Secondary schools in Red China are not schools in the ordinary sense of the word, but places of child labor, according to a case study published in the September-October issue of Freedom at Issue. This publication of Freedom House monitors human rights and civil liberties throughout the world.
William P. Bundy, editor of Foreign Affairs, said Red China does not play an important role in the international arena despite its size and population. The former assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs makes the assessment in the October issue.
SEPTEMBER 17 - Red China believes war with the Soviet Union is unavoidable, said Liao Cheng-chih, a veteran member of Chinese Communist party central committee, in Peiping.
Lord Killanin, president of International Olympic Committee, said Red China has made clear it will not enter the Olympics as long as the Republic of China is a member.
SEPTEMBER 18 - The most remarkable aspect of the "great guiding principles" of Red China's "state planning commission" is the unabashed declaration that Peiping will be open to advanced foreign technology and equipment, an about-turn after two years of insisting on a "do-it-yourself' development strategy. Peiping said it will curb the drift to regional autonomy and the centrifugal tendencies that developed in the chaos of the "cultural revolution."
The "gang of four" once tried to sever contact between Red China's news agency and Mao Tse-tung, a Hongkong Communist newspaper reported.
SEPTEMBER 19 - Diplomats from the Soviet Union and seven other Communist countries walked out of a Peiping lunch for visiting Niger President Seyni Kountche when Li Hsien-nien referred to the Soviet Union as "the most dangerous enemy of African countries and peoples."
Red China's modernization drive is being hindered by too few technical experts, a Peiping newspaper said. Kwangming Daily called for experts in agriculture, industry, defense and science and technology to upgrade Red China's status.
A purge of military leaders is being carried out in Red China. Hsu Hsiang-chien, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party's military commission, said the army was investigating military men who were associated with the "gang of four."
Mao Tse-tung was a TV fan who kept watching even from his sickbed, Kwangming Daily said.
An American businessman wounded in a stabbing attack by a Chinese man on a Peiping street remained in the hospital under observation. Richard Talmadge, 33, of New York City, was cut around the upper part of his body. His attacker was arrested.
SEPTEMBER 20 - The Chinese Communists have been stepping up their infiltration and subversive activities in Taiwan, Vice Foreign Minister Fredrick Chien said in Taipei. In Washington, the leader of a delegation of free Chinese journalists said some 2,000 Chinese Communist agents had tried to infiltrate Taiwan recently.
President Jimmy Carter said that if the Chinese Communists insist on using force against Taiwan, he cannot predict the outcome of U.S. efforts to "normalize relations" with Peiping. He said the United States has an agreement with the Republic of China to ensure its safety. The U.S. wants peace in that region, he told more than 40 editors of 21 Reader's Digest editions.
Red China seeks closer ties with the United States only because it wants to involve America in a war with the Soviet Union and to see both superpowers crippled, said Dr. Ray S. Cline, director of studies of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, in the Christian Science Monitor.
Many workers in Red China will receive their first pay raise in 14 years in October, Kyodo news agency said. Kyodo said increases will range from 15 to 20 per cent for 40 per cent of factory workers.
SEPTEMBER 21 - Ambassador of the Republic of China James Shen said in Seattle that "normalization of relations between Washington and Peiping is not inevitable." Shen said "normalization" would harm the Republic of China.
A delayed intelligence report from the Chinese mainland indicated that the Chinese Communist regime was shocked when it learned of the defection of Fan Yuan-yen, then a squadron leader of the Communist air force, July 7. The next day military districts received orders to suspend flying training for all pilots and start a program of reindoctrination.
SEPTEMBER 22 - The Carter administration is staging a retreat in its relations with Red China, Chang Hsiang-shan, vice president of the Peiping Society for Friendship with Japan, said in Peiping.
George Bush, former chief of the U.S. liaison mission in Peiping, said after a meeting with Teng Hsiao-ping that they had "minimal discussions" on the subject of Sino-American "normalization." "I have no reason to feel there is any flexibility in (Red) China's position," Bush said.
