The United States is appealing to Red China to open its borders to Vietnamese refugees, U.S. officials said.
Recent violent incidents with racial overtones between Chinese and foreign students in Shanghai have created an atmosphere of fear among Third World undergraduates. At least a dozen Africans and Arabs have been hospitalized, several in serious condition, as a result of clashes between students of the Shanghai medical school and foreigners at the Shanghai Textile Institute.
A Peiping leader admitted the greatness of Confucius, indicating failure of the Chinese Communists to evict Confucianism as the main stream of Chinese culture. Li Hsien-nien told Japanese that "Confucianism has good points and bad points. Confucius was great as an educator."
Many of Red China's victims of the "cultural revolution," even those fortunate enough to have their names cleared, are not able to get back what they lost. Fox Butterfield of the New York Times reported from Peiping that rehabilitation of the purged does not mean they can receive a proper job or a decent housing .
JULY 17 - Mark Gayn, foreign affairs columnist for the Toronto Star, said no one knows the scale of unemployment on the Chinese main land, but the problem is made more acute by an economic slump. One of the "vice-premiers" said there were 20 million unemployed, half in the cities and half in the countryside.
Red China will remain unable to produce enough food for its teeming population, according to a study by A. Doak Barnett, research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "(Red) China is highly likely to continue to be a net grain importer," Barnett said in the Asia Mail of Alexandria, Va.
JULY 18 - More than 100 African students demonstrated against discrimination in mainland China, waving signs saying "Down with racism" and "We want to go home."
Red China's readjustment to the economic facts of life has resulted in the dashing of French hopes for the sale of two multi-million dollar nuclear reactors.
JULY 19 - The Chinese Communists have not been able to destroy the religious belief of the Tibetan people, although they have destroyed many of Tibet's monasteries and sharply reduced the number of monks. Fox, Butterfield of the New York Times said Peiping appears to have acknowledged that Lamaism has a powerful hold on the people of Tibet.
Vietnam accused Red Chinese troops of firing mortars and making fresh intrusions into four northern border provinces, killing many civilians and burning scores of houses.
Posters calling for the independence of Tibet were put up in Lhasa in March, officials told foreign journalists visiting the capital.
JULY 20 - Special divisions are to be added to Chinese Communist courts to handle "serious offenses" concerning economic matters, which are being regarded with more severity by the authorities.
JULY 21 - To ascribe all mainland suppression of human rights to the "gang of four" is an attempt by present Peiping rulers to cover up the repressive nature of Communism, Professor Rene Goldman of the University of British Columbia said in New York.
A Lhasa dispatch of the Toronto Globe and Mail said the Chinese Communist "cultural revolution" as well as the Peiping regime's policy on the suppression of religion have resulted in the closure or destruction of over 2,500 monasteries in Tibet. More than 100,000 monks and nuns have been compelled to give up their religious habits and homes.
The Chinese Communist party has changed the border of Inner Mongolia, making the region larger, Peiping said, apparently for military reasons.
JULY 22 - Corruption among Chinese Communist officials in Kwangtung has become an increasing problem, according to a report in the New York Times. The report from Hongkong said a businessman back from Canton complained that profit from his trip would not cover the cost of "gifts" he was asked to buy for his Communist counterpart.
JULY 23 - Red China continues to impose restrictions on unofficial travel of U.S. citizens on the Chinese mainland, the U.S. Department of State said in a report to Congress.
Large American business firms are either expressing caution or declining comment on Red China's recently published investment law, the New York Journal of Commerce reported.
Six crew members of a Chinese Communist freighter jumped overboard and swam to an outlying island west of Hongkong.
A Peiping newspaper said bureaucracy among leading officials is "deep rooted" and can't be eradicated in one stroke. "Some leading cadres think less of modernizing their country than of modernizing their personal life style," Peiping Daily said.
JULY 24 - Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger criticized Red China, saying "we had obligations of long, historic standing" with the Republic of China which were abrogated by the establishment of relations with the mainland.
Twenty Soviet soldiers ambushed and killed a Red Chinese political officer and wounded a civilian along the northeast border, the "New China News Agency" said.
The Reader's Digest with a worldwide circulation of 31 million in 15 languages and 39 editions has only five subscribers (three of whom are foreigners) on the Chinese mainland, Edward Thompson, editor-in-chief of the U.S. edition, said in Taipei.
The Peiping command of the Chinese Communist army has strengthened its control over the Soviet frontier following an administrative re organization in Inner Mongolia.
