Fredrick Chien, the Republic of China's vice minister of foreign affairs, said the path to "normalization of relations" between the United States and the Chinese Communists is strewn with obstacles. He said he didn't believe they could "normalize relations" quickly.
A campaign to preserve the line of Mao Tse-tung in higher education has moved into the provinces - with Shensi taking the lead in voicing condemnation of attempts to subvert the Maoist line.
Chang Chun-chiao is the man to watch after Mao Tse-tung dies, a Taiwan expert on Chinese Communist affairs said. The expert was commenting on the Western assumption that Teng Hsiao-ping is likely to be the top man in Peiping after Mao is gone. "My guess is that the 58-year-old Chang Chun-chiao will emerge as the top dog with the support of Chiang Ching's palace faction," the expert said. "It is probably the wish of Mao Tse-tung. "
DECEMBER 17 - Peiping announced the death of Kang Sheng, 77, one of five "vice chairmen" of the Chinese Communist party. He is the second high-ranking veteran party leader to die this year. Tung Pi-wu died last April at the age of 89. Kang was connected with the party's intelligence apparatus and secret police for many years.
During his visit to the Chinese mainland, President Ford and Chinese Communist leaders discussed the Taiwan issue without reaching agreement on how to resolve their conflicting views, a State Department official said.
Former U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger expressed doubt about continued U.S. association with Red China for worldwide military balance in the long run.
DECEMBER 18 - U.S. Representative Jack Kemp (R.-N.Y.) said on the House floor that the U.S. should not take any move to "normalize relations" with the Chinese Communists which would jeopardize the Republic of China in any way.
The American mission in Peiping was described as "something like a diplomatic isolation ward" by Paul Brinkley-Rogers, Hongkong bureau chief of Newsweek. He said: "The Americans are never invited into homes and they have difficulty striking up casual conversations."
Hugh Sidey, White House correspondent of Time. who visited the Chinese mainland with President Gerald Ford, said Mao Tse-tung's health is very frail. Sidey said "a nurse helped the 81-year-old Mao stand up" to greet his guests.
Peiping is using Guyana as its principal base for infiltration of Latin America. About 2,000 families from the Chinese mainland have arrived in Georgetown, the capital, as immigrants. Chinese Communists have established three textile mills and sent technicians to exploit the bauxite mines.
More than 220,000 students of Shantung, Shensi and Kiangsu provinces have gone to the countryside since the beginning of this year, Radio Peiping said.
Peiping may be involved in the rebellion against President Samora Machel of Mozambique, reports in Johannesburg said.
Peiping accused the Soviet Union of stepping up its intervention and expansion in Angola to "grab a new strategic position and push its new colonial policy in Africa."
A group of pacifists, including three Americans, said they tried to sail their 72-ton ship to Shanghai but were refused entry by the Chinese Communists.
DECEMBER 20 - Peiping has sent money to the rebellious Communist guerrillas in the Philippines, the Washington Star said. A U.S. customs inspector in New Hampshire found 77,000 U.S. dollars in a bundle of books carried by a Filipino woman entering the U.S. from Canada. The money had been given her by a "second secretary" of the Chinese Communist "embassy" in Ottawa.
DECEMBER 21- One month after Burmese President Ne Win's visit to the Chinese mainland, relations between Peiping and the Burmese Communist party, which is in revolt against the Rangoon government, seem as good as ever.
Hanoi has moved closer to Moscow's view of world affairs, especially detente, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Mohan Ram reported from New Delhi that Hanoi's neutrality in the ideological conflict between Moscow and Peiping "may well be ending."
DECEMBER 22 - Premier Chiang Ching-kuo of the Republic of China appeared on television on an American Broadcasting Company news program, saying that if the United States recognized Peiping, "it would cause serious damage not only to the Republic of China, but would also cause serious damage to the United States as well as to Asia and the whole world."
Wang Hung-wen, who supposedly ranks third in the Chinese Communist hierarchy after Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, put in an appearance after seven months of invisibility. He presided over a memorial ceremony for Kang Sheng. Wang is one of the "Shanghai radicals" of Chiang Ching's faction.
Red China's new satellite was not put into space without reason. According to Peiping, the spy in the sky has found out - not surprisingly - that the Soviet Union has greatly increased its forces along the Chinese mainland border.
The Soviet Union's bitter rivalry with the Chinese Communists emerged alive and well from the events of 1975. Moscow-Peiping relations are frigid and staying that way. Increasingly, diplomats find, foreign policy decisions taken by the Soviets or the Chinese Communists are dictated almost entirely by the other's stance on the same question.
