SEPTEMBER 16 - Peiping has formed a three-man military commission to ensure the party's control over the military, London Daily Telegraph correspondent Clare Hollingworth reported from Peiping. The three men are Wang Hung-wen, Teng Hsiao-ping and Chen Hsi-lien.
With Chou En-lai on the sidelines in failing health, the emphasis in Peiping seems to be on forestalling conflict over key leadership positions by making it plain that no one person is going to inherit the authority the ailing Chou used to wield, Hongkong reports said.
Arrest of 35 refugees from the mainland for "illegal" entry brought the total number of refugees detained in Hongkong since the beginning of the year to 5,049. This implies a total of more than 20,000 successful escapes, because only 1 in 4 is apprehended.
SEPTEMBER 17 - A bullet wound in the chest is the real cause of Chou En-lai's prolonged disappearance from public functions, the Kung Sheung Daily News of Hongkong reported. Chou narrowly escaped death and his bodyguard was shot dead in an assassination attempt by a former Red Guard in Peiping May 1, the paper said.
People on the Chinese mainland, especially those living in the major coastal cities, are being told that Hongkong is not the paradise many believe it to be, according to refugees reaching the British crown colony. They said such talks are being given by small groups of former immigrants now touring mainland cities under Peiping sponsor ship.
SEPTEMBER 18 - Chinese Communists re called for destruction a recent issue of one of their principal newspapers, the Kwang Ming Jih Pao. because of an article vaguely criticizing Mao Tse-tung, it was reported in Taipei.
SEPTEMBER 19- Anti-Communist pamphlets have been found inside publications sent to educational institutions on the Chinese mainland from Hongkong in recent months. Special screening committees were reported to have been set up in Canton.
SEPTEMBER 20- Peiping's rulers have revised their "constitution" to make Mao Tse-tung "chief of state," Japanese newspapers reported. They said the question of Mao's successor was left open.
SEPTEMBER 21 - Li Teh-sheng, one of the five "vice chairmen" of the Chinese Communist party central committee, has apparently been purged, according to specialists on Chinese Communist affairs in Taipei.
SEPTEMBER 23 - A news item which could mean that Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, has recently been given new responsibilities appeared on the front page of People's Daily. In a report on a special opera performance given in honor of Mrs. Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippines president, the newspaper said Chiang Ching had entrusted the cultural group under the "state council" with the organization of the show.
SEPTEMBER 24 - A German journalistic observer of Far Eastern affairs said a gigantic question mark hangs over the fate of the Peiping regime - what will happen after Mao and Chou. Television correspondent and author H.W. Vahlefeld said Mao's death would "shake up" the Chinese mainland.
SEPTEMBER 25 - "Despite bickering and infighting at the top, Communist China is, without doubt, the most regimented society on the face of the earth. In (Red) China today, many things are left unsaid because it is the better part of wisdom to leave them so. What is being said is only standardized and rigid." These are some of the impressions of Jan S. Prybyla, professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University, after an extended visit to the Chinese mainland.
SEPTEMBER 26 - Republic of China Ambassador James C.H. Shen told the American public that people on the Chinese mainland are still deeply infused with Confucian thought and that the current malevolent anti-Confucius campaign of the Chinese Communists will ultimately fail.
SEPTEMBER 27 - President Chiang Kai-shek's portraits along with anti-Communist leaflets and gift parcels were recently found in towns along the coasts of southern Fukien and northern Kwangtung, according to Hongkong arrivals from the Chinese mainland.
The official Indonesian Army newspaper accused four Communist Chinese of masterminding and financing an anti-Indonesian demonstration in Portuguese Timor.
SEPTEMBER 29 - "Deputy premier" Teng Hsiao-ping has been chosen to succeed the ailing Chou En-lai, and some analysts believe that a successor to Mao Tse-tung has also been chosen - Wang Hung-wen, the 38-year-old leader from Shanghai - according to a report published in Newsweek.
SEPTEMBER 30 - The Peiping regime, marking the eve of its 25th anniversary, declared that power struggle "will continue for a long time to come." The declaration came in an editorial jointly published by People's Daily, Red Flag and Liberation Army Daily.
Chou En-lai's illness has raised serious questions about the future of U.S. relations with the Peiping regime, according to an analysis in U. S. News & World Report.
Floods this year almost destroyed part of Shengli oilfield in the Pohai Bay area, "New China News Agency" disclosed. The floods were caused by continuous heavy rain and sea tides.
OCTOBER 1 - Twenty-five years after the establishment of the Peiping regime, the Chinese mainland is beset by uncertainties about its future, according to a Hongkong dispatch in the New York Times. Joseph Lelyveld said: "The question of succession looms large because of uncertainty as to whether it can be brought off smoothly. But there are more profound questions facing the regime. First among these is whether the Maoist model of revolutionary leadership will survive Mao."
OCTOBER 2- Li Teh-sheng, No.6 in the Chinese Communist hierarchy and under heavy wall poster attack this year, was mentioned by the official media for the first time in five months. NCNA said Li attended October celebrations in the northeastern city of Shenyang, where he has his headquarters, but did not say what position he holds.
