Red China sends Teng Hsiao-ping to Washington to talk peace and then moves a large invasion force into Vietnam
It was incredible. On December 15, President Carter announced that the United States was recognizing the Chinese Communist regime at the expense of the Republic of China. On January 1, the United States opened formal relations with Peiping and suspended them with Taipei, although the de facto relationship with the Republic of China continued without interruption (except for a March hiatus because of the temporary absence of funding).
Teng Hsiao-ping arrived in the United States at the end of January for Washington talks with President Carter and a tour of the country. He was lionized by some and picketed by others. Mr. Carter took advantage of the occasion to reiterate his belief that the new U.S. relationship with the Chinese Communists would contribute to the peace and stability of Asia and the Pacific. Teng didn’t sound very peaceful in remarks about the Soviet Union and Vietnam. President Carter says that Teng did not announce Red China’s intention to invade Vietnam, but the visitor obviously spoke frankly enough to prompt Mr. Carter to recommend caution.
Stopping off in Tokyo on his way home, Teng said the Chinese Communists would “punish” Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia. Red China had backed the ousted Pol Pot government. A few days after Teng returned to Peiping to give the orders, the Chinese Communists marched into Vietnam. That was on February 17. A month later, the Chinese Reds claimed to be withdrawing after completing Vietnam’s “punishment,” but it was a slow process. Both Vietnam and the Soviet Union charged trickery and there were reports that the invaders had settled down to defend disputed border areas formerly occupied by the Vietnamese.
The United States urged the Chinese Communists to get out of Vietnam and the Vietnamese Communists to get out of Cambodia. These pleas fell on deaf ears. Peiping said in effect that it was none of the Americans’ business. The Vietnamese didn’t even bother to reply. The once dominant influence of the United States in Southeast Asia reached nadir.
This was more than a vest-pocket war. Well over a hundred thousand troops were involved. Casualties ran into the tens of thousands with thousands killed. Provincial capitals were occupied by the Chinese Communists, who penetrated Vietnam by 20 miles or more in some areas. The Vietnamese claimed that the invaders destroyed properties as they began to retreat. Neither side could be believed in the war of words, but there was no question of the suffering inflicted on the civilian population.
Although the Americans went ahead with the opening of an embassy in Peiping, and the Chinese Communists did likewise in Washington, it was apparent that the Vietnam invasion had shocked the United States deeply. The hopes for peace expressed during the Teng visit quickly died away. So did expressions of confidence that the Chinese mainland would be modernized quickly and rise to rank as one of the chief U.S. trade partners.
Red China had played the American card against the Soviet Union and immediately took advantage of what it conceived to be augmented security to launch a new aggression. The question asked in Taiwan was echoed by Americans as U.S.-ROC relations were debated in Congress: If the Chinese Communists cannot be trusted to negotiate peaceful settlement of their differences with Vietnam, what hope is there that they will not attack Taiwan pending peaceful resolution of the China problem?
Following is the record of Chinese Communist and related affairs in the period from January 16 to February 15 (“Mainland Periscope”):
JANUARY 16 - Hundreds of people from Shantung Province demanding democracy and human rights demonstrated in Peiping’s Tiananmen Square.
President Carter sent to the Senate the nomination of Leonard Woodcock to be the first U.S. “ambassador” to Red China.
President Carter said it was “not possible” to get Red China to promise it would not attack Taiwan, even though that was one of America’s goals.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev urged the Italian government not to sell arms and military-oriented technology to Red China.
Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping that while some young mainland Chinese are beginning to think for themselves about Communism, most still feel it is too dangerous to get involved in politics.
Colina MacDougall, a British Red China watcher, said in the London Financial Times that hungry peasants demonstrating in Peiping called attention to Red China’s problem of feeding a huge population after two years of catastrophic drought.