Two photos of Chinese Communist troops training with missiles published in Peiping triggered reports that Red China may launch a manned satellite next year.
JULY 25 - After some 17 years of hostile confrontation, the Chinese Communists are again trying to woo the Italian Communists, according to reports from Peiping.
The Red Cross Society of China in Taipei branded as "a new round of united front maneuvers" Peiping's offer to establish contacts between the people in Taiwan and those on the Chinese mainland.
The Soviet Union has replied to a note from Red China agreeing to talks in Moscow in mid September on improving relations.
Red China said board chairmen, general managers and factory chiefs of joint ventures with foreign companies must be Chinese Communists.
The Soviet Union rejected Red Chinese charges that Soviet border troops ambushed two persons two weeks ago and said such accusations do not contribute to normalizing relations.
Teng Hsiao-ping has earned the nickname "Half-Measurist" among his peers because he never seems able to carry out a scheme to its conclusion, according to an intelligence report from Red China.
Li Li-san, a former Chinese Communist leader and opponent of Mao Tse-tung in the 1920s, has once again been given the title of "comrade" by Red China's historians.
JULY 26 - Ma Yin-chu, one of Red China's economists who was criticized and dismissed from the presidency of Peiping University in 1960 because of his insistence on population control, has been rehabilitated, Peiping Daily said.
People's Daily called construction in Peiping "sluggish, disorganized, chaotic and wasteful." It said the situation amounted to "anarchy."
JULY 27 - The Peiping regime was condemned for its "hegemonic power aims which represent a threat to the security of all peoples, particularly the peoples of Southeast Asia," by a group of 10 Communist parties at a meeting in East Berlin.
A Soviet press official indicated Moscow will propose a nonaggression pact with Red China to replace the Red Chinese-Soviet treaty of friend ship and alliance which expires next spring, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Chen Yun, one of the vice chairmen of the Chinese Communist party, suggested de-Maoization as the best way to pull Red China out of its myriad of problems, according to an intelligence report from Red China.
Red China has been pirating Scientific American magazine for four years in shabbily produced English-language copies. An equally shabby Chinese-language version has been in circulation since January.
The Soviet news agency Tass said clashes between Chinese Communist and Third World students in Shanghai showed that Red China regards other people as "an inferior race" whose representatives they could "molest and mistreat as they like."
JULY 28 - There is pervasive belief that the Chinese Communists monitor telephone conversations and inspect mail, said Wall Street Journal reporter Frank Ching. This is especially so in the case of foreigners, he added.
Only 2,800 persons are still alive in a labor camp in Tsinghai which once held over 100,000 prisoners, according to an intelligence report from Red China.
Thousands of new Peiping apartments are empty because they have no water, electricity or gas, People's Daily said.
JULY 29 - On the eve of their peace talks, Vietnam charged Red China has stepped up attacks along the frontier.
Hua Kuo-feng has apologized to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for visiting the Shah last summer, Peiping said.
JULY 30 - Red China and Vietnam concluded the ninth session of their acrimonious peace talks. Red China cited years of assistance to Vietnam, saying it had supplied more than 300,000 army personnel to Vietnam between 1964 and 1971. The Vietnamese called the figure "pure fabrication," and said the actual number was "tiny. "
The London Daily Telegraph reported from Moscow that angry exchanges over a recent clash on the Soviet-Chinese mainland frontier and Russian allegations of Chinese Communist interference in Afghanistan are providing a poisoned atmosphere for forthcoming Peiping-Moscow talks on normalizing relations. The developments may lead to a postponement.
Michael Oksenberg of the National Security Council said U.S. relations with Red China will not be at the cost of ties with other Asian countries. The United States is not building an alliance with Red China, he said.
JULY 31 - State Department spokesman Hodding Carter III said the United States was aware of the presence of Chinese Communist troops in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Chinese Communist party officials have been told to tighten up discipline and curb "ultra democracy" to make the march to modernization by the end of the century a success.
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has reiterated that his island republic will not establish diplomatic relations with Red China before Indonesia does.
Over 100 human rights fighters arrested by the Communist authorities staged a hunger strike last May during which one of them died, according to an intelligence report to Taipei.
Alarmed by the rising rate of cancer deaths, Red China has banned cigarette smoking by students.
