Mao Tse-tung was reported August 9 to be suffering from Parkinson's disease—a chronic nervous disorder marked by uncontrollable muscle tremors—according to the Indian News Agency.
The New Delhi agency said it had received the information from reliable diplomatic sources. It said diplomatic visitors reported that Mao mumbled and trembled while speaking. The agency said even Mao's interpreters have difficulty understanding him.
Earlier, the March of the Nation of New Delhi reported in its July 10 issue that a "duplicate Mao Tse-tung has cropped up" in Peiping. It attributed its information to "highly reliable sources".
Under the heading "Hoax of the Century" and "Peking Parades Mao's Double", the Indian paper said the Peiping regime is "playing a very sinister game by placing before the unsuspecting public a Mao double since the middle of May when the 'original' was reportedly seriously ill". Peiping has insisted that Mao is in good health.
The paper said the "brilliant idea" was thought up to remove suspicion and throw dust in the eyes of foreign diplomats stationed in Peiping.
Doubting Barbers
The Christian Science Monitor of Boston said in an editorial August 6 that a recent episode is Sian, capital of Shensi province, has "confirmed our belief that many Chinese (on the mainland) must be taking the present cult of 'Chairman' Mao Tse-tung with at least a grain of salt."
The paper cited a report from the Yugoslav official news agency "Tanjug" as saying that 18 of 19 barber shop managers of Sian "have dug their toes in against a Communist Party proposal for the setting aside of four working hours a week ... to study 'Chairman' Mao's works."
It quoted Tanjug: "The managers had the temerity to say that 'in the barber profession, business comes first.' A member of the Sian Barber Center, Kang Hen-an, is quoted as saying 'for a barber, the most important thing ... is to do as many haircults as possible, and to earn as much as possible for his collective and himself. Insofar as his politics are concerned, customers in most instances are not interested in them; they are interested first of all in having their hair cut.' "
Commenting on this, the Monitor said: "And that of course is why most of us go to the barber's."
Wigs From Corpses
Human hair exported from the Chinese mainland to make wigs comes from the corpses of women, according to an American journalist who visited the Far East recently.
In the New York Insiders' Newsletter for July 26, Jeff Endrst said the Chinese Communists exported US$10 million worth of human hair in 1964.
Labeled "Made in Hongkong", each wig is priced at US$23-26 wholesale in the British colony. The retail price in the United States is more than US$40. This is lower than wigs of European origin.
African Indignation
Marking the fifth anniversary of Ivory Coast independence August 8, President Houphouet-Boigny said the Peiping regime represents a threat to peace in Africa and to Africa's unity and independence.
He described the Chinese Communists as intransigent and inhuman, with "absolute scorn for the individual and human dignity."
Houphouet-Boigny said that the Chinese Reds are trying to pursue an expansionist policy in Africa, and that the Africans only want to live in peace among themselves and with the outside world.
This was only one example of African indignation directed against the Chinese Reds.
Following expulsion of a Communist "New China News Agency" correspondent, the general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor on July 29 demanded the closure of the Chinese Communist "embassy" in Nairobi.
"Workers ask that this embassy be permanently closed," said Clement Lubembe.
He said the federation has been warning the Kenya government of Chinese Communist activities for a long time.
Security Minister Njoroge Mungai told Parliament July 29 that all tourist movements are being watched.
Wang Te-ming, the NCNA "correspondent" deported July 23, reportedly had traveled throughout Kenya during his 18 months of stay, paying money to persons opposed to the government.
Huge Labor Camps
The overseas Chinese community in Georgetown, British Guiana, is being bullied and blackmailed by the Peiping regime's overseas agents, columnist Victor Riesel reported from the capital of that British colony in South America July 30.
Riesel said in an article published in New York newspapers that he learned from overseas Chinese in Georgetown of conditions in Communist labor camps:
"They have what I believe to be irrefutable documentation of the existence of slave labor camps on the mainland. These are 'labor reform farms' far more ghastly than even the notorious Russian Vorkuta Penal Labor Camp reportedly dissolved by the Soviets.
"The documentation made to this reporter disclosed that at least 4,000,000 persons have died of exhaustion, starvation or beatings in the (Red) Chinese prison labor camps in the past 14 years.
