A revenge-style purge is under way in Shanghai and Canton to eliminate both new and old cadres who supposedly have had some connections with the remnants of the "cultural revolution" motivated by the late Mao Tse-tung and his wife, Chiang Ching, an intelligence agent reported from the mainland.
Huang Chen, former chief of the Chinese Communist liaison office in the United States, has been named "cultural minister," Peiping reported.
One of the most mysterious figures in Red China's history, the American radio expert Sidney Rittenberg, has been released after 10 years in detention. He is the last foreigner deeply involved in the "cultural revolution" to have been under detention. For a brief period, Rittenberg took command of Peiping Radio at the height of the "cultural revolution" in 1967.
DECEMBER 17 - The Peiping regime's "purification campaign" against the followers of the "gang of four" met stubborn resistance and caused confusion in Heilungkiang province, Kyodo news agency reported from Peiping.
A showdown between Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping will be inevitable when Yeh Chien-ying, the "defense minister," dies, mainland watchers in Hongkong predicted. News reports said Yeh has been ill since he passed his 80th birthday in May and that his days are numbered.
Since the Hongkong government adopted on November 30, 1974, a policy of returning refugees to the Chinese mainland, 3,636 have been sent back on the charge of entering the crown colony.
DECEMBER 18 - Foreign diplomats in Hongkong said Teng Hsiao-ping is overtaking Hua Kuo-feng in the Communist power struggle. Teng is gradually placing his own men in key positions in both the Communist party and regime, the sources said.
The Communist party chief of Heilungkiang province has been dismissed after only nine months in office, Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping. Wade said Liu Kuang-tao was accused of trying to protect himself by sidetracking an investigation of the "gang of four. "
"Vice chairman" Li Hsien-nien, one of Red China's top economic specialists, told a national conference on the power industry that unless Peiping solves its problems of power supply, "the economy cannot possibly grow at high speed," the "New China News Agency" reported.
Red China's campaign for law and order following the fall of the gang of four "terrorized much of the country and spawned outbreaks of violence," Newsweek said. "No distinction was made between common criminals and political prisoners and the sentence imposed by the 'people's courts' often depended as much on a transgressor's class background as his crime," the magazine said.
DECEMBER 19 - Old-line Chinese Communist bureaucrats and military men who have recently returned to power are forcing out of office and publicly humiliating younger Communists who drove the old timers from public life 10 years ago, Hongkong reports said.
The former director of the "New China News Agency," Chu Mu-chih, has been confirmed as deputy director of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist party.
DECEMBER 20 - Violations against human rights take place so often on the Chinese mainland that Amnesty International has appealed to the Peiping regime at least three times in the last five months for commutations on humanitarian grounds. The latest appeal was made in November following new reports of executions in various parts of the mainland.
Peiping newspapers announced the forthcoming introduction of a new series of more than 850 simplified Chinese characters. The announcement marked the second stage of a reform of the written language begun in 1956.
DECEMBER 21 - Red Chinese officials often blindly carry out the so-called "campaigns" ordered by the Peiping regime without knowing their purpose, the New York Times said.
A new director of the Chinese Communist earthquake bureau has been appointed and a special task force established to tackle problems concerning quakes, said "New China News Agency" in a report on a just-concluded Peiping conference to improve the accuracy of quake predictions. The new director is Li Chien-ping, a former "vice minister" of the coal industry. He replaces Liu Ying-yung, who apparently was sacked because of his failure to heed predictions of the disastrous Tangshan earthquake of July 28, 1976.
DECEMBER 22 - The Mainichi Shimbun of Japan said Red China is still in an "extremely unstable situation" amid a struggle against the "gang of four." In a dispatch from Hongkong, the paper said four newly elected members of the party's central committee have been disgraced and Teng Hsiao-ping's associates are gradually taking over the important posts by getting rid of "revolutionary cadres."
DECEMBER 23 - Red China is a totally unfree society and there is no possibility of any change for the better in the immediate future, according to a survey released by Freedom House, a New York-based organization devoted to the strengthening of free societies.
A large signboard painted with the Republic of China's national flag and anti-Communist slogans appeared in the Yintan area of Kiangsi at the end of November, according to an intelligence report reaching Taipei.
An important military leader and colleague of Teng Hsiao-ping, General Yang Yung, has been named public health "vice minister," People's Daily said. General Yang is also deputy chief of general staff of the army.