JANUARY 17 - A. former military intelligence director warned that Peiping will try to subvert Taiwan. Retired Gen. Daniel Graham, U.S. Army, said the Chinese Communists “will try to subvert rather than invade Taiwan,” but that the Republic of China’s will to resist Communism will never crack.
In the first public opinion poll ever taken in Peiping, most of the Red Chinese questioned said their civil rights have not been respected and they are not happy with cultural life.
A Korean military strategist, Dr. Choi Chang Yoo, professor at the Korean Military Academy, said “normalization” between Red China and the United States is expected to lead to Russian aggression in Asia.
The White House denied that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had differed on U.S.-Red China relations.
Foreign Minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja said Indonesia has no intention of “normalizing relations with Red China.”
JANUARY 18 - Teng Hsiao-ping symbolizes the “instability” of Peiping’s leadership following Mao Tse-tung’s death, Senator Robert Dole (R-Kans.) said. Dole described Teng’s forthcoming visit to the United States as “a massive public relations effort, orchestrated largely by the Carter administration.”
The United States is ignoring the 800 million people on the Communist-controlled mainland of China by “normalizing relations” with Peiping, columnist William F. Buckley Jr. said.
Red China revealed that the head of the seventh ministry of machine-building industry, Sung Jen-chiung, has been appointed director of the organization department of the party central committee. He succeeded Hu Yao-pang, who took over from Chang Ping-hua as head of the party’s propaganda department.
JANUARY 19 - The distrust and fear harbored in Southeast Asian countries toward Red China is much deeper than that toward Vietnam and the Soviet Union in spite of the latest developments in Cambodia, correspondent O. G. Roeder of the Zurich daily Neue Zuercher reported from Jakarta.
The London Economist said democracy is striking a reverberating chord on the Chinese mainland. The weekly said peasants joined some 70,000 other petitioners seeking relief from oppression.
JANUARY 20 - Vietnam accused Red Chinese troops of intruding into Vietnamese territory more than 50 times and killing and wounding dozens of Vietnamese over the last 10 days.
Chinese dissident sources in Peiping said peasants had frequently risen up to demand more food, Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping.
Peiping’s open-door policy toward the West has not relaxed religious persecution, Hans Josef Theyssen, who toured Red China in November, wrote in German weekly newspaper.
JANUARY 21 - Leaders from Red China’s provinces have admitted neither food nor clothing has been sufficient in rural areas on the mainland for years, People’s Daily said.
Conservative member of Parliament Enoch Powell predicted a new world balance of power with Britain and the Soviet Union ranged against the United States, Red China and Western Europe.
A new wave of dissidence hit Peiping with angry peasants demonstrating outside the residence of Hua Kuo-feng and political agitators publicly advocating human rights.
JANUARY 22 - Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping that Teng Hsiao-ping has been further criticized in a Peiping poster for trying to limit poster attacks on Mao Tse-tung.
Dissatisfied Chinese peasants continued to demonstrate outside the residence of Hua Kuo-feng. The press stressed the necessity of improving the living standard of 700 million peasants.
The Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan religious leader, said he finds nothing new in recent Red Chinese overtures for him to return to his homeland.
Chinese Communist spies could enter the United States as a result of diplomatic relations, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned. William Webster said spies may pose as diplomats or students.
American businessmen are not going to reap a bonanza in mainland China because of Red China’s “incredibly backward infrastructure,” antiquated technology and lack of foreign exchange, said Elliott Haynes, chairman of Business International of New York.
Red China’s new political freedoms may not be as free as Westerners think, an American released from 22 years of detention in mainland China said. Daniel Kelly, the son of an American missionary doctor, left Peiping last month and was in Hong Kong en route to the United States after spending about two-thirds of his 38 years in Red Chinese prisons and labor camps.
JANUARY 23 -The tension along the China mainland-Vietnam border is high and Red China has amassed five divisions of troops there, the Sankei Shimbun said in Tokyo.