The Madrid paper Ya reported that "Communist China is now controlling the drug business of the world by exporting to the West opium and heroin produced in the so-called Golden Triangle. "
AUGUST 1 - A flag of the Republic of China appeared in the Tienanmen Square on the eve of the anniversary of the Red army, the China Tribune published in New York, reported. The paper published a photo of the flag on a lamppost.
Lack of qualified teachers and deteriorating laboratory equipment are hampering development of university education in Red China, People's Daily said.
Negotiations between Red China and the Soviet Union on normalizing relations will definitely begin in mid-September despite a frontier incident, Chinese Communist and Soviet sources said.
Crime, especially juvenile delinquency, is rampant on the Chinese mainland, said Christian Roll, a German newsman stationed in Hongkong. Chinese Communist interpreters and hotel managers advise foreign guests to lock their hotel doors and watch over their valuables.
Red China's hope of a long-term agricultural growth rate of 4 to 5 per cent a year is unrealistic, Dwight H. Perkins, chairman of the Economics Department of Harvard University, said in Economic Impact. Perkins visited the Chinese mainland three times in the last four years.
The Great Wall on the Chinese mainland .is in danger of gradual destruction as its ancient bricks are removed for building barracks and dormitories, Yomiuri Shimbun said. An entire block of the wall three kilometers long about 100 kilometers northwest of Peiping has disappeared entirely in the last four years.
Red China's trade with Japan has begun to show signs of decline. Peiping is buying less steel from Japan and sharply raising the price of crude oil.
AUGUST 2 - The peaceful Yangtze River is threatening to transform itself into a second Yellow River, which is known for its violence. Kyodo news service reported from Peiping that the Yangtze has turned yellow. Scientists say the bottom of the Yangtze is now piled with sand and mud. If this situation is allowed to continue, the 6,200-kilometer Yangtze will soon wash out farmlands on both banks with frequent floods, the experts said.
Red China's courts have reviewed 708,000 criminal cases in the 18 months to June this year and found that more than 166,000 cases from the "cultural revolution" involved false accusations or wrong verdicts.
Vietnam was not beaten during the border clash with Communist China but only hurt a little, said Chen Yun, a vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party.
A Red Chinese ministry spent almost US$4 million to buy useless expensive foreign machinery for an automobile factory, Peoples Daily said. The paper blamed the waste on inefficiency and "commands issued in accordance with official wishes."
The Chinese Communists said their army of 4 million is short on new fighting technology and its generals lack skill for modern warfare. The appraisal appeared in the army newspaper Liberation Daily.
Red Chinese workers are unhappy about some privileges being restored to former capitalists, Workers' Daily reported. The capitalists were authorized to get back pay for salaries which had not been paid since the "cultural revolution" and to receive fixed interest on capital deposited in the Bank of China in 1949.
AUGUST 3 - The Peiping regime is plagued with factional power struggle and Teng Hsiao-ping is under attack by his opponents, an intelligence report said. Teng's launching of the war against Vietnam has brought fierce criticism, the report said.
The mayor of Shanghai was reported to have criticized "remnants of leftwing extremists" who blindly followed all Mao Tse-tung said and did. Japan's Kyodo news service said in a dispatch from Peiping that People's Daily reported the criticism by Mayor Peng Chung.
AUGUST 5 - Two documentaries on the rural life and the 10 Major Construction Projects in Taiwan were shown last March 14 at a commune in Anhwei, according to an intelligence report.
Red China accused the Soviet Union of increasing its control over Laos. The accusation came in a general attack on increased Soviet "military penetration" of Southeast Asia. The Soviet was said to be turning the Cambodian port of Kompong Som into a supply base for its Pacific fleet.
AUGUST 6 - Peiping and Moscow will never patch up their deep enmity, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Malcolm Toon said in an interview.
Former California Governor Ronald Reagan said two predictions arising from the U.S. "recognition" of Peiping have proved wrong - the "huge" market in Red China turns out to be an illusion and the Republic of China's export oriented economy is not undermined.
AUGUST 7 - U.S. State Department spokesman Thomas Reston said he was not at liberty to comment on the question of awarding "most favored-nation treatment" to the Chinese Communists.
The United States informed Red China it is delaying until later this year the sending of legislation to Capitol Hill that would give tariff concessions to Peiping.
Unable to cope with those who have returned, Red China has had second thoughts about phasing out the Maoist-inspired program to send educated city youth to the countryside. Red Flag, theoretical organ of the Communist party, said some of them will be assigned to rural areas in the years ahead.