DECEMBER 23 - The sources of worldwide disturbances still lie in the vicious struggle between Peiping and Moscow for supremacy as well as competition of the two Communist powers for expansionism, Foreign Minister Shen Chang-huan of the Republic of China said.
Wang En-mou, former Maoist "commander and commissar" of the "Sinkiang military region," who was purged during the "cultural revolution" period, has been reinstated as "deputy political commissar" of the "Nanking military region," according to a "New China News Agency" broadcast monitored in Taipei.
A group of rusticated youths and tribesmen in Szechwan, a mountainous province in central China, have drawn together anti-Communist individuals and units in the area to call for the independence of the province, an intelligence source disclosed in Taipei.
The New York Times said editorially that the Pathet Lao seizure of power in Laos "has brought a reinforcement of North Vietnamese and Soviet influence and put (Red) China on the defensive there. "
A major new campaign to preserve the radical education system devised during the "cultural revolution" has revealed what appears to be continued doubts about its effectiveness among Red China's educators. The campaign, which began early this month at two Peiping universities, has begun to spread to the provinces with a series of strongly argued articles defending the new system.
DECEMBER 24 - Mao Tse-tung made it clear to President Ford during his recent visit to the Chinese mainland that "senior vice premier" Teng Hsiao-ping will be the nation's next "chief of state," columnist Jack Anderson said.
Newsweek's December 29 issue cited the discontent of youths with the Chinese Communist regime. A young man complained to an American couple visiting Canton about the life under Mao. Asked whether he had ever considered escaping, he replied: "Everyone wants to go. But there's no way out."
DECEMBER 26 - People's Daily described 1975 as a year of acceleration towards a new world war of which the "social imperialists" (the Soviet Union) were the most dangerous source. The paper declared: "The world is still in great disorder. There is seething unrest everywhere from Asia to South Africa, from South Europe to the Middle East, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The situation is excellent."
DECEMBER 27 - A veteran American journalist who revisited Peiping after an absence of 28 years found the city "vastly changed both physically and in spirit." Robert Shaplen, correspondent of Newsweek in China in the mid-1940s and now a Hongkong based correspondent of the New Yorker, wrote in the December 22 issue of the magazine: "I saw few smiles ... the common people I met, though they were not unfriendly, did not want to engage in much conversation, and we correspondents were officially discouraged from moving around the city on our own."
DECEMBER 28 - Three Soviet airmen released by the Chinese Communists after 21 months' detention were in the care of the Russian embassy in Peiping while diplomats pondered the significance of Peiping's surprise move. A Chinese Communist statement virtually accepted Moscow's longstanding claim that the men's helicopter strayed into northwest China by mistake while on a medical mission and was forced to land when it ran out of fuel. At that time, Peiping dismissed this account as "a bunch of lies" and accused the crew of spying.
An official of the Palestine Liberation Organization said his organization has the help of the Chinese Communists, who "give us both arms and material support."
A Peiping datelined story of the Toronto Globe and Mail said that in a Chinese Communist university, "no one is kicked out, no 'one fails, no one repeats his year." For instance, the report said, for one student admitted to the "Tsinghua University" in Peiping on the recommendation of a "commune," even if he continues to flunk all his examinations, he would not be expelled as before the "cultural revolution."
DECEMBER 29 - In confidential directives, the Peiping regime has described American leaders, including former President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as thieves. The revelations of Chinese Communist denigration of U.S. leaders were contained in anecdotes retold by Chinese refugees now residing in Hongkong, said Mrs. Tillman Durdin, who grew up in China and lived most of her life in Asia.
Chinese Communist "foreign minister" Chiao Kuan-hua told a visiting Fretilin delegation that Red China would "firmly support" that anti-Indonesia party in warring East Timor.
Three Soviet pilots detained in Red China since their helicopter crossed into Chinese territory 21 months ago returned to Moscow.
In the latest of its almost daily denunciations of detente between the Soviet Union' and the United States, Peiping's "New China News Agency" said the Soviet Union "is spreading illusions about peace with the sinister purpose of covering up its policy of expansion."
DECEMBER 30 - Student activists campaigning against Chinese Communist "education minister" Chou Jung-hsin declared they would stick to the pure Maoist line. They sent a letter to Mao Tse-tung denouncing Chou's criticism of university courses and the quality of students chosen for "political consciousness" rather than by examination.
