The Peiping regime launched another fierce attack on "older brother" Russia August 22, charging that the Soviet Union has entered upon a new stage of collaboration with the West by supporting India in the border dispute with the Chinese Communists.
An editorial in the Peiping People's Daily, said the Soviet had failed to distinguish right from wrong and continued: "The Soviet leaders hurl complaint after complaint at Red China in order to cover up their own sellout, their betrayal of the socialist camp and their abandonment of proletarian internationalism.
"N. S. Khrushchev, in his report to the December 12 (1962) session of the Supreme Soviet, even ignored the fact that Nehru had ordered massive military offensive against Red China in the Sino-Indian border areas and alleged that the Soviet side 'did not think that India wanted to start a war with Red China.'
"Even the Chinese (Communist) peace notes, the ceasefire and withdrawal on China's own initiative, were perversely used by the, Soviet leaders to back up the charge that Communist China opposed a settlement of the boundary question through negotiations."
The lengthy indictment included charges that India used Soviet weapons against Chinese Communist troops in last autumn's border fighting, and that Soviet leaders helped Nehru every time he got into difficulties.
"The Soviet leaders," the paper said, "not only encourage and support the Indian reactionaries politically; they also speed assistance to them economically and even militarily. As is the case with the U.S. imperialist aid to the Indian reactionaries, the Soviet leaders increase their aid by ever larger margins as the Indian government becomes more frenzied in its anti-China campaign. From 1955 to April, 1963, the Soviet government agreed to give India 5 billion rupees in aid, two-thirds of it after India provoked the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1959.
"During India's massive offensive against China in October, 1962, the Indian government used equipment supplied by the Soviet Union. After the Indian military attack met with failure, the Soviet Union, together with the U.S. and British imperialists, further supplied the Indian government with aircraft and helped it build factories to manufacture military aircraft. . . Every time Nehru was badly in need of support for his enlarging of the border dispute, Soviet leaders went to India to bolster him."
The editorial challenged Soviet claims that the Soviet Union is competing with the United States in economic and military aid to India.
"As a matter of fact, this is not a competition, it is a joint stock company, with (U.S. President) Kennedy as the big shareholder and the Soviet leaders the small shareholder.
"This competition is only their overall collaboration in allying with India against Communist China."
Aid From Japan
The Japanese Cabinet an August 23 approved the sale of a vinylon plant to Communist China.
The plant, worth some US$20 million, is to be paid for in deferred installments.
The contract was signed in Peiping between the Kurashiki Rayon Company, a Japanese chemical fiber maker, and Chinese Communist trade authorities.
Chinese Communists are required to make a down payment of only US$5,000,000. Interest on the loan will be six per cent per annum.
The plant is scheduled to be shipped to Communist China in the autumn or winter of 1964.
The government of the Republic of China took a serious view of the arrangement and protested to the Japanese government.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the government considers the deal a form of Japanese economic assistance to the Chinese Communists—tantamount to a loan of US$15,000,000.
Chinese members of the Committee on Promotion of Sino-Japanese Cooperation also lodged a protest with Japan. It was pointed out that since the installment payments had the approval Japan's state banks, the transaction is no longer a private one.
Trade between Britain and Communist China also is increasing.
In July, Britain sold the Chinese Communists about £ 1.71 million worth of goods, the largest amount for any month this year. This is about twice the value of goods sold to Red China in July of last year and about five times the total for June.
Britain's sales to Red China for the first seven months of 1963 came to £ 6.26 million. This was £ 670,000 more than in the same period last year.
Chinese Communist goods sent to Britain for the first seven months totaled £ 11.15 million, slightly less than for the same period in 1962.
Air Agreement
The Peiping regime and Pakistan signed an air agreement August 29 that gives the Red Chinese their first landing rights in the non-Communist world.
Peiping will be able to fly its aircraft to Karachi in West Pakistan and Dacca in East Pakistan. Pakistan will have landing rights in Canton and Shanghai.
The agreement was signed in Karachi by heads of Pakistan and Chinese Communist civil aviation teams after two weeks of negotiation.
Air Commodore Noor Khan, managing director of Pakistan International Airlines, said that Pakistan expects to start air service to Tokyo via Communist China early in 1964.
This is the first agreement Peiping has signed with a country having a defensive alliance with the West. Pakistan is a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO).
The United States opposed the agreement. On August 31, the State Department announced the United States had indefinitely deferred signing of a US$4,300,000 loan agreement with Pakistan for construction work on Dacca airport. .
Pakistan is second only to India in the amount of aid received from the United States. In the past decade Pakistan has benefited from about US$3 billion in U.S. economic and technical assistance and another US$1 billion in military aid.
