It was a quiet month on the Chinese Communist watchers' front. Evidence continued to pile up that Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao hadn't completed the "great proletarian cultural revolution" or won the power struggle at the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Reports of violence reached Hongkong and Taipei from many mainland provinces. The revolutionary committee system appeared to be failing; only the glue of the "people's liberation army" was holding things together. Schisms began to show up in the Mao/Lin Piao hierarchy, including resentments of PLA power. Such developments might point in the direction of all-out, no-holds-barred struggle.
Peiping and provincial press and radio said "class enemies" were on the march, busily engaging the Maoists everywhere. Yet the language of the new power holders was reasonably restrained. Appeals for forgiveness and unity were numerous, although with warnings of dire punishment for those who declined to listen.
Movement of former Red Guards and other young people to the countryside was beginning to bring louder objections. Some uprisings were report ed. The more than 20 million who have been rusticated could be a source of some danger to the Maoist regime. So could the cadres who have been held over from the era of Liu Shao-chi in order to keep the economic wheels rolling. They are disdainful of the abilities of the new cadres and consider themselves indispensable. Such differences may be coming to a head in county and local revolutionary committees.
There were some diplomatic stirrings that may presage Maoist attempts to externalize internal difficulties and get back to the business of making world revolution in the Maoists pattern. Japanese sources said Peiping was preparing to return ambassadors to "embassies" where changes d'affaires have been holding forth since the early days of the "cultural revolution". A second round of talks began at Stockholm in Canada's flirtation with the Peiping regime.
Russia retained first place as the principal target of Chinese Communist namecalling. When Peiping complained that hundreds of tanks, armored cars and other vehicles of war had penetrated mainland territory in Sin kiang, the Russians laughed and claimed the border clash involved a shepherd and a flock of sheep operating as a cover for PLA troops.
For Peiping, the most rewarding news note of the period must have been the failure of the Russians to persuade the Moscow conference of Communist Parties to read Red China out of the world movement. The Russians tried hard enough. The declination of Romania and a few other countries to go along was more a matter of tweaking Kremlin noses than of favoring Peiping.
The Chinese Communist press began to pay more attention to the war in Vietnam. The Viet Cong's new "provisional government" was recognized. Of the two ambassadors 'sent out so far, one - Wang Yu-ping, a veteran professional-went to Hanoi. The second Chang Tung - went to Pakistan, another country where the Chinese Reds hope to make trouble. An ambassador to Cambodia was nominated, no doubt in a move to prevent further thaw in Prince Sihanouk's relations with the United States.
This is the record of Chinese Communist and peripheral occurrences for the period of May 20-June 19:
May 20
Hongkong sources told of increasing strife within the Mao Tse-tung/Lin Piao ruling group. At the core of the conflict is resentment toward the increasingly dominant role played by the "people's liberation army". Additionally, political cadres ousted from high position at the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party were reported conspiring against Mao and Lin.
One story told of a struggle for power among the wives of politburo members: Chiang Ching, Mao's wife; Yeh Chun, Lin Piao's wife; Teng Ying-chao, the wife of Chou En-lai; and Tsao Yi-ou, wife of Kang Sheng, she secret service chief.
Revolutionary committees are said to be split on a basis of old versus new cadres as well as of military men versus civilians.
Mainland intelligence told of two incidents of sabotage at the railroad station and yards in Lanchow, an industrial center and transportation hub in northwest China. Anti-Maoists were blamed.
Liberation Army Daily complained that fear, in action and erroneous thinking were obstructing the implementation of Mao thought in the armed forces.
Stockholm sources said talks had begun between Canadian and Chinese Communist representatives. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said the negotiations were "going well".
May 21
Greeting Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny, Outer Mongolian "prime minister" Yumjagiyn Tsedenbal denounced Mao Tse-tung and his supporters as "traitors to the interest of the Chinese people and the cause of socialism".