A total of 12 million intellectual youths on the Chinese mainland have been sent down to rural areas since 1969. According to reports of Maoist organs, 90 per cent were middle school graduates.
Seven freedom-seekers accused the Peiping regime of atrocities at a press conference in Taipei. The seven are natives of Chaoyang, Kwangtung province.
Peiping said Soviet inroads in Latin America this year have weakened the position of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Peiping said Soviet expansion and penetration activities in Latin America are part of Russia's global strategy in its contention with the United States for world hegemony.
The Soviet press maintained its attacks on Red China despite release of a Soviet helicopter crew held by the Chinese Communists since March of 1974. Neither Peiping nor Moscow was interpreting the release as a good-will gesture.
JANUARY 1 - The Japanese Foreign Ministry said the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists will further aggravate their rivalry as they try to expand their sphere of influence in Asia.
JANUARY 2 - Peking University's 766 science students who graduated on New Year's Eve were packed off to border areas and the countryside, Radio Peiping reported. Three hundred graduates of Tsinghua University went to Tibet, Sin kiang, Chinghai and other border regions.
JANUARY 3 - Peiping broadcast a sarcastic attack on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, blaming his personal leadership for the poor 1975 harvest - "the lowest in a decade even according to the most generous estimates."
Peiping said the United States has "fallen from its prime" and the Soviet Union is attempting to become the new leader of "world domination."
JANUARY 5 - The Peiping regime's release of three Russian pilots "clearly indicates that the pro-Russian elements in Peiping have gained the upper hand in power struggle," an expert on Chinese Communist affairs said in Taipei.
An advance team of Chinese Communist "diplomatic personnel" as well as experts in guerrilla warfare have arrived in the Bangladesh capital of Dacca.
Peiping warned the West to stop feeding the Soviet "tiger" with loans, technique and grains, enabling it grow stronger.
JANUARY 8 - Chou En-lai died of cancer in Peiping. He was 78. Radio Peiping broadcast the news in its regular morning program about 20 hours after he died.
Peiping opposes better Soviet-Japanese ties and is determined to build a new "Great Wall" between the two countries, the Moscow newspaper Izvestia said.
JANUARY 9 - Chou En-lai's death, leaving a senile and feeble Mao Tse-tung as the sole top figure in Peiping, has made inevitable a fierce struggle to settle the regime's succession problem. But the death of Chou is unlikely to effect any changes in the Chinese Communists' foreign policy in the foreseeable future, Taipei sources said.
The Czechoslovak Communist party newspaper Rude Pravo accused Peiping of attempting to conquer the world and of trying to provoke nuclear war between Russia and the United States.
JANUARY 10 - The death of Chou En-Iai will have no effect on the nine-year rupture between the Japanese and Chinese Communist par ties, the Japanese Communist party newspaper said.
JANUARY 11- Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was reported to have complained to Japanese leaders about the United States' improved relations with Chinese Communists. Gromyko told Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa that Peiping was trying to wreck the trend toward detente between the Communist countries and the West. "America also is going along with (Red) China, which is making the Soviet Union the focal point of its attack," Gromyko was quoted as saying.
"Wide-Eyed in Peking: A Diplomat's Diary" is the subject of a lengthy article in the New York Times magazine by a Canadian diplomat after a 14-month frustrating assignment in Peiping. He is B. Michael Frolic, now professor of political science at York University, Toronto, Canada, who was stationed in Peiping in 1974-75.
JANUARY 12 - A Hongkong newspaper said a "drastic struggle for power" is "inevitable" in the wake of Chou En-lai's death.
Peiping will continue its support for the Thai insurgents despite the establishment of "diplomatic relations" between Peiping and Bangkok, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Daniel Southrland reported in a Bangkok dispatch that senior Thai military officers believe Thailand will be the next "domino" in Indochina as Peiping and Hanoi step up their support for insurgents in the north.
The London Daily Telegraph said the Chinese Communist leadership is opposed to everything the West stands for.
Visiting Japan, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced Peiping, sometimes openly and at other times in veiled references, in talks with Japanese leaders.
JANUARY 13 - Maoist Filipino Communists said they will keep up their decades-long struggle to bring down the Manila government.
Chinese from the mainland continue to pour into Hongkong despite the British colony's crackdown on "illegal" entry in late 1974. Statistics compiled by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau indicate that between November 1974, when Hongkong banned "illegal" entry from Red China and September 1975, 30,587 persons reported to Hongkong authorities.