SEPTEMBER 23 - The Peiping regime's "ministry of water conservancy and power" said construction of the last 20 years has been of little use in the face of floods, waterlogging and drought.
A big character poster lashing out at Hua Kuo-feng, Yeh Chien-ying, Teng Hsiao-ping and Wang Tung-hsing appeared in downtown. Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang, according to an intelligence report from the Chinese mainland.
SEPTEMBER 24 - Fallout containing radio-activity nearly 200 times the normal level has been detected in central Japan, health officials said. Authorities in Nagoya said the fallout was caused by Red China's nuclear test last week.
SEPTEMBER 25 - An anti-Communist organization was broken up by the Communist authorities in Tientsin recently, an intelligence agent on the mainland reported to Taipei. Four members of an anti-Communist group led by Hung Heng-ming, a history instructor at Tientsin University, were arrested and tried in public. They were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
A friend of Teng Hsiao-ping has been appointed director of the general political department of the Red Chinese army. He is Wei Kuo-ching, top party leader of Kwangtung province and a member of the politburo.
Recent armed clashes between Cambodia and Vietnam were provoked by the Phnom Penh regime with Chinese Communist backing, the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap reported.
Teng Hsiao-ping told a visiting West German group there was no chance of warming up Peiping-Moscow relations for a generation or more.
SEPTEMBER 26 - The Japanese Communist party announced its opposition to the conclusion of a peace and friendship treaty with Red China, saying Peiping has continued to interfere in party affairs.
SEPTEMBER 27 - Three Red Chinese provinces - Szechwan, Hupeh and Fukien - are still gripped by political strife between provincial authorities and remnants of "gang of four" followers, according to provincial radio broadcasts.
U.S. Representative Philip Crane criticized the Carter administration for "following a clear and deliberate double standard in its diplomatic policies." Crane, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, said the Carter administration's diplomatic overtures to Red China are "the most brutal testimony to the unwillingness of the administration to see the difference between friend and enemy."
SEPTEMBER 28 - An American political scientist has warned the United States against pro viding arms to Red China. Dr. Stanley Hoffmann, professor of government and chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, wrote: "It makes no sense to bolster (Red) China's power by providing Peiping with weapons it could use in a war against the Soviet Union".
Representative John M. Ashbrook (R-Ohio) said the United States should not shut its eyes to the massacre of innocent people on the Communist-controlled mainland of China.
Red China, closest supporter of the Communist regime that now rules Cambodia, gave an unusually warm welcome to the visit of a Cambodian delegation headed by Prime Minister Pol Pot. He was met by Hua Kuo-feng, Teng Hsiao-ping, Li Hsien-nien and other high officials.
The Chinese who knifed and wounded American businessman Richard Talmadge in Peiping earlier this month was executed, the Paris daily Le Monde reported. The attacker's name was not made public, nor was the mode of execution revealed.
People should be paid according to their work, People's Daily said, dissecting what it called the socialist principle "to each according to his work" and claiming that opposition to this was "idealism run wild and metaphysics rampant." Everyone must work. "More work, more pay; less work, less pay; he who does not work, neither shall he eat... to the masses of laboring people this is a great liberation and fundamental emancipation," the paper said.
SEPTEMBER 29 - Hodding Carter III, spokesman for the State Department, said there was no new development coming out of the bilateral talks between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Chinese Communist "foreign minister" Huang Hwa at the U.N.
Czechoslovakia's Communist party newspaper Rude Pravo warned that Red China is preparing for a new war and called for an offensive against the policy of the Red Chinese leadership.
Red China has appointed Yang Yung, the former commander of the strategic Sinkiang military region, as deputy chief of the army general staff.