DECEMBER 24 - Giant banners bearing slogans to welcome a counterattack on the Communist-controlled Chinese mainland by the armed forces of the Republic of China have been found in various parts of the mainland.
There is hidden inflation on the Chinese mainland, said Ross Munro, Peiping correspondent of the Toronto Globe and Mail. Prices remain the same but quantities have been reduced.
DECEMBER 27 - For the first time in years, Red China failed to register an increase in grain production in 1977. The "New China News Agency" blamed the worst weather since 1949 for poor crops of rice and other grains.
DECEMBER 28 - An article in People's Daily painted a gloomy portrait of despondent and defeatist cadres under the Peiping regime. Their speeches, without substance yet unendingly long, comprise nothing but talk that has nothing to do with the reality of the units they belong to, the article said. No matter what kind of work is assigned to them, there is without exception a conference, a plan, a couple of slogans and nothing else. Even the slogans are always the same.
Red China's "minister of commerce," Fan Tzu-yu, has been purged as a follower of the disgraced "gang of four," a Japanese newsman reported from Peiping. Quoting Red Chinese sources in Peiping, the correspondent of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Fan was succeeded by Wang Lei, one of the vice chairmen of the Peiping municipal revolutionary committee.
DECEMBER 29 - President Jimmy Carter expressed for the first time his concern about the human rights situation in Red China. "One of the most popular things that I have tried to do is to express to the world our own people's commitment to basic human rights, to freedom, independence, and autonomy, the worth of a human being, whether they live here or in Russia or in South America or in Uganda, or (Red) China," President Carter said.
Reviewing the political struggles in Red China during the past year, the "New China News Agency" charged that the "gang of four" caused the most serious damage to the Chinese Communist party in its 56-year history.
DECEMBER 30 - The United States will not provide any economic assistance for the Chinese Communists, said John Sullivan, assistant administrator of AID for Asia.
Shortage of commodities seems to foreclose Peiping's efforts to introduce a material incentive system to boost economic production, the Wash ington Post reported. Mao believed the bonus system would create a new elite and branded it as "revisionism." "Paradoxically," Jay Mathews reported from Hongkong, "the short supply of sought-after goods like vegetable oil and television sets not only prevents the formation of a comfortable elite but severely weakens the positive incentives of any bonus system."
DECEMBER 31 - The Chinese Communists have again stepped up their drive to send city youths to the countryside as serfs. In four provinces alone - Yunnan, Honan, Hunan and Shansi - more than 200,000 have been "sent down."
A small scale labor rebellion was reported in Kwangtung at the end of November when forced laborers in Tapu county assisted by Communist guards seized weapons from a platoon of Communist troops and made good their escape in two trucks, an intelligence report from the mainland said.
JANUARY 1- The Japanese Foreign Ministry said it was unlikely that the United States and Red China would "normalize" relations in the near future.
The Red Chinese media echoed Cambodian complaints of aggression by Vietnamese forces, apparently reflecting Peiping's growing commitment to support the Khmer Rouge in border conflict with Vietnam.
JANUARY 2 - Brian Beedham, foreign news editor of the London Economist. said Red China is the most totalitarian regime he has ever seen. Beedham said Peiping is more totalitarian than any other Communist country except Albania, North Korea and Cambodia.
Despite repeated radio broadcasts on the much heralded pay raises, workers in Kwangtung have not received a single penny in addition to their regular wage, according to travelers returning from visits to the province. Food shortages are keenly felt throughout Kwangtung and some small towns and remote villages are in need of cooking oil, they said.
JANUARY 3 - Peiping's marriage law, which forces young couples to live separately, is adding to corruption and alienating young educated urban dwellers whose support it counts on for "modernization" of the economy, the Washington Post reported.
For millions of maidens on the Chinese mainland, the objects of affection, or "sex symbols," are butchers, truck drivers and doctors, Time reported. The reason is that "these lucky fellows possess the most potent of aphrodisiacs - the goods and services denied the majority of Chinese," Time said, quoting mainland travelers.
Washington has "made it clear" to the Chinese Communists that the United States is committed to the human rights of the people on the mainland, a State Department spokesman said.
JANUARY 4 - Four former Japanese foreign ministers and one former vice foreign minister predict there will be no drastic developments this year leading to "normalization" of Peiping-Washington relations or rapprochement between Peiping and Moscow. This was revealed by the English language Japan Times in New Year interviews with Iichiro Hatoyama, Zentaro Kosaka, Toshio Kimura, Aiichiro Fujiyama and Shinsaku Hogen.
