Maoists pulled down the curtain on 1967 with premature boasting that the "great proletarian cultural revolution" had done its work, that the "powerholders who travel the capitalist road" were under control, and that the time had come to get back to the workbench and the school desk. Liu Shao-chi had been established as something of a permanent shooting duck. Lin Piao said the attacks on the "president" and chief of the powerholders might go on for 10 or 20 years.
Actually, nothing whatsoever had been settled. The "cultural revolution" couldn't even be said to have reached mid-passage. Maoism had slowed down to a state of continuing talk but scarcely any action against its confirmed enemies. Old, discredited cadres were being summoned back to be forgiven -often much against the wishes of the bureaucrats themselves. They wanted no more struggle against Red Guards and "revolutionary rebels".
Despite all the brave talk of victory, the Maoists - and especially their less radical wing - were intent upon keeping the Chinese Communist show on the road. They had learned that they couldn't continue to preside over a going concern in which the opposition had been destroyed, that in attempting to destroy their opponents they were bringing the whole Chinese Communist structure down around their ears.
The mainland initiative thus had passed from the Maoists not so much into the hands of the Liuists or powerholders as into the hands of the anti-Communists. Unrest was rampant and considerable violence erupted even in those provinces and municipalities that the Maoists claim to have secured. Elsewhere the struggle went on with intermittent clashes. Large-scale fighting was reported from Szechwan and Yunnan. Forces of the "People's Liberation Army" often stood by and let others slug it out. The Maoists dared not complete the purge of the PLA any more than they had the courage to finish off Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping.
Having failed to fasten Mao-thought Communism on the people of the mainland, the Maoists hoped to talk their way out of the corner into which they had maneuvered themselves. The forgiveness for cadres was only one indication. There were continuing attempts to get students and teachers back into the classroom. Workers didn't have to quote from Mao's "little red book" so long as they returned to the business of production. A semblance of quiet returned even on the diplomatic front. Uncle Sam was still the No. 1 whipping boy but denunciation of others was less frequent and not so violent. Not for a year had the Maoists tried to persuade the peasants to pull their chestnuts out of the fire and they were in no condition to resume the attempt at the start of 1968. Mao knows he has reason to fear the peasants' "spontaneous tendency toward capitalism" but doesn't know what to do about it.
Maoist weakness and retreat did not mean that the danger was at an end and Chinese Communist collapse only a matter of days. Mao's most basic belief is that power grows out of a gun barrel. If and when the end is in sight, he will try to destroy China and the Chinese people in a Gotterdammerung. This is part of the reality behind the Peiping regime's unceasing drive toward the wherewithal of nuclear war. It also punctuates a Red Guard prediction that Red China will be at war within 1968.
The Republic of China's "70 per cent politics and 30 per cent military strength" strategy of mainland return was given added urgency by the growing likelihood of a Mao attempt to touch off World War III and Nuclear War I as part of his death throes. The question is how much longer mainland liberation can be postponed without making a global holocaust inevitable. Showdown between the Republic of China and the Communists rebels would be limited war. Any other conflict involving Peiping would be total and nuclear.
The record of events involving the Chinese Communists from November 20 to December 19 was undramatic and seemingly peripheral - thus demonstrating the pause to which Mao had been brought and presaging the probability of 1968 explosion in the absence of preventive undertakings. This is the record for the month:
November 20
Foreign Minister Wei Tao-ming of the Republic of China told the United Nations General Assembly that the Chinese Communist regime is on its last legs and should not be propped up. He said the regime is un-Chinese in character and purpose. "To the Chinese people," he said, "there is only one China and one legal Chinese government, the government of the Republic of China."
November 21
Kansu radio reported that Maoists had retaken a "people's liberation army" arsenal that had been in revolt for the last year. The plant in Lanchow, the capital of Kansu, was said to have been placed under a "revolutionary committee".
Intelligence sources in Taipei said Chou En-lai had admitted he was under violent attack by anti-Maoists. He charged a conspiracy was under way to alienate him from Chiang Ching, the wife of Mao Tse-tung. Admitting that he had made mistakes, Chou said he was prepared to submit to "constructive criticism".
A Polish journalist returning to Warsaw after four years in Red China said the Peiping regime was trying to move the "great proletarian cultural revolution" off the streets and into factories and schools. He cited Chou En-lai admissions of production losses and said Red Guards had disappeared from streets and "big character posters" from walls. Public executions are increasing, he said, but added that no one knows what is going on in about half of the mainland.
Great Britain lifted its ban on travel by members of the Chinese Communist diplomatic mission in London. British diplomats in Peiping still were prohibited to travel except from home to office.
Hongkong sources said that police inspector F.G. Knight, who escaped from the Chinese Communists after they had kidnapped him, had been allowed to get away. The British said they would deport five Chinese Communists who were to have been traded for Knight.