SEPTEMBER 30 - Chinese Communist cultural leaders purged during the "cultural revolution" made a comeback at a banquet given by Hua Kuo-feng to mark October 1. Chou Yang, 71, a translator of Tolstoy, was a vice minister of culture and in charge of propaganda before falling victim to the Red Guards at the end of December, 1966. Hsia Yen, 77, a writer and dramatist, was "vice minister of culture" from 1954 to 1965. He was dismissed and accused of being "the agent of the Chinese Communist Khrushchev" (former "president" Liu Shao-chi) in cultural and artistic circles in August of 1967.
The Chinese Communist "foreign minister," Huang Hua, told the U.N. General Assembly that the struggle between the U.S. and Soviet superpowers threatens war, with Russia posing the greater danger. "Judging from the current overall picture of the rivalry between the hegemonic powers, the United States is on the defensive while the Soviet Union is on the offensive," Huang said.
OCTOBER 1 - Factory life on the Chinese mainland is miserable and an improvement of working conditions is difficult because of lagging productiveness, said the Far Eastern Economic Review of Hongkong.
Anti-Hua Kuo-feng forces are gaining momentum on the Chinese mainland and the Peiping powerholders have launched a string of bloody massacres to eliminate dissidents, intelligence sources said in Taipei.
The Soviet Union briefly abandoned its bitter criticism of Red China, calling for "fully normalized" relations and an end to flare-ups on the border. The statements came in telegrams from Soviet leaders on the 28th anniversary of the Peiping regime.
OCTOBER 2 - A 10-year experiment to implement theoretical socialism failed in Red China, a former student at a university in Shanghai said. This is the reason for some of the changes now taking place there, Andrew Kirkpatrick said in Hongkong. He said the most staggering thing he saw at the end of the experiment was the extreme apathy that permeated all walks of life.
Pravda said Red Chinese "foreign minister" Huang Hua set a new record for "anti-Soviet coarseness and insinuations" in his speech to the United Nations. Moscow said the speech fooled no one and only showed the Chinese Communists' hostile nature.
Relations between Red China and Albania are continuing on a lukewarm basis. For the first time this year the Albanian Party of Labor did not take part in organizing the ceremony held in Tirana to mark Peiping's October 1 anniversary.
OCTOBER 3 - Red China has reshuffled a few more military leaders in its provinces. The latest appointments, disclosed in provincial broadcasts monitored in Hongkong, include the assignment of Hsiang Chung-hua, a former deputy chief of staff, to the post of political commissar of the Canton military region.
OCTOBER 4 - The economy of Red China attained zero growth rate last year, the Wall Street Journal said, reporting considerable economic turmoil, especially after the death of Mao Tse-tung in September. Li Hsien-nien told Journal editors there had been "minor incidents" along the Soviet border.
Three coastal provinces in Southeast China Chekiang, Fukien and Kwangtung have recently been beset by tension and disorder, according to reports in Hongkong. The reports said the tense situation stems from strengthening of military precautions against sabotage and upheavals engineered by anti-Communist organizations and followers of the "gang of four."
The primary objective of Red China's pursuit of "normalization" with the United States is to give Marxism-Maoism a chance to spread among the American workers, Huang Hua, Peiping's "foreign minister," is quoted as saying in an intelligence report. Huang admitted that the United States would not accept Peiping's demands and said there is no possibility of formal ties between Washington and Peiping in the next year or two.
OCTOBER 5 - Sharply increased prices are turning German importers away from the Chinese mainland to other supply sources for Asian foodstuffs. Subsidized and price-manipulated by Peiping authorities under the "hungry exports" policy, food from the Chinese mainland had been low in price for many years. But with the fall Canton trade fair, German importers found prices of Red Chinese groceries up sharply. Prices of canned fruits have risen 17 per cent, noodles 34 per cent and black mushrooms 60 per cent.
Longing for a change, youths of the Chinese mainland provinces of Hunan, Hupei and Kiangsi are calling on the mainland people to topple the new Peiping powerholders headed by Hua Kuo-feng, an intelligence report from the mainland said.
Many people still serve as beasts of burden on the Communist-controlled mainland of China, according to Carl T. Rowan, former director of the U.S. Information Agency. In an article written in Canton, Rowan said Red China is still a very poor land.