A total of 1,014 refugees were known to have escaped to Hongkong from the Chinese mainland during the period from September 1 to 29.
Peiping hailed Arab oil price hikes as an "historic pioneering action" which opened a new dimension for defense of national resources against "imperialist plunder and exploitation." Chiao Kuan-hua, Peiping's "vice foreign minister," lashed out at both the Soviet Union and the United States in a policy speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
OCTOBER 3 - Two top commissars in Peiping's armed forces, more than a score of leading military officers and many high party and state officials purged during the "cultural revolution" have been politically rehabilitated. Their re-emergence came to light as NCNA published a list of persons attending a reception in Peiping. Hsiao Hua, who served as the chief commissar of the armed forces from 1964 to 1968, and Yu Lichin, once the top commissar of the air force, were among those rehabilitated.
John Burns, the Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent in Peiping, said in a story on People's Daily that it is a newspaper which employs 1,000 people but no reporters, assigns a third of its editors to farm labor on a full-time basis, takes two months to write an editorial and buries the news of President Richard Nixon's resignation as a four-paragraph item on an inside page.
OCTOBER 4 - Experts on Chinese Communist affairs in Vienna predicted that chaos and factional struggle would erupt in the Peiping regime after the deaths of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai.
Commenting on low-key celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Chinese Communist regime, the Economist of London said Mao's failure to appear and the illness of Chou En-lai indicated the "question of succession hangs heavier than ever over Peiping these days."
OCTOBER 6 - Unusually heavy air traffic has been seen round Peiping, possibly signaling a major meeting of the leadership, diplomatic sources said. Six civilian aircraft landed and took off within 45 minutes at Peiping's military airport, which is closed to foreigners but can be seen from the top of the nearby summer palace. Only top-level officials would rate special flights, observers said.
OCTOBER 7 - Mao Tse-tung has left Peiping for two months to let his wife, Chiang Ching, and her followers demonstrate their ability to run the "state" machine, Taipei mainland watchers said. Specialists in Communist affairs asserted Mao had been away from Peiping for two months and had been staying "somewhere around Wuhan."
In a purported private letter of Mao Tse-tung published in Bonn the 80-year-old dictator forecasts that the right wing of the Chinese Communist party will seize power after his death. Extracts from the letter, said to have been written to his wife, Chiang Ching, in 1966 during the "cultural revolution," were printed in the news magazine Der Spiegel.
OCTOBER 8 - Peiping regime's massive civilian militia force is assuming a more important role in security and political affairs amid signs of continuing tension between civilian and military authority. The militia's role is a key element of the mass political campaign launched early this year by Mao Tse-tung, Hongkong reports said.
OCTOBER 10 - More than 1,500 overseas Chinese and students in France condemned the Chinese Communists' anti-Confucius campaign as a "violent action aimed at destroying traditional Chinese culture" and advocated that Chinese people in the free world should do their best "to eliminate the Maoist Communist bandits."
The Soviet Union has proposed to Peiping the revival of their defunct mutual defense treaty. The regime of Mao Tse-tung ignored the offer along with other Moscow lures for a reconciliation. This development was disclosed in the la test Soviet appraisal of Peiping-Moscow relations.
OCTOBER 11- A Manila newspaper columnist said Mao Tse-tung appears to be afflicted with "palsy" in his right hand, based on a film of Mao's meeting with Imelda Marcos, wife of President Marcos.
U.S. Senator Jesse Helms said the Peiping regime should not be taken as the legitimate representative of the Chinese people.
OCTOBER 12 - After visiting university campuses on the Chinese mainland and in the Republic of China, Lloyd W. Herbener, associate professor of political science at the John F. Kennedy College in Wahoo, Nebraska came to the conclusion that free choice for the student on the mainland is denied and allowed in the Republic of China. This view was expressed in Human Events.
OCTOBER 13 - Mao Tse-tung had a severe stroke at the end of September and is no longer able to handle affairs of importance, the London Daily Telegraph reported. The story attributed the report to "Western businessmen recently in Peiping" who had unique access to top Chinese Communist leaders.
Chou En-lai, back in the hospital with a heart ailment, has been told by doctors not to receive visitors, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns said in Peiping.
OCTOBER 14 - The three-man Soviet helicopter crew captured by the Chinese Communists in the northwest mainland border region with the Soviet Union last March will be tried on charges of espionage, "vice premier" Teng Hsiao-ping told Canadian newsmen in Peiping.
Officials on the Chinese mainland are curiously willing to discuss the ill health of Chou En-lai and seem to think it is unlikely that he will recover, according to members of an Australian delegation' who arrived in Hongkong from Peiping.
Slogans on the "fourth national people's congress" have appeared in the streets of various cities on the Chinese mainland, according to travelers reaching Hongkong.
OCTOBER 15 - Both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai are in great distress aggravated by deterioration of their health conditions, Hongkong reports said. Chou's condition has worsened in the last week, the South China Morning Post said, and Mao is under doctors' orders not to receive visitors.