The recently sprouted democratic movement in Red China may soon be uprooted by a measure to curb or even quash the right of public dissent. The move, reportedly under consideration by central authorities, is aimed at stopping the proliferation of strongly worded wall posters.
The first Coca Cola shipment to Red China in 30 years - with the message “Tastes Good, Tastes Happy” - was loaded in Hong Kong.
Former Red Chinese “foreign minister” Chi Peng-fei has replaced Keng Piao as head of the Communist party’s “international liaison department,” which deals with foreign Communist organizations.
Red China is about 200 billion dollars short of the capital needed to meet its modernization goals by 1985, according to the New York Times.
Even with its industrial development at an extremely low level, Red China is suffering from considerable industrial pollution in some of the poorly planned factory and oil refinery areas, Christian Roll reported from Shenyang, Liaoning, to the Neue Zuercher of Zurich.
JANUARY 24 - Red China is urgently looking for arms and allies because of shooting battles and military maneuvering on its borders with Vietnam and the Soviet Union, according to the U.S. air force magazine.
A 32-year-old woman described by Peiping authorities as a “reactionary” has been arrested because of her alleged connection with the ongoing democracy campaign in Red China, Kyodo news service reported from Peiping.
Eight peasants who came to Peiping to appeal for justice have died of “cold and hunger” since their demonstration on January 14 in front of the residences of leaders, members of the Chinese human rights movement told AFP in Peiping.
JANUARY 25 - Red China plans to spend US$350 billion through the end of the century on 120 major industrial projects updating everything from oil fields to toy factories, U.S. reports said.
Applications by Chinese of the mainland to enter the United States are seven times the figure for January last year, a U.S. spokesman said in Hong Kong.
The Soviet Union has increased its troop strength around mainland China’s borders by nearly two-thirds since Peiping exploded its first nuclear weapon, according to declassified intelligence data of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Radical leftists, angered over Red China’s new relations with the West, vowed to dog Red Chinese leader Teng Hsiao-ping throughout his U.S. tour.
JANUARY 26 - George Bush, former chief of the U.S. “liaison office” in Peiping, said the United States “gave all but gained nothing” in “normalizing relations” with the Chinese Communists.
JANUARY 27 - There has been a “significant” increase in the number of Chinese Communist troops along Vietnam’s northern border, and the United States has warned Peiping it considers this situation dangerous, U.S. officials disclosed.
JANUARY 28 - Poor peasants with grievances have been pouring into Peiping by the thousands over the past month. According to a Peiping dispatch of the Toronto Globe and Mail, there are many more than journalists realized.
JANUARY 29 - Teng Hsiao-ping arrived in Washington for talks with President Carter and a coast-to-coast tour.
JANUARY 30 - Obtaining a job transfer in mainland China is “harder than ascending to heaven,” a reader complained in a letter to People’s Daily.
At least 400,000 youths have returned to Shanghai from the countryside where they were banished under the rustication program of the Chinese Communist regime, the Central News Agency said.
Soviet television reported that Teng Hsiao-ping is “alarmed” over the unpopularity of Washington Peiping rapprochement among the American people.
JANUARY 31 - The New York Times reported a member of the Red Chinese delegation visiting the United States said former President Richard M. Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had accepted an invitation to visit Red China in March.
The “four modernizations” is Peiping’s propaganda slogan at home and abroad, but so far no blueprint for the “modernizations” has been worked out. This was revealed by Hu Chiao-mu, president of the Red Chinese “academy of social sciences,” on a visit to Japan.
The U.S. Department of Energy and Red China signed a scientific agreement calling for the building of a 50-billion-volt accelerator on the Chinese mainland.
FEBRUARY 1 - Red China is sending military supplies to the beleaguered forces of toppled Premier Pol Pot inside Cambodia, using Chinese Communist ships and at least one offshore island, sources in Bangkok said.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency predicts that despite Red China’s new drive to raise living standards, by the year 2000 the average Chinese on the mainland will still be producing only about US$1,000 worth of goods a year.