Serious opposition to the post-Mao Tse-tung policy line of Red China's regime and Communist party still exists in Shanghai, People's Daily said.
AUGUST 8 - Several hundred ragged pro testers from around mainland China camped at the red gates of Chungnanhai, where the Red Chinese regime sits, complaining they were drifting, unemployed and hungry. They were closely watched by soldiers.
A Japanese banking syndicate and the "Bank of China" will sign an agreement giving Peiping a US$2 billion loan for its modernization program, the Bank of Tokyo said.
Hanoi charged Peiping with launching more than 100 border attacks on Vietnamese territory in the past month.
Tensions along Sinkiang's border with the Soviet Union are likely to rise sharply again following the recent clash in which one Chinese Communist officer was killed and another taken prisoner by Russian forces, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Red China is introducing a new system of entry permits to stem the smuggling of luxury goods by "couriers." Only holders of multi-entry permits will be allowed to take such goods into the mainland. The new travel document, which is valid for three years, allows a Hongkong Chinese resident to take in one television set, radio, watch, camera, radio cassette recorder, electric fan, sewing machine or bicycle a year. Holders of "letters of introduction" will no longer be able to take along any of these items.
AUGUST 9 - Writers and artists on the Chinese mainland are doubtful about a policy of "literary democracy" announced by the Peiping regime, an intelligence report from the mainland said. The mainland writers consider "literary democracy" to be a repeat of the "flowers blooming campaign" launched by Mao Tse-tung in 1957 as a maneuver to liquidate his opponents.
Chinese Communists massacred at least 67,000 people in Kwangsi autonomous district alone in the "cultural revolution," it was reported by Jiji press and several Japanese papers from Peiping.
One of the world's great cultural treasures, the caves of Kansu Province, narrowly escaped destruction or severe damage in a flood which destroyed 80 per cent of the houses of Tunghuang County, NCNA said.
Vietnam is exterminating hundreds of thou sands of Chinese who cannot flee the country in boats by sending them out to die as starving pioneers in undeveloped farmland, a high ranking Vietnamese defector, Hoang Van Hoan, vice chair man of Vietnam's national legislature, said in Peiping.
The Holy See termed "illegitimate" the re ported consecration - without Vatican approval of a bishop of Peiping by a Chinese Communist synod of "patriotic Catholics." The Vatican said its stance was based on the universally applied doctrine that only the Pope can appoint bishops.
Underestimation of the impact of the "cultural revolution" and lack of planning are responsible for the economic mess on the Chinese mainland, according to Teng Hsiao-ping. Teng admitted the regime's economic troubles at a party central meeting last April.
AUGUST 11 - Red China has failed to win over major Japanese business firms to invest on the mainland. Many of them are still hesitant to respond to the new overture from Peiping and have great doubts about any investment environment under the Communist system, Tokyo sources said.
A top Hanoi official left the impression with visiting U.S. Congressmen that Red China and Vietnam may be at war again soon, perhaps as early as this autumn.
Red China is getting a "Johnny can't read" problem because its torrents of children are out stripping the resources of the school system, People s Daily said. "The number of children who cannot or can hardly read or write is increasing," the paper said.
AUGUST 13 - Moscow is trying to lure Southeast Asian Communists away from Peiping's banner, according to U.S. News & World Report. The magazine said the Soviets are doing so with the help of Vietnam.
Futurist Herman Kahn predicted "an intense confrontation" between the Soviets and the Chinese Communists in the next decade.
Red China has decided to penalize stubborn offenders against birth control policies. If a third child is born in a family, both the parents will lose 10 per cent of their monthly salaries until the child reaches the age of 14. A fourth child would cost 15 per cent of monthly salaries and a fifth child 20 per cent.
AUGUST 14 - Vietnam claimed Red China has 30 divisions in place for another attack on Vietnam, and Red China demanded Vietnam get its troops out of Laos and Cambodia. These charges were swapped at the 10th session of peace talks aimed at avoiding a repetition of the February 17-March 17 undeclared war.
The son of a Chinese Communist party cadre has been sentenced to three years detention for five rapes and assault and battery against a worker.
AUGUST 15 - One hundred million Chinese on the mainland have suffered political persecution since 1966, according to a wall poster in Peiping. The same poster said over 400,000 persons were beaten to death during the "cultural revolution."
Two ringleaders arrested after a "serious political incident" on Hainan Island have been given heavy prison sentences, Hainan radio reported, for "looting, fighting and destruction."