The Singapore government announced that the Singapore branch of the Peiping-based "Bank of (Red) China" showed a deficit of US$34,330 after depositors' withdrawals totaling US$6.6 million. The Communist bank had been fined US$42,600 for failing to keep the required cash minimum for withdrawals.
May 22
Reports in Hongkong told of anti-Mao activities by supporters of Liu Shao-chi in Hupeh, Anhwei, Chekiang, Kiangsi and Kwangtung. Anti-Maoists were said to have been buried alive in Hsin Hsing county, Kwangtung.
Peiping boasted of winning "70 battles" in northeastern Thailand since January 1. The Communists claimed that guerrillas wiped out up 250 troops of the Thai Royal Army and shot down or damaged eight planes.
May 23
Mainland reports told of a revolt by 1,500 political prisoners undergoing reform through labor in Kwangtung. The anti-Communists overpowered their guards, killed about 30 of them and escaped to a mountain retreat near Yingteh.
May 24
Peiping announced readiness to negotiate border disputes with the Soviet Union. An 8,000-word statement said that boundary treaties with the Russians were "unequal" but that those made with the Tsars would be accepted as a basis for negotiation "out of the desire to safeguard the revolutionary friendship between the Chinese (Communist) and Soviet peoples".
May 25
The Chinese Communists charged that the Soviet Union was using nuclear blackmail in an attempt to seize more mainland territory. The broadcast said the forces of Peiping are prepared to wipe out all invaders.
May 26
Vice President-Prime Minister C.K. Yen said in Taipei that Peiping-Moscow clashes are likely to continue but 'that no all-out confrontation is insight. He said the Maoists dare not risk war with the Soviet Union.
May 27
Intelligence reports told of a revolt of 4,000 peasants at Chungming, an islet in the Yangtze River near Shanghai. Three Communist cadres were killed and a dozen injured. Peasants had been ordered to overfulfill their production quotas by 20 per cent.
Chinese Communist troops along the Heilungkiang, Chilin, Inner Mongolian and Sinkiang borders with the Soviet Union have been required to pledge a fight to the death in the event of further conflict, Hongkong reports said.
May 28
Izvestia declared the Chinese Communists had made "definite plans" to move into the vacuum that will be left with withdrawal of the British from Southeast Asia. The Moscow paper charged that Peiping's troops are already in Burma.
May 29
Shensi radio admitted incidents of arson and sabotage and said the provincial revolutionary committee has demanded intensified struggle against class enemies.
Hongkong reports told of a Kwangtung power struggle between the PLA and followers of Liu Shao-chi supported by local militiamen. The army was said to be investigating, denouncing and purging rural leaders and regional powerholders.
Peiping radio told of a disastrous tidal wave that struck large areas of Shantung province. Said to have been the worst in 80 years, the wave reached a height of 22 feet and penetrated as far as 13 miles inland along a 45-mile stretch of coast in the lowland area where the Yellow River empties into the Po Hai Sea. More than 1,100 square kilometers and 100,000 people were affected.
May 30
Hongkong sources said several businessmen who went to the Canton trade fair had been arrested by the Chinese Communists. Newspapers of the colony also reported that of deaf mutes who went to the mainland for "Mao treatment", one was dead and another missing. Seventeen others were undergoing futile treatment in Canton, the reports said, and 30 more in Hongkong have decided not to go to the mainland.
May 31
People's Daily renewed attack on the Soviet Union for aggression against the mainland. The paper charged that the Soviet Union's "appetite for aggression is indeed bigger than the old Tsars".
June 1
Peiping claimed that the United States and Japan plan to make Okinawa a nuclear base for the conquest of Asian nations. The broadcast said Japanese demands for the return of the Ryukyus are phony.
June 2
Mainland travelers reaching Hongkong said the rural economy is in a state of confusion because of the dominance of the black market. The Communists were said to be seizing large quantities of foodstuffs under the pretext of preparation for war. This left only the black market as a source of food and other goods.