The Soviet Union accused Teng Hsiao-ping of rabid anti-Sovietism, hostility toward detente and opposition to international disarmament.
The United States and Red China cemented their relations with agreements covering science and technology, cultural exchange and consular affairs. The consular accord provides for the opening of Chinese Communist consulates in San Francisco and Houston and American offices in Canton and Shanghai.
A Yugoslav report from Peiping said a wall paper demanding the rehabilitation of former Red Chinese “president” Liu Shao-chi, purged during the “cultural revolution,” appeared in the main shopping street of Peiping. A Chinese Communist magazine said Liu died of illness around 1971 as he was being taken by train to a rural prison after being purged in 1968.
FEBRUARY 2 - Hua Kuo-feng offered self-criticism at a party central committee meeting in December, Japan’s Kyodo news service reported. Hua said he failed to criticize the leadership of Mao Tse-tung.
FEBRUARY 3 - “President Carter’s decision to recognize Red China and cut official ties with the Republic of China is like “turning Israel over to the Arabs,” retired U.S. Army Major General John Singlaub said.
The American people view the Republic of China on Taiwan more favorably than they view Communist China, according to a poll.
The widow of Mao Tse-tung, one of the leaders of the purged “gang of four,” is living under “certain restrictions” in Peiping with the other three radical leaders, Chinese Communist “foreign minister” Huang Hua disclosed.
More than 1,000 hungry people rioted in Chengtu, Szechwan, recently, resulting in armed suppression during which more than 30 of the rioters were killed, the Central News Agency reported from Hong Kong.
The Kremlin has warned the United States it is “playing a dangerous game” with Teng Hsiao-ping and has clouded prospects for a SALT II summit, a Soviet diplomat said.
A Peiping wall poster called for an end to the commune system, the brainchild of Mao Tse-tung.
Sydney dock workers refused to handle all cargoes to and from Red China in protest against Chinese Communist threats against Vietnam.
FEBRUARY 4 - Three former Red Guards who robbed, looted and raped during the “cultural revolution” of 1960 were executed recently, People’s Daily said.
Red China had formed a new military command unit facing a 2,000 kilometer-long border with the Soviet Union in the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Japan’s Kyodo news service reported.
Newsweek said America’s “honeymoon” with Red China carries risks for the United States. The magazine said Red China may “change course again.”
Overseas Chinese associations in Latin American countries joined those in the United States, Canada, Middle East, Europe and Asia to demand that Teng Hsiao-ping free 27 million political prisoners; and dissidents on the mainland.
British Foreign Secretary David Owen warned Americans about getting carried away by new ties with Peiping to the detriment of relations with the Soviet Union.
FEBRUARY 5 - An American editor said the cheap labor Communist China offers U.S. threatens the Philippines and other Asian nations. Jonathan Fast, editor of Contemporary Asia, published in London, said the Philippines’ economy would be greatly affected.
Teng Hsiao-ping said Red China will pursue a liberal emigration policy, and Senator Henry Jackson said he felt sure Red China would qualify for big loans and a normal trading status with the United States.
“The problem, frankly, is the succession. (Red) China doesn’t have anyone to take over once Teng Hsiao-ping and the senior generation of revolutionaries pass on.” The speaker was a Chinese Communist accompanying Teng, 74, on his visit to the United States.
People’s Daily has criticized some Red Chinese leaders who demand special treatment when they go out and who live behind a security screen that has cut them off from public contact. “They live like hermits and are closely guarded and can scarcely be reached by ordinary cadres and the masses,” the newspaper said.
Marvin Stone, editor of U.S News & World Report, warned against falling into Peiping’s “unity” trap.
A poll, conducted by the New York Daily News showed that 57 percent of those surveyed were opposed to the severance of diplomatic relations between the Republic of China and the United States, as the price of U.S. Red China recognition.
