His pronouncements thus far are pedestrian. Visiting foreigners meeting him have come away noncommittal. No one has yet been brave enough to say that Hua is a country bumpkin. At the memorial service for Mao, he wet his fingers to turn the pages of the manuscript. Such shots were subsequently cut out of the filmed record.
Although a "cult of Hua" is in the making, there is reason to believe that he is a front man and transitional. Is it Hua who got rid of Teng Hsiao-ping and then turned torrents of abuse loose to destroy Chiang Ching and the Shanghai Mafia? Could he have learned so much from Mao in such a brief period of time? His very claims to have been anointed by Mao lack any convincing proof.
Hua has announced no program or policies. He has announced only that the thought of Mao will be perpetuated. Is that the thought of Mao as interpreted by Chou En-lai or by Chiang Ching?
Concepts of the radicals and the revisionists are still arrayed against each other. Hua has made no choices, possibly because he lacks the power to do so. The economy skitters along the edge of a precipice. Politics is no longer to interfere with production. "But it does. Hua is sticking to the Chiang Ching doctrine that such "bourgeois rights" as higher wages and shorter hours are evil.
No matter who his props may be, Hua does not appear strong enough to hold the pieces together for long. The struggle for power on the Chinese mainland is not over; it has scarcely begun.
Following is the record of events on and concerned with the Chinese mainland in the period from October 16 to November 16:
OCTOBER 16 - Chinese Communist sources confirmed an attempted coup by "radical" leaders. Wall posters identifying the plotters as Chiang Ching and the "Shanghai trio" appeared in Shanghai and Wuhan, Kyodo news service reported in Tokyo.
Western visitors to Shanghai said: "all hell broke loose" in the mainland's largest city as thousands of people demonstrated in support of the purge of Mao Tse-tung's widow and three Communist party leaders from Shanghai.
Troops with fixed bayonets were keeping strict guard in Peiping, possibly in connection with the arrest of four radical leaders who allegedly plotted against the party and regime, Asahi Shimbun reported.
The Chinese Communist army and the so-called moderates in the Communist party are giving only temporary support to Hua Kuo-feng to oust the radicals headed by Mao Tse-tung's widow, the Sing Tao Wan Pao, a right-leaning newspaper, said in Hongkong.
The reappearance in Peiping of a television hero resembling Teng Hsiao-ping prompted speculation that he might make a political comeback, Kyodo news service said.
OCTOBER 17 - A million or more people demonstrated in the Shanghai area in support of the purge of Mao Tse-tung's widow and three others, an American visitor to the city reported.
Posters seen in Shanghai accused the four Peiping conspirators - including Chiang Ching - of having hastened Mao's death by "tormenting" him during the last months of his life.
The ousted Teng Hsiao-ping is in a hospital with gunshot wounds inflicted when he forced his way in to see Mao Tse-tung, the Japanese newspaper Mainichi reported.
An Asahi Shimbun correspondent in Peiping reported the radical leaders headed by Chiang Ching were alive and either under arrest or house arrest in Peiping. The same correspondent said the coup planned by Chiang and her group to overthrow Hua Kuo-feng was bared only seven hours before it was to have been carried out.
OCTOBER 18 - A wall poster in Peiping accused Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, of trying to murder her husband. The poster, pasted up on the campus of Peking University, charged that she personally tried to kill Mao on his deathbed.
A top Shanghai administrator was accused in Peiping wall posters of organizing a militia army of one million in an effort to take the mainland's largest city by force. Sources in Shanghai reported the posters accused Communist party secretary Ma Tien-shui of arming the militia and plotting to grab control of the harbor, radio station and other key locations.
People in some parts of mainland are buying up alcoholic beverages and firecrackers in preparation for celebrations when the purge of Mao Tse-tung's widow and other radical leaders is announced officially, travelers said in Hongkong.
Peiping's leaders are too preoccupied with internal problems, including the economic setbacks resulting from disastrous earthquakes last summer, to pay much attention to relations with the United States or Russia, according to an analysis by U.S. News and World Report.
The works of two of the principal conspirators in the recent abortive coup in Peiping, "vice premier" Chang Chun-chiao and theoretician Yao Wen-yuan, disappeared from the shelves of mainland bookshops but were still available in translation.
OCTOBER 19 – The State Department lodged a protest with the Chinese Communist regime over its nuclear blast of three weeks ago which brought radioactive fallout in parts of the United States.