Secret Journals
The United States has released top-secret journals of the Chinese Communist army that depict civilian and military disorders and discontent on the mainland in 1960 and 1961.
The journals, which fell into U.S. hands some time ago, gave free world analysts first-hand information about the repercussions from economic failures and food shortages in the winter of 1960-61.
They describe widespread hunger, uprisings by the militia, critically low morale, and shortages of equipment in the army, as well as the measures taken by the Peiping regime to overcome the crisis. They also contain some frank assessments regarding Peiping's general foreign policy, its sober appreciation of U.S. strength, and its need to get along without Soviet aid.
The documents, which total 1,000 pages and about 750,000 words, consist of 29 issues of the "Bulletin of Activities" of the General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The bulletin is published irregularly, and circulated to regimental commanders and their superiors, men of rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel and higher.
According to the documents, the critical period seems to have been the last half of 1960 and the first three months of 1961. Thereafter, the bulletins indicate a gradual improvement and a sense of relief in Peiping.
The extent of the disorders is not clear from documents, since they refer to the mood in the villages only in passing to illustrate the impact on army morale.
At one point, however, serious disturbances were reported in six of the seven districts of Hunan province, an inland region north of Canton with a population of about 50,000,000. Militiamen were said to have led the protests, killing Communist Party members, wrecking communication lines, and stopping military convoys. There was no mention of the number of casualties.
"Reactionary cliques" in the population were said to have been supported by many defectors from the regular army. The number of defectors was represented in the bulletins by four X's, which, according to the consistent style throughout the journals, suggested a four-digit number, or more than 1,000, perhaps many more.
The regular Chinese Communist army is responsible for the militia to some degree, and high-ranking officers were sent to the provinces to quell the demonstrations. In December, 1960, and January, 1961, they took away all pistols and automatic weapons from the militia, leaving only rifles and spears in the hands of the most reliable men.
The army also ordered 80 per cent of its provincial commanders into special personnel work with the militia. By March, 1961, 57,000 officers were said to be serving in the countryside, rebuilding the militia units around trusted army veterans.
Fears Within Army
For a time, however, the Peiping regime was anxious about the loyalty and capacity of the army itself. The morale of the troops was shaken by the plight of their civilian relatives in rural China.
In November, 1960, the army warned commanders to prepare for an increase in troublesome incidents. The next month it warned of a "critical" situation.
In one army company, the journal reported, 5 per cent of the men were found to be so disaffected that they blamed Mao Tse-tung, head of the Chinese Communist Party, personally for the country's troubles. In March, 1961, three of every 10 soldiers were said to have "wrong" ideas about local Communist Party officials, ideas that the regime tried to refute by blaming troubles on "reactionaries" among party workers.
The Peiping regime continued to conduct extensive polls to find the sources of disaffection. One report said that of 60 soldiers interviewed in Szechwan, the families of 24 had been struck by "calamities," including nine deaths of malnutrition.
In Wuhan, the families of 10 per cent of the soldiers were found to have been afflicted by "unnatural" deaths.
To counteract discontent, the regime first tried to give troops better rations, but this did not help. Many of the soldiers felt guilty about eating relatively well while their families went hungry, so they sent the rations home. The regime also held discussion meetings throughout the army to try to prove that things had been worse, and it organized trips by soldiers to more prosperous rural areas.
Finally, the regime moved to exploit rather than to disrupt the soldiers' close ties with their families. It gave the relatives of soldiers preferential treatment in the distribution of plots of land. It allowed relatives to visit military camps to share the troops' rations, and it permitted soldiers to take food home.
In February, 1961, when morale appeared to have improved somewhat, one Communist general wrote that the regime had won what amounted to a "war" on the political and ideological front. Hsiao Hua, deputy director of the army's General Political Department, was quoted in Mayas having said that he had expected the thinking of the troops to be "shaken seriously" during the previous winter and spring.
By May, the regime had reorganized its agricultural program and the civilian food situation was reported to be better. Nonetheless, the army continued to keep close observation of soldiers with more sentry watches and closer bed checks. A marked reduction in tension was suggested by the journals in June.
Also evident from the journals are the physical problems that the army encountered at the time. The bulletins are full of warnings of cutback in steel production. They cite a cut of 50 to 70 per cent in the construction of army barracks, and a reduction of 30 to 50 per cent in steel and lumber supplies.
In the first half of 1961, a scheduled increase in the production of spare parts was cut back by 85 per cent. Neither industry nor imports could meet these shortages, the army was warned. The regime urged units to emphasize self-sufficiency.