The United States fears that the Soviet Union could be drawn into the Peiping-Hanoi conflict if their current border clashes escalate into a full scale border war, according to James Weigh art of the New York Daily News.
People on the Chinese mainland are watching programs on television sets made in the Republic of China, it was reported in Hong Kong. The Taiwan-made sets were reported to have been taken to the mainland during the spring festival holidays by Hong Kong residents as gifts to relatives.
The Christian Science Monitor said the American people should not be blind to the oppressive nature of the Peiping regime when pursuing trade and other exchanges with Red China.
FEBRUARY 6 - Vietnam accused Chinese Communist troops of crossing into areas of a northern province, laying mines, clearing forests and occupying Vietnamese territory.
Teng Hsiao-ping arrived in Tokyo for talks with Japanese leaders after a nine-day visit to the United States.
Red China accused the Soviet Union of attempting to intimidate Japan by building military bases and stationing thousands of troops on two islands claimed by Japan.
Korean Foreign Ministry sources said the South Korean government had never formally requested Japan to use its good offices for rapprochement between Red China and South Korea.
Britain is quietly checking on the chances of selling naval and merchant ships to Red China after agreeing to supply Peiping with Harrier jump jet warplanes.
FEBRUARY 7 - The London Daily Telegraph reported that problems have arisen in negotiations for Peiping purchase of the Harrier jump jet.
Red Chinese unemployment is forcing girls into prostitution and turning men into beggars, gamblers, thieves and speculators, according to a wall poster in Peiping.
Teng Hsiao-ping said Vietnam must be “punished” for its conquest of Red Chinese-backed Cambodia. In Tokyo, Teng also called for withdrawal of American troops from South Korea.
FEBRUARY 8 - Teng Hsiao-ping returned to Peiping vowing to take “appropriate counteraction” against Vietnam.
Red China has deployed hundreds of warplanes in the southern part of the country near the Vietnam border, the newspaper Yomiuri reported in Tokyo.
Three Young Red Chinese dissidents who sought the restoration of laws and political rights in 1974 were released from prison and rehabilitated recently. The three, known by their pseudonym Li I-che, displayed a giant wall poster in November, 1974, attacking politicians and bureaucrats.
Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira rejected Teng Hsiao-ping’s demand for joint action against Vietnam. Ohira told Teng that Japan hopes for a peaceful resolution of Indochinese problems.
Chang Yu-peng, former private secretary of Mao Tse-tung, committed suicide recently, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported from Peiping. Chang had been under interrogation about his suspected close relations with the purged “gang of four.”
FEBRUARY 9 - Former Cambodian ruler Prince Norodom Sihanouk said Red China has been assured the use of Thai ports to supply a protracted guerrilla war in Cambodia, the New York Times said.
The United States expressed concern about the possibility of an expanded conflict in South East Asia and for the first time publicly cautioned Red China against an attack on Vietnam.
The Soviet Union is applying pressure to scuttle Chinese Communist efforts to buy arms in Western Europe. Western diplomats said Moscow may lean especially hard on Italy, where the Soviets feel they have more strings to pull.
Vietnam accused Red China of violating its airspace and carrying out 60 armed border raids in eight days.
Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin told a visiting American scientific delegation in Moscow that Teng Hsiao-ping’s harsh verbal attacks on the Soviet Union during his American visit were virtually a declaration of war.
Young Red Chinese intellectuals demanding jobs in Shanghai have disrupted vital transportation lines, Kyodo news service reported from Peiping. “The demonstrators stopped trains, cut power to trolleybuses, damaged public facilities and held officials of the Shanghai labor bureau hostage,” said the report.
FEBRUARY 10 - The Chinese Communist economy is 20 years behind that of the Republic of China on Taiwan, Chang Kwang-shih, minister of economic affairs, said in Taipei.