Mass demonstrations designed to destroy the base of party "radicals" in Shanghai continued for the fourth straight day. New posters showed a caricature of Mao's wife with a dagger through her head.
Four Shanghai municipal leaders close to the radical group that attempted a coup d'etat in Peiping were arrested last week-end, a source in Peiping said. The four were Ma Tien-shui, Mrs. Wang Hsiu-chen, Chiu Chun-lin and Hsu Ching-hsien.
People of the mainland got their first official word that the regime of Hua Kuo-feng had defeated an attempted coup following the death of Mao Tse-tung September 9.
Mao Yuan-hsin, said to be Mao's nephew, cooperated with the radical group in an attempt to seize power in Red China, Kyodo reported.
Major military commands in Red China's regional areas have thrown their support behind new Communist party leader Hua Kuo-feng and the purge of radicals, Hongkong reports said.
OCTOBER 20 - Yao Wen-yuan, the fiery ideologue who helped spark the tumultuous "cultural revolution," was openly attacked in Peiping for the first time since the anti-leftist campaign began. Students at the Peking Institute of Chemistry hung a huge black-and-yellow slogan at the doorway of the academy, declaring "down with Yao Wen-yuan."
Mao Tse-tung was used by the Chinese Communist press to denounce his widow, Chiang Ching. "New China News Agency" reported that cadres and peasants of Tonghou people's commune studied Mao's teaching "the bourgeoisie exists in the party," adding that Mao "taught us never to take pity on evil snakes, whether they are snakes who show their poisonous fangs or who have changed in to beautiful women."
Red Guards and students in Shanghai said "drastic hand-to-hand combat" was under way against "maggots" who tried to seize power in Red China, according to a Shanghai broadcast.
OCTOBER 21 - Several million people rallied in Peiping in support of the purge of Mao Tse-tung's widow and other radical leaders. The rally at Tienanmen also proclaimed support for Hua Kuo-feng.
Peiping radio confirmed the promotion of Hua Kuo-feng to "chairman" of the Chinese Communist party.
"Down with Chiang Ching" was shouted over and over again by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Peiping. One demonstrator taking up the cry was Mao Tse-tung's niece, "vice minister for foreign affairs" Wang Hai-jung.
Photographs of Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, and three other "radical" leaders who reportedly plotted a coup against Hua Kuo-feng were removed from a public notice board in Peiping, Kyodo reported.
Thousands of wall posters at Peking University clamored for the death penalty for Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, and the three top Chinese Communist leaders accused of a coup d'etat attempt.
Peiping announced the appointment of Hua Kuo-feng as "chairman" of the Communist party and said the plot by Mao Tse-tung's widow and other radicals to seize power had been crushed. "The 'party central committee' headed by 'chairman' Hua Kuo-feng adopted resolute and decisive measures to crush the counterrevolutionary conspiratorial clique and liquidated a bane inside the party," "New China News Agency" said.
OCTOBER 22 - Mass demonstrations, the largest since the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s, were resumed in Peiping.
Mao Yuan-hsin, nephew of Mao Tse-tung, was killed by gunfire when Chiang Ching and her followers were arrested, an intelligence report reaching Taipei said. According to the report, Wang Hung-wen was seriously wounded and many others were arrested besides Chiang, Wang, Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan.
Troops supporting Hua Kuo-feng moved into Shanghai almost simultaneously when leaders of the "Shanghai Mafia" were arrested in Peiping, according to an intelligence report in Taipei. The report said troops under the command of Hsu Shih-yu, commander of the Canton Military Region, entered Shanghai in early October and rounded up followers of Chiang Ching, Wang Hung-wen, Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan.
The Peiping regime urged newspapers to continue to propagate the "ideal of communization of the world," according to Hsinhua news agency.
OCTOBER 23 - The purged radical leaders of the Chinese Communists are being questioned in Peiping about their role in the aborted coup d'etat, a Tokyo newspaper said. The Mainichi Shimbun said Chinese Communist authorities have been interrogating Chiang Ching, widow of Mao Tse-tung, and her three radical cohorts.
Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen, Chiang Ching's three principal accomplices in her alleged attempt at coup d'etat, have been replaced in their Shanghai party positions. Chang is replaced as Shanghai party committee first secretary by Su Chen-hua, Yao is replaced by Peng Chung and Wang as third secretary by Ni Chih-fu.