Intelligence sources in Taiwan reported that Chinese Communist "foreign minister" Huang Hua has ridiculed U.S. President Jimmy Carter's promotion of human rights. "We always believe the various human right declarations made by Carter are all phony and worthless," he said.
OCTOBER 6 - Health authorities in Red China have been unable to control epidemics plaguing southern provinces since last June, intelligence sources said in Taipei. The sources said hospitals and clinics in Canton were filled with flu and typhoid patients.
Washington "normalization of relations" with the Chinese Communists could lead Peiping to cooperate with the Soviets, according to Dr. Franz Michael, professor emeritus at the Sino-Soviet Studies Institute of George Washington University.
The Chinese Communist leadership expressed concern that the big purge is going too slowly. A joint editorial in People's Daily, Red Flag and Liberation Army Daily confirmed public indifference to the campaign. The editorial said: "The gang would not fall if we did not hit them, and, though they have fallen, their poisonous influence will not vanish by itself."
Another former Red Chinese deputy chief of staff, Chang Ai-ping, has been reinstated in the military reshuffle. He is reportedly director of the "Science and Technology Commission for National Defense."
Mao An-ching, son of Mao Tse-tung, said six of his family members and relatives died for Chinese Communism, Hongkong Communist newspapers reported. Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po identified them as Yang Kai-hui, Mao's second wife and An-ching's mother; Mao Tse-tan and Mao Tse-ming, Mao's brothers; Mao Chu-hsiyng, Tse tan's son; Mao Tse-chian, Mao's sister; and Mao An-ying, An-ching's elder brother.
OCTOBER 7 - Relations between Washington and Peiping, which peaked with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's visit to the Chinese mainland August 22-26, are showing signs of coolness. "Normalization of relations" between Washington and Peiping is no longer the topic of the day in the American capital. The first sign of cooling came from Teng Hsiao-ping, who told American journalists in Peiping September 6 that he considered the Vance visit a "setback".
Delays at Red Chinese ports have diminished over the last 12 months but are still serious, according to Klaus Tickmers, chairman of the German shipping company Rickmers Line AG. Rick mers, speaking in London, said that during the political unrest which preceded the death of Mao Tse-tung, ships were delayed for as long as 90 days.
Peiping pressure resulted in Egypt withdrawing its newly acquired Chinese Communist missiles from a military parade in Cairo, informed sources said. They added that the Chinese Communist "ambassador" intervened after a rehearsal in which lorries carrying Soviet missiles were preceded by empty lorries which were scheduled to carry the Red Chinese missiles.
OCTOBER 8 - Fukien, a Chinese mainland southern coastal province, has been plunged into chaos because of assassinations, plundering and sabotage by followers of the "gang of four," said an intelligence report reaching Taipei.
OCTOBER 9 - Internal jostling of Chinese Communist party personnel is still going. People's Daily said: "Up to now, some comrades, especially those working as cadres, still have little understanding of the party's cadre policy. Conclusions about many cadres under examination are still pending. Some cadres, though already cleared, are still hung up rather than liberated."
Lin Feng, former vice chairman of the "people's congress," who was dismissed during the "cultural revolution," is now said to have been "persecuted by Lin Piao and the gang of four" and has been posthumously rehabilitated in Peiping. Lin Feng died after a "lingering illness" on September 29 at the age of 71.
OCTOBER 10- Ross Munro, Peiping correspondent of the Toronto Globe and Mail, said restriction on movement is the single greatest limitation of freedom the Peiping regime imposes on mainland Chinese. Munro said, "All but a tiny minority of (Red) China's 650 million peasants don't have the right to move to the cities."
The Chinese Communist party, moving ahead with a rectification campaign and the reinterpretation of Mao Tse-tung's policies, reopened its higher party school. The party also announced a decision to reopen party schools at levels down to municipalities.