November 22
Taipei intelligence sources said the Peiping "state council" had been paralyzed by purges of more than 40 ministers and directors of top-level administrative branches. Only 10 Communist bosses remain in place: Chen Yi of foreign affairs, Hsieh Fu-chih of public security, Li Hsien-nien of finance and trade, Li Fu-chun of economic planning, Yeh Yun-tsung of science and technology, Lin Piao of defense, Tseng Shan of interior, Wang Cheng of agriculture, Chen Cheng-jen of the eighth industrial machinery ministry and Fang Yi of international economic liaison. Of these, Chen Yi, Wang Cheng, Chen Cheng-jen and Fang Yi have been under attack from time to time. Administrative control was said to be largely in the hands of Lin Piao, Chou En-lai and Chiang Ching, Mao's wife.
November 23
The Russian newspaper Red Star charged that Chinese Communists are compelling children to spy on their parents. Mainland life is being militarized, the paper said. Each 10 buildings of cities are grouped in a unit and the people made responsible for each other's conduct and thoughts. The count of those punished for opposing Mao exceeds 5 million, Red Star claimed.
Two policemen were wounded by a terrorist bomb in Hongkong. Two Communist newspapers published in defiance of British suspension orders.
November 24
Hongkong reports said anti-Maoists destroyed or damaged 67 MIG19 jet fighters in an attack on the Pingtan air base in Kwarigturig. In Taipei, the Ministry of National Defense said a large number of MIGs had been destroyed or damaged by government commando forces at a Kwangtung field.
Tokyo sources quoted British diplomats as saying that the leadership of Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao would not last much longer. Moscow said that many anti-Mao letters were being received in the Soviet Union.
A Hongkong court sentenced two terrorists to life imprisonment. These were the stiffest punishments meted out since the Chinese Communists began their attempt to seize Hongkong power from the British last May. Nine schoolgirls were sent to jail for a month for a pro-Communist demonstration.
Indonesia decided to turn the former "embassy" of the Chinese Communists into a school.
November 25
Travelers reaching Hongkong said Kwangtung authorities had ordered mothers of two or more children to practice birth control.
Terrorists attempted to blow up a crowded ferry and a police station in Hongkong. Other bombs were planted on a main street.
Peiping protested to Burma against the arrest of seven Chinese residents of Rangoon.
November 26
People's Daily admitted the Maoists were having trouble getting young people back to school. The editorial said that Red Guards were still bent on attacking teachers and that many of the latter were declining to go back to the classroom. The top Communist paper implied that schools are still not really operative, although reopening was ordered early in 1967.
Six Hongkong policemen were wounded, five of them in bomb blasts. The other was shot by a mob attacking a police patrol. Two Hongkong police constables who accidentally crossed the Chinese Communist frontier in September returned to the colony. Hongkong released five Chinese Communists in an apparent trade.
November 27
Hongkong reports claimed that Chinese Communists advocating Hongkong extremism had been purged from a Kwangtung committee. Chou En-lai was said to have given the orders and to have placed the anti-Hongkong struggle committee under control of the PLA.
Anti-Maoists in Canton threatened to assassinate foreigners attending the Chinese Communist trade fair there.
Defense Minister Swaran Singh charged in New Delhi that Peiping bad stockpiled 100 nuclear bombs of 20-kiloton capacity. He estimated production at 40 bombs a year.
Moscow quoted a Shanghai paper as saying that young lovers are bourgeois degenerates, that normal Chinese Communists love only Mao Tse-tung.
November 28
Peiping Daily said conditions are ripe for Vietnam-style "people's wars" in Africa. The commentary said the United States is the main enemy in Africa, but that the Soviet Union is an accomplice of American imperialism.
Hongkong authorities closed a Communist school where bombs were being manufactured. One student lost his hand in an explosion.
November 29
Red China approved exit visas for members of the British mission in Peiping. Restrictions on the movement of British diplomats were lifted.
Travelers from Canton said that tension was mounting and that foreigners attending the trade fair had been asked to leave.
November 30
Taipei sources said the National Government had solved logistical problems involved in mainland operations. Chinese Communist security arrangements were said to have been weakened by the mainland turmoil, giving guerrillas opportunity to step up their activities. National forces are more active inland than along the coast, where the Reds have better transportation and communications.
Taipei reported continuing struggles between Maoists and anti-Maoists in Szechwan, Yunnan, Hunan, Liaoning and other provinces. PLA troops intervened in some struggles.
People's Daily said Peiping is not interested in joining the United Nations, which it described as "a body manipulated by the United States, a place for playing power politics and an organ to serve U.S. policies of aggression and war". At the same time, the paper claimed that the Chinese Reds have been deprived of their "legitimate rights" at the U.N.