A few portraits of Chou En-lai were carried alongside those of Hua Kuo-feng by long lines of demonstrators marching across Tienanmen. Chou En-lai has not been mentioned in the official press since the start of the year.
OCTOBER 24 - Hua Kuo-feng made his first public appearance as Peiping's confirmed top leader. Peiping "mayor" Wu Teh told a Peiping crowd of 1 million that Red China had faced "real danger" from a coup attempt.
Tokyo sources said one of two daughters of Mao and Chiang Ching has been missing since the arrest of the four radical Communist leaders in Peiping. She is believed to be Lee Na, probably the wife of Wang Hung-wen, one of the "black quartet" arrested for an attempted coup after the death of Mao.
OCTOBER 25 - Long before his death, Mao Tse-tung accused his wife, Chiang Ching, of seeking to establish herself as his successor and warned her against doing so, according to an editorial published in the three leading organs of Red China.
Four radical leaders accused of trying to seize power in Red China had an "inveterate hatred" for the military, Peiping said.
The "gang of four" recently purged on the Chinese mainland was directly involved in the riots that terrorized Hongkong and Kowloon in 1967, the Tien Tien Daily reported in Hongkong. The paper also said the group was responsible for persecution of overseas Chinese who returned to the mainland during the "cultural revolution."
OCTOBER 26 - The real power in Red China behind the facade of Hua Kuo-feng's new leadership probably lies in the hands of a cabal referred to in Taipei as the "Huang-an clique." Key figures were identified as "vice premier" Li Hsien-nien; Chen Hsi-lien, commander of the Peiping military region; Li Teh-sheng, commander of the Shenyang military region; and Hsu Shih-yu, commander of the Canton military region. All four are from Huang-an county in Hupei province.
Ma Tien-shui, vice chairman of the Shanghai revolutionary committee, presided over a Shanghai rally to acclaim Hua Kuo-feng's appointment as party "chairman" and condemn the "gang of four." Ma was earlier reported in trouble for his association with Chiang Ching and her group.
OCTOBER 27 - Signs of unrest and turmoil have appeared in the provinces of Shangtung and Fukien in the wake of the purge of the "gang of four" led by Chiang Ching, according to Hsinhua. Tseng Shih-yu, commander of the Tsinan military region, called for "suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, rioters, and robbers."
Mao Tse-tung's widow and other radical leaders were "exposed" by Hua Kuo-feng after forging a number of documents, including a "last adjuration" by Mao, according to a Chinese Communist party newspaper.
Chiang Ching disclosed many state and party secrets to American Prof. Roxanne Witke in a series of interviews in Red China in 1972, a Hongkong newspaper reported. Prof. Witke of New York State University reportedly is writing a book on Mao's widow to be published next spring.
The director of the "New China News Agency" was put to work sweeping classrooms at a Peiping university because he refused to publish a speech by Chiang Ching, a Hongkong newspaper reported. Ming Pao said Chu Mu-chih did not publish the speech because Mao said it was "no good."
Peiping accused the Soviet Union of trying to provoke armed struggle in southern Africa to foil the shuttle diplomacy of the United States and control black African liberation movements.
OCTOBER 28 - A Chinese Communist official affirmed that the gang of four would not be executed. But he added that there was no question of their being politically re-educated.
Reports of Chiang Ching's ambition to become "empress of China" have appeared in many local newspapers in mainland China.
OCTOBER 29 - A commission of inquiry into the crimes of the gang of four was created by a decision of the Chinese Communist central committee. It will be headed by "marshal" Yeh Chien-ying, party vice chairman and "defense minister."
The Boston Globe reported that a lone gunman acting for Mao Tse-tung's widow three weeks ago shot at a procession of government limousines, one of which carried Hua Kuo-feng. It said the gunman was captured by security police and no one was injured.
Su Chen-hua, an alternate member of the political bureau, has been appointed Shanghai's new "mayor." Su was purged during the "cultural revolution" and later rehabilitated.
Victor Louis, a Soviet journalist who writes for London's Evening News, said in a dispatch from near the Soviet-Chinese Communist border that "Russia and (Red) China are getting friendly again." Louis in the past has leaked impending changes in Soviet attitudes on major policy issues.