June 3
Yunnan radio complained of sabotage and other anti-Mao and anti-PLA activities by class enemies. The broadcast said aid to North Vietnam had been affected.
June 4
Moscow told of armed clashes and mass protest movements on the mainland. Troops had to be used to put down anti-Maoists, according to Tass.
Four bombs exploded outside the Chinese Communist "embassy" in Nairobi, Kenya. Pictures of Mao Tse-tung were destroyed for the third time in two years.
Senator Jennings' Randolph of West Virginia charged that the Chinese Reds were giving financial aid to the militant Students for a Democratic Society, the principal organizer of U.S. campus demonstrations and riots.
Peiping screamed an agonized protest because the Bulgarian government invited a Republic of China delegation to a tourism meeting in Sofia. The Chinese Reds said the Bulgarian government of Premier Todor Zhivokov "is a lackey fostered wholly by Soviet revisionism".
June 5
Canton Communist newspapers admitted that the "revisionist and capitalist" program of Liu Shao chi remains strong in Kwangtung, which has a population of 42 million. The editorials complained that Maoist leadership was lacking in the province.
Canada's Minister of External Affairs Mitchell Sharp said that the first round of talks with the Chinese Communists had been completed in Stockholm and that another round was planned. Former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker suggested in the Commons that the United States had told Ottawa it would "not countenance" a break in Canada's relations with the Republic of China.
Peiping described the Moscow world meeting of Communists as "a black conference with a predictable miserable end", and described the Soviet leaders as "the new Tsars".
June 6
On the second anniversary of the Middle Eastern war, Peiping urged the Arabs to fight on against Israel. The Chinese Reds accused the United States and Russia of imperialistic ambitions in thy Middle East.
With Romania objecting, several speakers denounced the Peiping regime at the Moscow Communist summit. Peiping told of several new clashes along the Russian border but the U.S.S.R. denied them.
June 7
Leonid Brezhnev told the Moscow conference that Peiping was planning nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Mao, he said, has indoctrinated the people of the Chinese mainland with the idea of "the messianic role of (Red) China, the mass indoctrination in the spirit of chauvinism and vicious anti-sovietism". He reminded delegates to the conference that many of them were present at the 1957 Moscow summit when Mao "with astonishing frivolity and cynicism talked about a possible annihilation of half of mankind in case of nuclear war.
Peiping announced agreement to meet with the U.S.S.R. in a Soviet border city to discuss navigation of rivers forming part of the frontier. Only the day before the Chinese Reds had complained about Soviet shooting across the border and the kidnaping of residents.
Indonesia Foreign Minister Adam Malik said that the Chinese Reds will become a greater threat to Southeast Asia when peace comes to Vietnam. He predicted that Indonesia may become the main target of Peiping's aggression and said that Jakarta will not restore diplomatic relations with a hostile Red China.
Ottawa sources said that Red China was demanding a break with the Republic of China as the price of diplomatic relations with Canada and that he Canadians were balking.
June 8
Hongkong heard new reports of increased PLA requisitioning of food and other commodities as safeguards against "war or famine". Former Red Guards rusticated to the countryside were being used - probably with promises of forgiveness - to inform on peasant hoarders of grain and other foodstuff.
Maoist publications in Peiping admitted that Mao Tse-tung continues to face massive opposition on the mainland. A joint editorial of People's Daily, Red Flag and Liberation Army Daily also admitted mistakes and lack of unity in provincial revolutionary committees. The people were urged to stop "nagging" them.
June 10
Peiping assembled the military and civilians along the Soviet border to conduct demonstrations and protest meetings against the "new crimes" of the U.S.S.R. They also were said to have "pledged loyalty to Mao Tse-tung".
June 11
Peiping and Moscow threw down the cudgels along the troubled border of Sinkiang province, although not on a large scale. The Chinese Reds charged that Soviet troops, tanks and armored cars had swept into the remote area in a "wanton provocation against three Chinese herdsmen who were grazing cattle". A woman was said to have been killed and a man kidnaped. Moscow subsequently blamed the Chinese Communists for the incident, charging an invasion of Kazakhstan.
