Soviet soldiers because the Soviet Union had continuously sent "numerous spies" to the mainland, NCNA reported.
SEPTEMBER 9 - Peiping softened its prerequisite demands for U.S. recognition due to Russia's recent demonstration of military strength in Asia, former U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird said in Taipei. He said Peiping "may not insist upon" the termination of diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, total U.S. military withdrawal from Taiwan and the abrogation of the U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty with the ROC as the three conditions for U.S. recognition.
The Soviet mission to the U.N. distributed a Pravda commentary on reports about unrest among workers on the Chinese mainland and discontent with Maoist socio-economic policies. The article said these reports indicate that the army units sent to the areas of disturbances have been given instructions to suppress the actions of the working people by force and to make them continue work.
Chinese Communist guerrillas have stepped up activities along the Thai-Malaysian border since American withdrawal from Indochina, Thai border patrol police commissioner Gen. Surapol Chul lapram said in Bangkok.
SEPTEMBER 10 - A Canadian newsman visiting the Chinese mainland said population growth is out of control, creating a critical food problem.
The September-0ctober issue of Columbia Journalism Review carries an article criticizing Peiing's interference with the press freedom of Western media. Barry Rubin, writing on "international censorship," points out that the Peiping regime uses political and economic pressures to enhance its "image" and to push its policies in the Western press.
SEPTEMBER 11 - The Soviet Ministry of Defense newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, adding to what Western diplomats said is a growing ideological campaign against the Peiping regime, accused Mao Tse-tung of using the army to control public life. Mao Tse-tung has invested the armed forces with the function of guiding the entire life of the country, the newspaper said.
SEPTEMBER 12 - The Soviet Union charged Peiping was encouraging Maoists in Portugal to oppose Moscow-leaning Portuguese Communists with propaganda and violence.
SEPTEMBER 13 - A Chinese Communist ship has four classes of cabins and the most powerful person aboard is not the captain but the political instructor, according to Charles Lynch, chief of the Southern News Services of Ottawa, who returned from a trip to the Chinese mainland.
SEPTEMBER 15 - Peiping made a major shift in its foreign policy regarding Africa by giving implicit approval to dialogue between black Africa and white South Africa. Such dialogue, Peiping said, should be used by black African leaders as a weapon in the service of the revolutionary African cause. Peiping previously had condemned dialogue.