"By actual count there are now 351 such 'labor reform' centers. These are not to be confused with the heavily publicized communes. The 351 institutions are forced labor camps of the type which even the Soviets have abandoned.
"The biggest of these centers is in the middle sector of the Ningsia Moslem autonomous region. This vast area is in northwest China.
"The Ningsia 'labor reform' camp consists of 17 'farms' big enough to hold 2,000,000 inmates. It is constantly filled. During the past 14 years, Mao's regime has imprisoned some 41,000,000 persons in these camps. Men and women are dumped into the 351 rural installations."
Riesel mentioned Janet Jagan, wife of the former prime minister of British Guiana, who visited the Chinese mainland.
Janet Jagan, according to Riesel, "sought to draw on the overseas Chinese here (in Georgetown) as a base for some future drive to infiltrate the million Chinese who live in Caribbean, Central and South American lands."
However, Riesel said, "the Chinese here (in Georgetown) and elsewhere know she is Peiping's 'Red flame', and want none of her and her propaganda."
Plot in Colombia
The commander of the Colombian Army announced the discovery of a nationwide subversive plot directed by pro-Chinese Communists on August 2. At least 20 persons were said to be under arrest.
Maj. Gen. Gerardo Ayerbe Chaux said the plot was centered in Bogota, Popoyan, and Baranquilla. He said the Communists planned to attack public buildings and assassinate political leaders.
Sarawak Threatened
The snowballing Communist guerrilla campaign led by clandestine agents of Peiping in northern Borneo could transform Sarawak, the largest state of Malaysia, into another South Vietnam.
Press reports indicated that the Red guerrilla warfare appears to pose a more serious threat to Sarawak's security than Indonesia's confrontation with Malaysia.
Some 26,000 Chinese Communist guerrillas and "sympathizers", more than 15 per cent of the adult Chinese population of Sarawak, are believed to be prepared for armed rebellion at the agitation of the Peiping regime.
British Director of Borneo Operations Maj. Gen. George Lea warned that Communist threat is growing and will continue to grow "as plans for an armed insurrection are pushed forward."
Captured Communist documents show that Sarawak's Chinese Communists are using the guerrilla tactics of Mao Tse-tung.
Observers believe that if the Chinese Communists gained control of Sarawak, it would only be a matter of time before the other states of North Borneo, Brunei and Sabah, were taken over.
This would give Peiping a base from which to expand its influence, threatening Malaya, the Philippines, and possibly even its present close friend, Indonesia.
Security forces of Kuching in Sarawak believe that the Clandestine Communist Organization (CCO) (Chinese Communists) has already started a determined move to take over the state.
British intelligence estimates the CCO has some 2,000 hard-core members and cadres living in the Kuching area and others in the central river town of Sibu and the eastern coastal town of Miri.
There is a potential of some 4,000 plus some 20,000 misguided "supporters and sympathizers".
Press reports said a pro-Communist organization played a role in fighting the Japanese in World War II but the CCO did not come into being until recently.
Captured documents reveal a careful and systematic recruitment procedure. Prospective members are closely investigated, then introduced into a front organization and given ideological training.
Opium Air Drop
Smugglers have used C-47 transports to drop opium into the sea, whence ships pick it up for transport to Thailand, Thai Police charged August 6.
Most the opium comes from the Chinese mainland. Some comes from Burma indirectly. The Thai government seized 27 tons of opium in 1964.
Meanwhile, Jeff Endrst, an American freelance writer who visited Taiwan recently, reported that "next to guns and bullets, opium is Communist China's foremost weapon against free world defense."
"This is a documented finding of Nationalist China's counter-intelligence, corroborated by narcotics agencies elsewhere in Asia," Endrst said.
In a Taipei-datelined dispatch distributed by the North American Newspaper Alliance, Endrst said Peiping "has gained some $500 million a year in hard currencies through the illicit sale of drugs since 1949."
Other provinces aside, the Chinese Communists are cultivating "poppy seeds to the tune of about 1,000 tons a year in the Yunnan region alone. Recent refugees from Yunnan testified that opium poppy had in some cases been entrusted to communes. The product reaches the West and ultimately much of it goes to the United States via Burma and Thailand."