Mainland sources told of a rising by rusticated youth in Kwangtung. At least a dozen Communist cadres were said to have been killed in an attack on the Tieh Lu Pi hydroelectric station.
June 12
Peiping and Moscow exchanged angry notes about continuing incidents along the border between Sinkiang and Kazakhstan. Although only shepherds and sheep were involved, the Soviets charged that the sheepherder and his flock were sent into Russian territory as a screen for Chinese Communist troop movements.
A Red Chinese vessel left Hamburg after waiting more than two weeks for a crewman who jumped ship and asked for asylum in West Germany.
June 13
Moscow rejected Chinese Communist claims to border lands and accused Peiping of expansionist intentions.
Australian Minister for External Affairs Gordon Freeth said in Tokyo that an aggressive Peiping regime is the root cause of Asian instability and that the presence of the United States is required to restrain the Chinese Communists.
June 14
Moscow renewed its invitation to Peiping for border talks in Moscow within two or three months. However, the Soviet note expressed willingness to discuss only minor frontier adjustments.
June 15
Hongkong reports told of mounting tension in Sinkiang. The whole province was said to have been placed under military control. Minority group members have been killed and imprisoned on charges of spreading rumors.
Other mainland intelligence told of the dispatch of armed forces to rural areas to supervise summer agricultural production. Reports of poor crops were received from Szechwan.
Peiping recognized the new "provisional government" established by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.
"New China News Agency" said the Soviet Union was pursuing a "gunboat policy" throughout the world. In the Pacific, the agency said, the Russians have 50 cruisers, destroyers and other surface ships and more than 100 submarines.
In a three-generation escape, a farmer, his son and daughter-in-law and their child escaped to Hongkong in a sampan. Two youths swam their way out of Red China.
June 16
Moscow's summit ended without any formal condemnation of Red China. U.S. reports said the Russians have increased their military forces along the Chinese mainland border to 1.5 million men.
Anti-Mao forces in Chekiang established an armed propaganda team and called upon peasants to overthrow Communist tyranny, according to intelligence sources. Other reports told of posting of anti-Communist and pro-Republic of China slogans and distribution of leaflets in Shanghai.
June 17
Travelers reaching Hongkong said anti-Maoists had burned down a granary and distributed thousands of posters along the Kwangtung coast. Three hundred persons were arrested and a curfew enforced in an area near Swatow. Army forces fired over the heads of demonstrating farmers in Cheng Cheng county. The farmers were protesting against orders for indiscriminate planting.
Peiping and Moscow agreed to resume border discussions that were terminated in 1967. The agenda was limited to traffic on rivers that make up part of the frontier.
June 18
The Peiping correspondent of Japan's Kyodo News Service predicted a Chinese Communist diplomatic offensive in the wake of the Moscow conference. He said that the Maoist regime is beginning to send ambassadors back to their posts after their recall during the "cultural revolution".
Britain's senior diplomat in Peiping was permitted to leave the capital for the first time in nearly two years. Charge d'Affaires John Denson received per mission for a week's trip to Shanghai, Nanking and Hangchow.
June 19
Announcement was made in London that the Hongkong government had decided to terminate an emergency regulation under which persons could be arrested and imprisoned for up to a year without charge. The regulation was used in the detention of some 75 Chinese Communists during the Red-led riots of 1967. The last of those detained were released in May. Whitehall sources said new attempts would be made to win the release of Reuters correspondent Anthony Grey, who has been under house arrest in Peiping since July of 1967.
People's Daily published a self-criticism purportedly written by Hua Lo-keng, 59, a mathematician and computer expert who once taught at the University of Illinois. He wrote that workers and the Red Guards had shown him how he had failed to conform to the thought of Mao Tse-tung. He also said he had been deeply poisoned by revisionism but blamed this on the fact that he had been forced to toe the line by the "renegade, traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi".