SEPTEMBER 17 - U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R.-Texas) branded Mao Tse-tung as "the most oppressive dictator who ever lived." He said the United States should make it clear to Mao's successor that so long as the Chinese people on the mainland remain slaves, they can expect no support from the United States.
British Kremlinologist Victor Zorza predicted that one way or another the name of Mao Tse-tung will be "dragged in the mud" in Red China. "What we are really seeing now are the first moves toward the dethronement of Mao Tse-tung," he wrote.
SEPTEMBER 18 - Hua Kuo-feng appealed for unity and struggle against attempts to reverse "correct" policies as he presided at Mao Tse-tung's funeral. Communist leaders and a million workers, peasants and soldiers filled Peiping's Tienanmen Square.
After several years of keeping a low profile, the Chinese Communist armed forces are suddenly being given heightened public attention again and could playa key role in the struggle for succession to Mao Tse-tung, analysts in Hongkong said.
The Chinese Communists executed all five members of the family of Wu Chung-chen, a member of the Communist Shih-chi commune of Chungshan county in Kwangtung province because he collected and kept relief materials sent by air from Taiwan's frontline islands, intelligence sources said in Taipei.
SEPTEMBER 19 - Red China completed funeral rites for Mao Tse-tung without revealing what would happen to his body. In the past Chinese Communist heroes were cremated but there was speculation that Mao, like Lenin and Ho Chi Min, might be embalmed.
SEPTEMBER 20 - The Chinese Communist press waited nearly a week to acknowledge Mao Tse-tung condolences presented by governments that Peiping considers "revisionist." Cuba was not even mentioned.
Hongkong was buzzing with a rumor that Huang Yung-sheng, former chief of staff of the Red army, had escaped to the British crown colony. Huang, a powerful military figure during the waning days of the "cultural revolution," suddenly dropped out of sight after the purge of "defense minister" Lin Piao in late 1971.
SEPTEMBER 21 - Washington Post columnist Chalmers Roberts wrote that whoever succeeds Mao Tse-tung will be as ideologically hostile to the United States and democracy as Mao was.
The Peiping regime faces a serious succession crisis in the wake of Mao Tse-tung's demise, according to Harvard University Professor Ross Terrill, an Australian.
U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater condemned Mao Tse-tung and his regime for religious suppression on the mainland. In a lengthy speech on the Senate floor, Goldwater called attention to the persecution, intimidation, thought-reform and murder of religious leaders and followers by the Chinese Communists.
SEPTEMBER 22 - A signed editorial by Sinologist O. Edmund Clubb in the September 25 issue of The Nation magazine said there won't be unity in Red China after Mao.
SEPTEMBER 23 - Red China decided to cancel "national day" celebrations October I as a "mark of respect" to Mao Tse-tung.
A crime wave sweeping the mainland is being attributed at least in part to the campaign of political defamation against ousted Teng Hsiao-ping, the Los Angeles Times reported from Hongkong.
SEPTEMBER 24 - Senator Strom U.S.Thurmond (R.-S.C.) took the Senate floor to describe Mao Tse-tung as a suspicious, intolerant and devious person. Sen. Thurmond said Mao devoted his life not to the construction of a better Chinese mainland but to guerrilla techniques in fighting his real or imaginary adversaries.
U.S. Senator James Buckley of New York branded Mao Tse-tung as "one of history's most accomplished butchers - one whose record soars head and shoulders above those set by Hitler and Stalin." In a speech on the Senate floor, he expressed astonishment that the American press had neglected this in their commentaries on Mao.
Red China has blazed a new path in collective writing by mobilizing the masses for "a people's war," according to the "New China News Agency." The agency said several hundred professional editors of the Shanghai "people's publishing house" had been joined by 4,000 amateur writers and editors - mainly workers, peasants and soldiers.
SEPTEMBER 25 - Chinese Communist "minister of railroads" Wan Li has been relieved of his duties and replaced by his deputy, Kuo Lu.
The Baltimore Sun reported that the remains of Mao Tse-tung had become involved in the power struggle between the so-called radicals and moderates.
A Peiping report of the Toronto Globe and Mail said Red China's post-Mao era began only a matter of days ago but diplomats believe they have detected signs of uncertainty and indecisiveness among the top Chinese Communist leadership.
SEPTEMBER 26 - The Chinese Communist party, in its first public policy guidance since the funeral for Mao Tse-tung, declared that the anti-Soviet thrust of the regime's foreign policy must be maintained.
The radical left in the Chinese Communist party has earned a new name: "Cats that don't catch mice." The appellation, apparently coined by supporters of the ousted Teng Hsiao-ping, was directed at cadres of the Chiang Ching faction in Shanghai, according to Taipei intelligence reports.
SEPTEMBER 27 - Supporters of "capitalist roader" Teng Hsiao-ping have begun their counterattack in Canton, while Peiping's propaganda machine continues its anti-Teng drive, according to reports in Hongkong. One report said all the anti-Teng slogans on the walls in Canton had been covered up by fresh paint.
Japan decided to check atmosphere and rain for possible fallout from the Chinese Communists' September 26 nuclear test.
A provincial committee of the Chinese Communist party called for suppression of "a tiny group of class enemies" who "disrupt public order" by spreading rumors, instigating strikes and engaging in "other sabotage," including "beating, smashing and looting."
SEPTEMBER 28 - A decisive struggle for the political succession to Mao Tse-tung now seems likely in Red China, the London Times said.
Top Chinese Communist military leaders met with former U.S. defense secretary James Schlesinger and told him it was imperative that the United States not relax its vigilance against Soviet military expansion, Peiping sources said.
SEPTEMBER 29 - Red Flag, the mouthpiece of the "cultural revolutionary faction," said there are "destructive activities, splitting activities and intrigues" within the Chinese Communist party and the Peiping regime.
People's Daily called on the mainland people to continue the struggle against those following the capitalist road.
Former U.S. defense secretary James R. ScWesinger, ending a lengthy trip to the Chinese mainland, said Hua Kuo-feng is "clearly in a position of leadership" following Mao Tse-tung's death.
The body of Mao Tse-tung is to be embalmed, it was learned in Peiping, but his final resting place remained a mystery.
SEPTEMBER 30 - Anti-Mao and anti-Communist activities have been mounting in Peiping. "Militiamen" of the Maoists have been ordered to step up their patrol missions, according to a Peiping broadcast.
James ScWesinger told Japanese officials that le heard of border "trouble between Red China and Soviet Russia" when he visited Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Japanese officials interpreted his remarks as meaning small scale military conflicts were still occurring along the border between Red China and the Soviet Union.
Four provinces on the Chinese mainland have reported "sabotage" in their areas in recent days, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post reported from Hongkong. Mathews identified the provinces as Kiangsi, Kiangsu, Chekiang and Tsinghai.
OCTOBER 1 - There has been a serious split in the Chinese Communist leadership since the death of Mao Tse-tung, Peiping's "Hsinhua" news agency revealed.
In apparently the first major break with official Peiping policy since the death of Mao Tse-tung, the leader of a key province has called for new emphasis on raising personal living standards. The first secretary of the Yunnan provincial party committee, Chia Chi-yun, proposed that the province promise to "increase production every year, make the economy more prosperous every year and the standard of people's living better every year."
The New York Times compared the scene in Peiping after Mao's death to that of Moscow after Stalin's death, but pointed out that Mao had murdered more people. The editorial hinted that Mao will be purged like Stalin.
The Chinese people of the mainland were called on to transform their grief at the death of Mao Tse-tung into "infinite hatred" for Teng Hsiao-ping and his "revisionist line." This exhortation was contained in an editorial in People's Daily.
Japan formally protested Red China's latest nuclear test.
OCTOBER 2 - Chinese Communists have been forced to dig into their "emergency budget" to finance relief and rehabilitation activities in the wake of frequent disaster this year, an intelligence source disclosed in Taipei.
The Chinese Communists have destroyed almost all of the 2,400 temples in Tibet and transformed them into military barracks and arsenals, the Department of Tibetan Affairs of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission of the Republic of China said.
OCTOBER 3 - Hua Kuo-feng says war between the United and the Soviet Union is inevitable, Time reported. The U.S. news magazine said Hua made the comment in Peiping to former U.S. secretary of defense James Schlesinger.
Former British prime minister Edward Heath said Red China's "main concern will be quite simple, quite bluntly, to feed all its mouths three times a day. If it does not do that, then the regime will be in danger."
The conflict among Peiping's leaders is much as it was before Mao's death, with the basic issues of succession and future policy still unresolved, the New York Times reported from Hongkong.
Chinese Communist "premier" Hua Kuo-feng is probably Mao Tse-tung's third and youngest son, Mao An-lung, a former Chinese Communist officer speculated in Taipei.
OCTOBER 4 -- Mao Tse-tung told his followers to form a collective leadership shortly before he was totally incapacitated in mid-June, according to a Chinese Communist circular reaching Hongkong. Mao also predicted that a full-scale capitalist restoration was likely on the Chinese mainland.
Red China has reacted coolly to a Japanese proposal to reopen negotiations on the long-stalled treaty of friendship between the two, Japanese news media reported from New York. Japanese Foreign Minister Zentaro Kosaka met for 45 minutes with Chinese Communist "foreign minister" Chiao Kuan-hua.
Red China denounced as "shopworn trash" a Soviet proposal that the U.N. General Assembly prepare a treaty "on the non-use of force in international relations."
U.S. News and World Report quoted Asian analysts as saying "don't look for Hua Kuo-feng to keep power for long." The American news magazine said Hua has been "caught between 'moderates' and 'radicals' and can't please both."
OCTOBER 5 - Chinese Ambassador James Shen cautioned that because of imminent deterioration of the situation on the Chinese mainland, "further overtures to Peiping are clearly not in the interest of the free world."
The Hongkong newspaper Ming Pao quoted Chiang Ching as saying Red China would be rocked by "violent incidents" instigated by anti-revolutionary elements.
Chinese Communist "foreign minister" Chiao Kuan-hua told the U.N. that Soviet "social-imperialism is the biggest peace swindler and the most dangerous source of war today."
A September 26 nuclear bomb test on the Chinese mainland has produced radioactive fallout "in significant quantities over Pennsylvania," state officials said.
Runaway youths from Red China's down-to-the-countryside movement are causing trouble in Nanking. Radio broadcasts said security patrols had been intensified to deal with "sabotage activities" by "class enemies."
A Peiping spokesman dismissed as "sheer fabrication" a Hongkong newspaper report of Mao Tse-tung's "last words" with Politburo members.
OCTOBER 6 - Chinese Communist mouthpieces reported unrest and jitters in the Shanghai-Hangchow area. According to Shanghai radio broadcasts, many armed militiamen in that city were strengthening patrols at warehouses, bridges, railroad stations and other "key points" to prevent sabotage by "the enemy."
U.S. officials said Red China's latest nuclear blast may have been intended to demonstrate its continuing power in the wake of Mao Tse-tung's death. "The Chinese Communists frequently test-fire nuclear devices for political and psychological reasons," one State Department Source said.
Accusing Teng Hsiao-ping of advocating blind dependence on foreign countries, Peiping said its space satellites, computers and sophisticated tools were victories for the principle of self-reliance.
Executions of common criminals convicted of capital offenses have become rather frequent in Sining in Tsinghai province, an immigrant said in Hongkong. The immigrant, who has lived in the town in the province west of Szechwan for over 20 years, said such executions were only recent events.
Yang Hsiao-chun, once expelled from the Chinese Communist party as a counterrevolutionary, died in Anhwei province, where he served as a party functionary, Anhwei radio reported. He was 65.
OCTOBER 7 - Peiping publicly affirmed its support of revolutionary movements throughout the world, stressing that "Mao Tse-tung thought" plays a guiding role on the stage of world revolution.
The U.S. State Department said it plans to raise with Peiping the question of its nuclear blast 10 days ago. The blast caused radioactive fallout in several eastern states.
At least six provinces in Red China have reported instances of social disorder since the death of Mao Tse-tung, Hongkong reports said.
OCTOBER 8 - Red China's leading newspaper said 300,000 civilians and soldiers were mobilized for six weeks last summer to ward off the worst flood threat in 18 years on the Yellow River. People's Daily said the Yellow River crested seven times during the crisis and that "water levels rivaled or matched the great flood of 1958, and exceeded it in certain districts."
The thousands of Peiping residents who have been sleeping in the streets since the July 28 earthquake are making preparations to face the northern Chinese winter, which threatens to be harsh this year. Earthquake victims all over the city were digging deep holes in the beaten earth pavements next to their provisional shelters.
Chinese Communist hardline revolutionaries in a rare concession to moderates commended the modernization program of Chou En-lai.
Peiping said it has decided to build a memorial hall for Mao Tse-tung, who died September 9. "Hsinhua" said the crystal sarcophagus containing Mao's body would be placed in the hall.
OCTOBER 9 - Hua Kuo-feng has been appointed chairman of the Chinese Communist party to replace Mao Tse-tung, according to wall posters put up in Peiping. The posters called on the people to "unite around the party's central committee. "
OCTOBER 10 - Organs of the Chinese Communist party and the armed forces said the party was "headed" by Hua Kuo-feng but stopped short of identifying him as chairman.
A majority of Australians fear the country will face the threat of military attack or invasion from an external source in the next 15 years, according to a national study of Australian attitudes. The study, commissioned by the Japanese Embassy in Australia, found that the biggest threat in the minds of Australians was Red China.
OCTOBER 11 - Chiang Ching, the widow of Mao Tse-tung, and three other ultra-leftist Chinese Communist party politburo members have been arrested by authorities in Peiping on charges of plotting a coup, the London Daily Telegraph reported. The others named were Wang Hung-wen, second vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party; Chang Chun-chiao, first "vice premier;" and Yao Wen-yuan, an ideologue and polemicist.
Wall posters appearing in Peiping said a decision to name Hua Kuo-feng as new chairman of the Chinese Communist party was "prepared during the lifetime" of Mao Tse-tung.
Li Hsien-nien was being strongly tipped in Peiping diplomatic circles as the next "premier" of the Peiping regime.
Chinese Communists vowed to follow Mao Tse-tung's anti-Soviet foreign policy and called on the world Communist movement to struggle against "modem revisionism." The plea was carried in an editorial in People's Daily.
OCTOBER 12 - Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, and over 30 Chinese Communist leaders of the so-cal1ed radical faction were arrested during a conspiracy meeting while they were forging the will of Mao, a Peiping source said.
The downfall of the "Shanghai clique" and the rise of Hua Kuo-feng do not mean the end of the power struggle on the Chinese mainland, experts on Chinese Communist affairs said in Taipei.
Former Chinese Communist senior "vice premier" Teng Hsiao-ping who was deprived of all his posts April 7 after the Tienanmen Square riot, has returned to Peiping from Canton, the independent Ming Pao said in Hongkong.
The appointment of Hua Kuo-feng as chairman of the Chinese Communist party caught Red China watchers in the United States off guard.
"Vice premier" Li Hsien-nien called on the Chinese people on the mainland to continue the struggle against Teng Hsiao-ping. He was speaking at a banquet for Prime Minister Michael Somare of Papua New Guinea.
Red China is once again gearing up defense production - after a lul1 between 1972-1974 - yet still lags significantly behind the United States or Russia as a military superpower. "There is little chance in the forseeable future that (Red) China will become a superpower in the class of the United States and the Soviet Union," said Lt. Gen. Samuel V. Wilson, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
An American journalist who returned from a 23-day tour of the Chinese mainland expressed skepticism about the benefit the U.S. is likely to
have in its present military and diplomatic bargaining with the Peiping regime. Robert L. Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, described Red China as "very poor" both economically and militarily.
OCTOBER 13 - Chinese Ambassador James Shen said in Washington that the reported arrest of "radical" leaders in Peiping was only the beginning of the post-Mao power struggle in the Chinese Communist leadership.
Political stability on the Chinese mainland is still a long way off, if ever it can be achieved, according to political analysts in Taipei. Aside from the fact that Hua Kuo-feng still faces challenges from other ambitious men in the camp of so-called "moderates," the possibility of a counterattack by the radicals cannot be ruled out, they said.
Some troops have moved into the campuses of Peiping's two major universities and on one of them there was a clash between leftist and moderate students, sources in Peiping said. An unknown number of troops moved into Tsinghua and Peking universities.
Yugoslavia's news agency said that in addition to four Chinese Communist party politburo members arrested on charges of plotting a coup, a nephew of Mao Tse-tung, Mao Yuan-hsin, political commissar in Shenyang, may also have been jailed.
People's Daily warned that anyone who "betrays" or "tampers" with directives laid down by Mao Tse-tung was "doomed to failure," Peiping radio reported. Diplomatic analysts interpreted the warning as a reference to party leaders believed purged in the post-Mao power struggle.
The reported purge of Chiang Ching and other members of the ultra-leftist faction in the Peiping leadership could not have taken place without the intervention of the military, Ming Pao said in Hongkong.
The reported arrests of Chiang Ching and her radical fol1owers indicate that the succession procedure arranged by Mao Tse-tung has been challenged, said the deputy director of the Institute of International Relations, Warren Kuo, in Taipei.
The Chinese Communist army was reported arresting numbers of left-wing students and writers who were supporters of the Shanghai group led by Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching.
Chinese people on the mainland had yet to learn officially of Hua Kuo-feng's reported appointment as Mao Tse-tung's successor. Delay in the announcement raised speculation that Hua had not completely secured his position.
OCTOBER 14 - A number of top Chinese Communist radical leaders, including Wang Hung-wen, have been executed, Hongkong reports said. Peiping refused comment.
Reports of the execution of Chiang Ching and her three key supporters were received in Taipei with doubt. Observers tended to believe that execution of the four would have to wait until after some sort of kangaroo court trial.
The personal bodyguard of new Chinese Communist party chairman Hua Kuo-feng may have carried out the arrest of Mao Tse-tung's widow and other radical opponents while they were forging Mao's political testament, the London Times said.
In a dramatic bid to preempt any possible coup attempt by the radicals, Hua Kuo-feng redeployed thousands of troops from under the command of Li Teh-sheng, commander of the Shenyang military region, believed sympathetic to the radicals.
Several anti-Communist evening newspapers said continuous gunfire on the mainland side of the border was heard by residents of Hongkong.
Chinese Communist political leadership appeared to have held an important meeting in Peiping, touching off speculation there might be further dramatic developments in an already unpredictable situation which has prevailed on the mainland since the death of Mao Tse-tung.
Hua Kuo-feng, newly appointed chairman of Chinese Communist party, was absent for the second time from a diplomatic function. The occasion was a banquet given by visiting Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare. The "New China News Agency" said the speech was given by "vice premier" Li Hsien-nien.
Shanghai radio said people creating a split in the Chinese Communist party were "doomed to destruction." It pledged support to Hua Kuo-feng, the new head of the party.
The Radiation Laboratory of West Germany's Federal Physics and Technology Institute announced it had detected radioactive fallout, apparently from the Chinese Communists' latest nuclear explosion, over northern Germany.
Red China is now in for a period of severe internal disorder, columnist Joseph Kraft said. Kraft predicted that the internal disorder would minimize any role the Peiping regime might play internationally.
Chinese Communist "minister of railways" Wan Li, who was relieved of his duties for "complicity" with Teng Hsiao-ping, has been reinstated.
A Canadian newspaperman who left Peiping recently said the reported arrest of Chiang Ching and her three close associates for plotting a coup d'etat could create a violent uproar on the Chinese mainland. John Walker of the Southam News Services said in a Tokyo dispatch that the Chiang Ching group had controlled the mainland media for years and they might have followers.
OCTOBER 15 - Chiang Ching, Mao Tse-tung's widow, and her radical followers were arrested for plotting to assassinate Hua Kuo-feng after he was named party chairman, the newspaper Asahi reported in Tokyo.
The widow of Mao Tse-tung and three other radical leaders known as the "Shanghai Mafia" have been attacked openly by "conspirators" in an anti-party and anti-government plot, Peiping sources said. The attack against Chiang Ching and the Shanghai trio came in wall posters seen by foreign travelers in Shanghai and Wuhan, two of China's largest cities.
Three guards were shot and killed during the arrest of four Chinese Communist radical leaders, including the widow of Mao Tse-tung, but neither she nor the others arrested were harmed, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported in a dispatch from Red China.
Chiang Ching and three of her followers were arrested at a mountain resort about 18 miles from Peiping, reliable sources in Peiping said. Diplomatic sources said the security group that guarded the late Chou En-lai took part in the arrest operation.
Since October 14, foreign students at Peking university have been forbidden to read the hundreds of big character posters pasted up by Chinese Communist students and professors.