Endrst added: "Hongkong and Portuguese Macao remain Peiping's favorite outlets. Opium sales are directed by 'the Special Products Foreign Trade Bureau'. Most of the funds received from opium, the Taiwan intelligence officials told this correspondent, remain abroad and are eventually used to finance various front organizations and subversive activities around the world.
"The money buys military aid as well as disloyal African and Asian officials who then act as contact men and try to exert political pressure on their own government.
"Money goes sometimes to influential individuals for their personal needs.
"When the Rwanda Watsui King recently lost a political battle and had to flee, he contacted a Chinese Communist newsman in Nairobi, Kenya, and received 'sizable' funds to live in personal comfort.
"Officials here (in Taipei) claim that when Kenya's notoriously pro-Communist Vice Premier Odinga visited Peiping in 1962, he received $500,000 for his efforts to influence other African nationalists in favor of Peiping's policies."
Tibet's Gold
The Mao Tse-tung regime is disposing of more than US$6 billion worth of the Dalai Lama's gold and other historical treasures to obtain foreign exchange, London's Weekly Review said July 17.
The gold and other valuables collected by the Dalai Lama during 700 years are worth about US$6,344 million, the weekly said. The treasures are kept in the cities of Bias and Shigatse and in the monasteries of Sera, Drepung, Ganden, and Tashilunpo.
Most of the treasures have been taken by the Chinese Communists from Potala and Norbullingka palaces, both on the outskirt of Lhasa, the paper said.
There is active discontent and opposition to the Chinese Communists in several parts of Tibet, press reports from New Delhi said July 20.
The Dalai Lama's elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, said in New Delhi July 20 that 6,000 Tibetan youths educated by the Chinese Communists have turned against Peiping.
He said about 40 refugees crossed into Ladakh in Kashmir recently, bringing news of repeated incidents in western Tibet.
Similar resistance groups are active in northeastern Tibet and at Thakpo and Kunpo near the Burma border, he said.
Referring to a reported clash between Tibetans and Communist soldiers at Yeh in southern Tibet, Thondup said that with harvest time approaching, Communist troops are raiding villages and collecting grain. Sometimes enraged farmers kill the Communists, he said.
Thondup said there are reports of many attacks on commodity centers run by the Communists. Displaced Tibetan traders take the initiative in such raids, he said.
Other press reports from New Delhi said July 19 that Tibetan rebels armed with machine guns had clashed with Red Chinese troops in southeastern Tibet.
Red Chinese broadcasts from Lhasa radio, monitored by Indians, said heavily armed Red Chinese troops, aided by planes, captured a large quantity of arms from the Tibetan insurgents. The dispatch identified the scene of the clash as Yeh Tingridzong, 80 miles from the junction of Tibet, Nepal, and Sikkim.
Tibetan rebels were said by Tibetan sources in Sikkim to be active in the region bordering east Nepal, ambushing Red Chinese military convoys, which no longer dare travel after nightfall.
According to Lhasa radio broadcasts, the Chinese Reds had paraded captured Tibetan rebels in the streets of Lhasa.
The Chinese Reds were reported to have established Engawi Jigme, a former Tibetan nobleman and governor under the Dalai Lama, in power in Tibet.
The London Daily Telegraph said July 19 that starvation is driving thousands of Tibetans to revolt against Communist Chinese tyranny.
It said the starving population of central and western Tibet had "violent clashes" with the Communist troops.
It added that "some deaths from starvation have occurred in the affected areas and strict rationing has been introduced."
An acute food shortage has resulted from the immigration of some eight million Chinese into Tibet and the presence of 15 divisions of Communist troops there, the Daily Telegraph said.
1,000 Casualties
Anti-Communist mainland guerrillas demolished a military train in Fukien province, on the Straits of Taiwan, in mid-April, killing or wounding 1,000 Communist troops.
Quoting reliable sources, the Central News Agency said Aug. 12 that the train was blown up by a time bomb on the Yingtang-Amoy line.
The same sources reported a bridge 20 miles east of Yunting county in Fukien was blasted about the same time. Communist guards stationed on the bridge, numbering about a platoon, were killed by the guerrillas.
Early last May, the sources added, anti-Communist guerrillas in the Zone of Three Gorges on upper reaches of the Yangtze River intercepted four freighters carrying supplies for Communist troops and killed more than ten escort soldiers. The guerrillas made off with the rations and clothing aboard the vessels.