The politburo of the Chinese Communist party's central committee recently asked two of its members to defend themselves against charges of having a close relationship with the fallen "gang of four," according to an intelligence report. The report identified the two as Wu Teh, chairman of Peiping's municipal revolutionary committee, and Chen Hsi-lien, "vice premier" and commander of the Peiping military region.
JANUARY 5 - Tens of millions of Chinese mainland youths, already driven to despair by the "gang of four," again have been cut to the quick by the new and ruthless examination system. Widespread youth discontent threatens to undermine stability in Red China. These conclusions were drawn by a Peiping correspondent from Stockholm.
Only one out of every 20 persons in the United States knows the Chinese Communists to be gross human rights violators, but a large majority of people want their government to speak out against such violations and refuse to do business with them, a Cleveland State University researcher said. Prof. John Robinson, who directed a two-year study of public opinion on foreign policy, said most of the people polled know about human rights violations in Russia but only a few know of those on the Chinese mainland.
JANUARY 6 - A U.S. government study on the world military balance counsels against the idea of U.S. military ties with Red China in the near future, the New York Times reported. The study contends that such military ties with Red China as military sales or intelligence sharing would alarm Moscow, thus spurring a Soviet buildup in Europe as well as the Far East.
JANUARY 8 - Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. presidential security adviser, called fighting between Cambodia and Vietnam the first case of a proxy war between Red China and the Soviet Union. Brzezinski said "the Vietnamese are clearly supported by the Soviets politically and militarily and the Cambodians are supported politically and perhaps militarily by the Red Chinese."
JANUARY 9 - U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy returned to Hongkong from his first trip to Red China committed to speeding up "normalization" of U.S.- Peiping relations. But Kennedy said there remained "important differences of principle" such as the status of Taiwan. "The key obstacle to normalization," Kennedy said, "is the future of the 16 million people on Taiwan. I did not expect and cannot report progress in resolving that issue."
JANUARY 10 - Senior American officials in Asia consider "normalization of relations" between the United States and Red China as impossible in 1978 and unlikely during President Jimmy Carter's first term, the Asian Wall Street Journal reported.
The London Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Bangkok reported that diplomatic observers in the Thai capital believe that what Vietnam does with several Communist Chinese advisers captured during heavy fighting inside Cambodia will deter mine the course of Hanoi's relations with Peiping. Sources in Bangkok have confirmed the presence of the advisers among hundreds and perhaps thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers taken prisoner.
JANUARY 11 - Six national flags of the Republic of China appeared last November 12 in front of a bronze status of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the Republic of China, in Wuhan City on the mainland, intelligence reports reaching Taipei said. November 12 is Dr. Sun's birthday.
The Chinese on the mainland don't even have usable matches, according to a Peiping dispatch in the Toronto Globe and Mail. A worker wrote People's Daily: "After the head of the match catches fire, the stick often does not burn. Nearly half of the box is like this."
JANUARY 12 - Sir Harold Wilson, former British prime minister, said Red China is active against smaller countries in Asia and is supporting infiltration activities of countries farther away from its borders, like Singapore. "Red China's economic agents have become active in Europe. For instance, in Malta, which is beginning to be increasingly dependent on Red China."
Red China acknowledged that the industrial city of Tangshan was left in "complete ruins" by the earthquake of July 28, 1976, and "signs of the havoc are still visible."
Some factories in Southeast China's Fukien province stopped production for seven months because of interference by the "gang of four," Hongkong reports said.
JANUARY 13 - America's relations with Red China will continue to be stalemated in 1978, according to Joseph C. Harsch, commentator for the Christian Science Monitor. The Wall Street Journal said U.S. "policymakers push aside the issue of recognizing Red China rather than risk appearing to abandon Taiwan."
JANUARY 14 - The Yangtze has displaced the Mississippi as the world's third longest river, Red China claimed. "The Yangtze, China's longest river, has been verified to be 6,300 kilometers (3,915 miles) in length instead of 5,800 kilometers (3,604 miles)," said the "New China News Agency."
JANUARY 15 - Despite intensifying clamor by the Peiping regime for the convocation of the "fifth people's congress," Communist mouthpieces recently indicated that power struggle within the Communist party has escalated. The papers included People's Daily, Red Flag and Liberation Army Daily.