Peiping has rejected messages of congratulations sent to Hua Kuo-feng by the Soviet Union and East European Communist leaders. A Chinese Communist spokesman said "we do not have party to party relations."
OCTOBER 31 - The central committee of the Chinese Communist party has stripped Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen of all their posts inside and outside the party in Shanghai, a broadcast of the "New China News Agency" said.
NOVEMBER 1 - Wall posters in Canton said former Chinese Communist "vice premier" Teng Hsiao-ping and ousted Peiping "mayor" Peng Chen have been included in a five-member committee to investigate crimes committed by Chinese Communist radicals headed by Chiang Ching.
Albanian strongman Enver Hoxha indicated that his Adriatic nation, for years Peiping's only ally in Eastern Europe, was heading toward less reliance on ideological and material support from Peiping.
Wall posters in Shanghai said Chinese Communist "vice premier" Li Hsien-nien has been promoted to "premier" and Communist party vice chairman Yeh Chien-ying has been named chairman of the standing committee of the "national people's congress." However, Kyodo news service later quoted Chinese Communist "foreign ministry" authorities as saying, ''The present premier is Hua Kuo-feng, the defense minister is Yeh Chien-ying and the post of chairman of the standing committee of the national people's congress is vacant."
NOVEMBER 2 - Peiping declared it would unite with all the world's "genuine" Marxist-Leninists and "wage a common struggle for the realization of Communism and the emancipation of all mankind." It said this would involve a "broad united front against imperialism, particularly against the hegemonism of the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States."
NOVEMBER 3 - The new Peiping leadership headed by Hua Kuo-feng announced it will follow policies laid down by Mao Tse-tung.
The London Weekly Review reported that bank robbery has become a popular crime in Red China. These crimes are not reported in the Communist mass media, but wall posters tell the story. Major robberies have been reported recently in such cities as Changsha, Shanghai, Canton and Peiping.
NOVEMBER 4 - Over 300,000 copies of Mao Quotations have been burned by angry city youths undergoing rustication in frontier regions, the Youth Warrior Daily reported in Taipei. Quoting a Communist document issued by the information department of the "Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee," the paper's Hongkong correspondent said the destruction of Mao's little red book took place in Sinkiang and Inner Mongolia, where millions of educated youths from Peiping, Canton and Wuhan are toiling on farms and in factories as menial laborers.
Red China's ousted and disgraced "gang of four" had planned to set up a rival Communist party in the northeast industrial region after their coup attempt failed and from there to counter-attack Peiping, a Japanese report said.
NOVEMBER 5 - People's Daily accused four radical leaders led by Chiang Ching of sabotaging the proletarian revolution in literature and art. The paper said they had for years made use of literature and art as "their springboard for a capitalist restoration in order to realize their criminal aim of usurping party and state power."
The "gang of four" was accused by the new power-holders of the Peiping regime of disrupting the railway transportation system and harming the economy, Hsinhua said.
NOVEMBER 6 - By doing nothing, the top Chinese Communist in Moscow has added to speculation that Peiping-Moscow relations are changing following the death of Mao Tse-tung. The diplomat, charge d'affaires Wang Chin-ching, remained impassively in his seat in Moscow's Kremlin Palace of Congresses throughout the Soviet Union's annual speech marking the anniversary of the Russian revolution. It was the first time since 1970 that Peiping's representative in the hall didn't walk out when the Soviet speaker touched on Red China in his remarks.
NOVEMBER 7 - Thousands of tons of relief goods sent from the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu to the earthquake-afflicted northern Chinese mainland in the wake of the Tangshan catastrophe have been seen and feared by the Chinese Communists. According to refugees who recently fled from the mainland to Hongkong, balloons carrying daily commodities landed in the provinces of Shangtung, Hopeh, Liaoning, Honan, Anhui, Hokiang, Shansi, Kiangsu and Chekiang as well as in Kwangtung, Fukien, Yunnan and Kweichow. More than 100 MIG fighters were ordered to intercept the balloons.
Wall posters at Peking and Tsinghua Universities in Red China indicate a shift away from the strict ideological education schemes once pushed by arrested radical leaders, Kyodo reported. The new position seems to reflect the views of Teng Hsiao-ping, who opposed substituting political attitudes for test grades as the basis for selecting university students.
The Soviet government reported it received greetings from the Chinese Communists on the 59th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. It included the following phrase which didn't appear in the 1975 greetings: ''The Chinese (Communist) people have always cherished their revolutionary friendship with the Soviet people."