Red Chinese authorities moved to defuse potentially explosive unrest among young people which has erupted into violent demonstrations at Shanghai.
FEBRUARY 11 - Red China delivered another strongly worded protest to Vietnamese forces, charging invasion of Red Chinese border areas and the killing of soldiers and civilians.
A new wall poster in Peiping warns against “dance fever” breaking out there and says Red China’s modernization cannot be achieved by dancing, Japan’s Kyodo news service reported. The poster quoted a Kyodo report that “some women call foreign diplomats and businessmen for dates and dance with them at their apartment houses late at night.”
A former California governor and possible presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, said the United States should offer to help Red China modernize but should also maintain official relations with Taiwan.
FEBRUARY 12 - Red China will soon announce its decision to abolish its friendship and mutual assistance treaty with the Soviet Union, a dispatch from Peiping reported.
People’s Daily warned Shanghai rioters that they are “entirely wrong.” Hundreds of young graduates who toiled in the countryside for several years have returned to Shanghai and demanded jobs.
Chinese Communist border guards gave “due punishment” to Vietnamese-occupied hills in a counterattack on the frontier, Kyodo news service reported.
Senator Robert Dole (R-Kans.) has introduced a bill to prohibit the extension of most-favored nation tariff treatment to Red China unless Peiping agrees to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and the limited test ban treaty.
Vietnam accused Red China of massing some 20 divisions along the frontier and asked the U.N. Security Council to deal with the threat.
Teng Hsiao-ping and his followers are facing the harsh reality of the economic backwardness of the Chinese mainland, according to the U.S. News & World Report. “There is no easy way for (Red) China to become a modern, industrialized nation,” the magazine said.
The Peiping regime, anxious to get its “modernization” programs rolling, is indirectly begging donations from overseas Chinese in Hong Kong and other parts of the world.
Vietnam has said it would accept United Nations supervision of its tense border with Red China.
Su Cheng-hua, a member of the politburo and political commissar of the navy, died of a heart attack at 67.
FEBRUARY 13 - Red China acknowledged that disturbances sparked by young people sent to rural areas during the “cultural revolution” had broken out at Nanking and Hanchow as well as Shanghai.
Lower House Speaker Nadao Hirokichi, former chairman of the Diet men’s Council for Japan Republic of China Relations, said he would not consider making a trip to Peiping.
A mainland Chinese factory manager has demanded freedom from three evils - too many meetings, documents and inspections. Zhu Yunfel, director of the Harbin power equipment plant manned by a force of 10,000, complained that the three evils took most of his time and energy.
FEBRUARY 14 - Vietnam had better stop invading Red Chinese soil or be prepared to face “all the consequences,” Red China said.
Vietnam demanded Red China withdraw “all its occupationist troops” from Vietnamese soil.
With nearly a third of its warplanes deployed near the Vietnamese border, Peiping is increasing its cross-border flights in a further escalation of the military confrontation with Hanoi, the Baltimore Sun reported.
The chance of an air force clash between Vietnam and Red China has increased, the New York Times reported.
The Soviet Union said the relationship between Peiping and Washington apparently has invigorated Red China’s program of subversion in Southeast Asia.
Peiping’s claim that troops along the south eastern coast of the mainland have been withdrawn to the Soviet and Vietnam borders is a propagandist lie, Adm. Soong Chang-chih said in Taiwan.
Red China and Japan have agreed to joint exploration of oil resources of southern Pohai bay. Japan will put up 400 billion yen (US$2 billion).
The Soviet Union may have established a new military command to coordinate military regions facing the Chinese mainland, Jiji news agency reported from Moscow.
FEBRUARY 15 - Leonard Woodcock, U.S. ambassador-designate to Red China said American businessmen looking to Red China as a possible gold mine will be disappointed.
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said France will not help Red China develop its offensive military capability.
Walter P. McConaughy, former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of China, said the United States should resist Peiping’s efforts to dictate American relations with the Republic of China.