OCTOBER 11- Hangchow suffered badly in 1974, 1975 and possibly 1976 from Chinese Communist power struggles preceding Mao Tse-tung's death. Some details of the disorder and violence were reported by Harrison E. Salisbury, former correspondent of the New York Times, who visited Hangchow.
Wherever a visitor goes today in mainland China, the one thing he's certain to hear is an attack on the "gang of four." In a 16-day visit, a group of Associated Press executive and directors heard the purged radical leaders blamed for almost every conceivable setback Red China has suffered in recent years.
George Bush, ex-chief of the U.S. liaison mission in Peiping, said he advocates "normalization of relations" with Red China but not on Peiping's terms. Bush, who arrived in Hongkong after a 17-day trip to mainland China, said the United States has already abandoned too many international commitments.
The Peiping regime is still executing mainland Chinese for political reasons, the Toronto Globe and Mail Peiping correspondent, Ross Munro, reported.
OCTOBER 12 - The Chinese Communist party's central committee called for full-scale restoration of party academic organizations at all levels and renewed learning of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Tse-tung thought, according to Peiping radio.
Red China has been experiencing an economic downturn since 1974 and political uncertainty and other problems will make it difficult to reverse the tide, according to a leading economist. Writing for the Asia Mail of October, Dr. Nicholas R. Lardy, professor of economics at Yale University, attributed the economic downturn to political disruption.
The Peiping regime does not have a written code of law and politics is in command of the legal process, according to Ross Munro, Peiping correspondent of the Toronto Globe and Mail. Munro said there are several million prisoners in labor reform camps on the Chinese mainland.
Radio Foochow, broadcasting from the capital of trouble-ridden Fukien province, called for "vigorous and resolute struggle against embezzlers, grafters, speculators and their various illegal capitalist activities. "
The Times of London, in a special report on Red China, said diplomats believe the regime's leadership is lacking in foreign affairs experts.
OCTOBER 13 - Most Americans want the Republic of China to remain free and safe, but they will have to voice their desire aloud so that decision-makers in Washington will pay more attention, Father Raymond de Jaegher said in Washington. Speaking for Paul Cardinal Yupin at a news conference at the National Press Club, Father de Jaegher said the American people should voice their opposition to "normalization of relations" between Washington and Peiping and help keep "free China free."
The U.S. State Department has announced that no plans are under consideration to sell military equipment to Red China.
The United States should not accede to Red China's demands for "normalization of relations," said U.S. Senator William Roth (R-Del.). Testifying before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the House International Affairs Committee, Senator Roth said: "The American people want a foreign policy that is based on strength and confidence. To accede to Red China's demands in my judgment would be a severe blow to the credibility of our foreign policy at home. Most Americans, myself among them, would be deeply disturbed by a step based on expediency rather than rooted in principle."
OCTOBER 14 - Red China's grain production in 1977 will fall short of the level it reached in 1976, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department's quarterly evaluation of world agriculture pointed to severe drought in the winter of 1976 and early spring of 1977. Wheat production by Red China in 1977 is expected to be 40 million tons, or 7 per cent below the record of 1976 harvest.
Discontent and hostility toward Hua Kuo-feng have escalated among Communist cadres and workers in the last several months, intelligence reports from the mainland said in Taipei. The reports pointed out that Hua expedited compilation and publication of the fifth volume of Mao Tse-tung's works to lift his own prestige.
OCTOBER 15 - Lack of fundamental individual freedom ... people living in fear ... strict rationing of all daily necessities ... people living on a bare minimum while a black market flourishes ... These are some of the impressions brought back by a Chinese girl student who recently made a private visit to Kwangtung. Writing in the South China Morning Post, she was identified as Christine Loh, a Hongkong-born Chinese girl studying law at Hull in England.
Chinese Communist troops shot 25 farmers to death in Anchi, Fukien, last July 20 after a local granary was ransacked by hungry peasants, according to an intelligence report reaching Taipei.
Failure to root out the influence of the "gang of four" has led the Chinese Communist leadership to uncertainty about how the purge should continue, a Washington Post report said.