The first Soviet movie to be displayed in Peiping in around 10 years has been telecast in Peiping, the Tokyo newspaper Nihon Keizai said. The paper said the film was a documentary of the 1917 Russian revolution.
NOVEMBER 8 - Wielding her powers as Chinese Communist cultural czar, Mao Tse-tung's widow rejected a request by deputies to the 4th "national people's congress" to be shown a controversial movie produced under instructions of Chou En-lai. Chiang Ching defied Mao's instructions on the film "Pioneers" and "resorted to shocking measures" to suppress it, according to People's Daily.
NOVEMBER 9 - The army newspaper Liberation Army Daily disclosed that before his death, Mao Tse-tung warned Hua Kuo-feng that his wife plotted to seize power in Red China.
Red China's "gang of four" ordered more than 200 sex and imperialistic films from Hongkong between June of 1975 and September of 1976, a Hongkong newspaper reported.
NOVEMBER 10 - Peiping's U.S. "ambassador" denounced Soviet disarmament proposals as fraudulent and said Moscow's talk of detente is empty and deceptive. Huang Hua told the General Assembly's main political committee the Soviet Union is the most dangerous source of war in the world.
Chinese Communists have not stopped hard-line propaganda against the Soviet Union. The "New China News Agency" carried a vitriolic commentary denying the Soviet claim that the world community of socialist countries is a voluntary union of countries on an equal footing.
NOVEMBER 11 - Mao Tse-tung's widow and her radical associates tried to pressure Mao and other top Chinese Communist leaders to appoint Chang Chun-chiao as successor to "premier" Chou En-lai when Chou died last January, the "New China News Agency" said. Chang, former chief political commissar of the armed forces and "mayor" of Shanghai, was purged along with Chiang Ching.
At least three anti-Communist groups have sprung up in Kansu province, according to an intelligence report in Taipei. Quoting an unnamed middle-ranking Communist cadre in the Northwest China province, the report said the three groups have some 2,000 members.
NOVEMBER 12 - Red China, showing no signs of softening her hard-line anti-Soviet propaganda, accused the Soviet Union of trying to dominate Africa by force of arms. NCNA denounced Soviet Communist party leader Leonid Brezhnev by name, accusing him of lying and bearing responsibility for a bloodbath in Angola that took more than 100,000 lives.
"In comparison with Mao Tse-tung, who built his revolution on the blood of his own people, both Hitler and Stalin were mere amateurs," Avvenire of Rome commented. Quoting an interview with Franciscan priest Candido Rachelli, the Vatican-supported daily said: "For the victory of his ideas, Mao has literally decimated the Chinese people."
NOVEMBER 13 - A process of crushing the personality cult of Mao Tse-tung is under way on the Chinese mainland, the Far Easten Economic Review reported in Hongkong. The people on the mainland understand that it is Mao and Maoism that are really under attack, the weekly said.
Marriage has become a major problem among the tens of millions of city youths exiled to the countryside on the mainland, according to a Maoist document intercepted by free Chinese agents. The Communist document, issued last January by the "revolutionary committee" in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, disclosed that the city youths under going rustication in rural areas do not want to marry for fear that it would mean permanent residence in the countryside.
Teng Hsiao-ping, ousted last April in the Peiping power struggle, probably played an active role in the purge of Mao Tse-tung's widow and three other radical rivals last month, diplomatic sources in Hongkong said.
NOVEMBER 14 - Hsinhua said the strong earthquake which hit Tangshan on July 28 "caused great losses to the people in both life and property and seriously damaged drainage and irrigation projects."
NOVEMBER 15 - Hua Kuo-feng is far from secure in his new position as head of the Chinese Communist party and regime because he is facing a growing challenge from the military establishment, Taipei experts said. A large number of top commanders have refused to endorse Hua.
Chinese Communist newspapers predicted that the Soviet Union would unleash a surprise attack on Western Europe. The press described the tactics - both conventional and nuclear - which the new czars in the Kremlin would use to carry out such on offensive.
NOVEMBER 16 - Mao Tse-tung's widow, Chiang Ching, tried in March, 1971, to have Chou En-lai's plane shot down as he was returning from a visit to Vietnam, Peiping reports said.
The second strong earthquake in less than four months shook Peiping.