The journals include many comments on the obsolescence of army equipment. For instance, 79 per cent of the army's boats, chiefly landing craft, were said to have been built before 1949.
There were also complaints about inadequate training. Several articles expressed concern about the high accident rate in the air force. Chinese Communist pilots were said to be flying fewer hours a month than Russians, who are known to fly considerably fewer training missions than U.S. military pilots.
The bulletins contain suggestions that the army lacked combat experience. About three-fourths of the artillery troops and two-thirds of the infantry were estimated never to have seen action. Most company commanders had served in the Korean War, the bulletins said, but not in the positions of leadership they now held.
Guerrilla Upsurge
Guerrilla activities and popular uprisings are continuing to plague the Chinese Communist regime on the mainland. Range of the commando activities has been extended from coastal areas to the hinterland.
Intelligence sources indicate that Kiangsi and Yunnan provinces in central and southwest China are infested with guerrillas.
One source said 120 commandos, speaking Swatow dialect and armed with carbines, attacked Weichang, a Kiangsi province Communist stronghold of the late 1920s, on July 23 and made off with large quantities of food supplies.
Another report said guerrillas in Yunnan recently succeeded in stirring up revolt in a company of the Communist army.
In a raid July 29, commandos killed some 70 Communists and liberated 800 political prisoners in a labor camp, the report said.
Guerrilla activities also are increasing in Kwangtung, Fukien, and Chekiang provinces. Government commandos have been penetrating these areas since 1962.
Sabotage and uprisings are frequent. Unrest is widespread. Intelligence reports indicate the Reds have been compelled to move additional troops to these seaboard provinces to guard against large-scale revolt.
The guerrilla campaign began early last year. One source claims 876 commandos were dispatched during the year and that 700 of them are still operating in 12 teams.
Communists have admitted close to 800 acts of sabotage in Kwangtung alone. Large numbers of mainland people have been accused of aiding and abetting the guerrilla force. Many were jailed and sent to remote areas for forced labor; some were executed.
A refugee from Canton said anti-Communist newspapers and leaflets often are found in the downtown area of that city.
Because of arbitrary Communist arrests, the people of Canton dare not go out at night, the refugee said.
A refugee from Chekiang disclosed that a group of more than 1,000 guerrillas known as the Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps is maneuvering in the Hwang Yen and Tien Tai areas.
Commanded by Chen Ta-kuo, former chief of the, Communist public security bureau, the guerrillas, mostly peasants, have raided warehouses and sabotaged communications facilities, the refugee said.
A reinforced division of Communist troops failed to round them up last October, he added.
Reports from Hainan Island said the deputy mayor was killed in a recent uprising in Haikow.
21 New Landings
The government is reported to have dispatched 21 more groups of commandos to the mainland between May 17 and the end of August.
Press reports said the guerrillas, who made landings in Kwangtung, Fukien, and Chekiang, established secret bases and are maintaining regular contact with Taiwan.
Guerrillas in Fukien recently ambushed a military train and killed more than 80 Communists.
A local news agency, quoting reports from Fukien, said the action took place August 6 along the strategic Amoy-Yintan railroad.
The reports said the three-car train, laden with military supplies, was passing through La Kuo Tuan, Shunchang, north Fukien, when it hit a mine.
Guerrillas attacked and made off with the supplies.
The reports said Communist troops reached the scene an hour later to find 86 officers and soldiers killed and a large number of light arms and uniforms missing.
Another report in the Hongkong Tiger Standard of August 18 said that in a recent riot in Chiu Yeung, Kwangtung, the Reds machine-gunned more than 400 persons.
The paper quoted a school teacher, Chan Wah, who arrived in Hongkong recently, as saying the riot involved 3,110 persons and was led by ex-Communist officials.
Chan said the riot started when the Communist authorities confiscated a large quantity of agricultural products from the "Peace Farm" hard-labor camp.
Chan said the workers set buildings afire and attacked Communist cadres sent to carry out the confiscation.
He said Communist reinforcements were rushed to the scene and fired at the rioters point-blank.
The Communists recently admitted that a vast mountainous region of southeastern Chekiang is infested with guerrillas.
According to Communist broadcasts from Hanchow and Wenchow monitored August 21-23, the area extends from Huangyen to Lishui and Hsienchow to Wenchow, covering nearly a third of the province.
The Reds said the situation is especially serious in Wencheng and Pingyang, where the terrain is rough and the villages are widely scattered.
In these two counties, guerrillas have repeatedly attacked local government organizations and ambushed garrison troops the broadcasts reported.
The Communist radio said the area has been placed martial law. Peasants are forbidden to go out in groups of more than three persons after 6 p.m. Those walking at night without lantern or torch will be shot.