Chou En-lai renewed Peiping assertions of all-out support to North Vietnam and pledged that the Chinese Reds would take on the Soviet "renegade clique" in a battle to the end.
Radio Peiping boasted that the British had accepted all Chinese Communist demands with regard to Hongkong border crossings by farmers. Settlement was confirmed in Hongkong and London, but the Commonwealth Office said there was no formal agreement.
December 1
London reports credited Chou En-lai with bringing a "degree of normalcy" back to Peiping's relations with some other countries. Red Guards had stopped besieging embassies in Peiping and Chinese Communist missions abroad had desisted from overt acts of hostility.
Two bombs were thrown at a Hongkong police station, wounding two persons. Hongkong police and British soldiers raided a Communist stronghold and seized explosives for making bombs.
December 2
Tokyo sources said Mao and Lin Piao are showing increasing concern about the PLA's lack of stomach for war. A campaign to glorify war reminded mainland armed forces that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".
People's Daily applauded the Thai Communists for alleged successes against the Bangkok government in 28 out of 71 provinces.
New fighting in Sinkiang, Shanghai and Kweichow was reported by Moscow radio. The Peiping regime was said to be executing anti-Maoists in Kweichow.
Peiping charged that Indonesia had carried out massacres of Communists with Soviet support. Jakarta claimed that 10,000 Chinese Communists freed because the government couldn't feed them had moved into the capital and constituted a security threat.
The Hongkong government admitted paying US$12,250 as part of the Communists border settlement.
"New China News Agency" claimed that U.S. aircraft had bombed a Chinese Communist freighter anchored in a North Vietnam port.
December 3
Communists planted two bombs outside the doors of a Hongkong church. The Reds also moved to disrupt an exhibition of Hongkong-made products. Two bombs were left at the site.
December 4
Peiping revived wall posters as a means of attacking the Soviet Union. One target was Mihail Sholokhov, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965.
Indonesian troops in West Kalimantan (Borneo) arrested 440 Chinese Communist terrorists. The army estimated 1,000 more were still at large.
Bombs were thrown at a police car that was lured into a Hongkong tenement area by false reports of a demonstration. The Reds charged the Hongkong government with kidnapping the headmaster of a school that had been making terrorist bombs.
December 5
Taipei reports told of a Canton clash between rival Red Guard groups. An anti-Maoist group was said to have looted an arsenal to obtain weapons and ammunition.
Peiping reported the death of Chen Shao-hsien, a member of the Communist Party's Standing Committee. He was 81.
December 6
The Soviet news agency Tass reported new mainland violence, including bloody clashes in Fukien and Shanghai. Red Guards were said to have reappeared in Peiping and troops to be patrolling the streets. The December 4 edition of People's Daily reportedly was confiscated without explanation.
"New China News Agency" told of the establishment of a "revolutionary committee" to assume control of Tientsin. This was hailed as a victory over anti-Maoists Wan Hsiao-tang and Chang Huai-san. It raised the total of Maoist committees to 9 in the mainland's 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The others are in Peiping, Shanghai, Shansi, Shantung, Heilungkiang, Tsinghai, Kweichow and Inner Mongolia.
A Hongkong newspaper said heavy weapons were used in fierce battles between Red Guards and anti-Maoists at Harbin in October. The Red Guards were sent to the Manchurian industrial city from Peiping.
Twenty-thousand students from 33 pro-Communist schools went on strike in Hongkong. The Chinese Communists lodged another protest with the British against alleged Hongkong atrocities. Hongkong police said that more than 8,000 reports of terrorist bombs had been received since July. More than half the reports were false. Real bombs totaled 1,404 and duds 2,448. Eleven persons had been killed and 328 wounded by bombs.
December 7
Taipei reports told of five explosions on Yangtze River steamers in the last month. Fierce fighting was reported in Szechwan and Yunnan provinces.
West Germany's trade with Peiping will reach an all-time high for 1967. For the first 10 months of last year, trade was US$175 million, an increase of 75 per cent.
December 8
A Canton Red Guard newspaper said that the Chinese Communists will be at war by spring. The paper did not say with whom, but noted that the Russians have massed 12 tank divisions and 13 rocket gun divisions in the north and that the National Government has 400,000 men on the offshore islands to prepare a counterattack. The paper also saw Japanese under the bed: a special service group in Manchuria. It charged that the Indians had massed forces as part of a "full-moon besiegement". World War III is in prospect, the paper said.
Taipei told of new fighting in eight provinces where the Maoists supposedly had won control: Heilungkiang, Shansi, Kweichow, Shantung, Tsinghai, Inner Mongolia, Shanghai and Peiping.
A report by the U.S. Agriculture Department said that population pressure is worsening Peiping's food problem. Lack of Communist Party unity was blamed for the slowness of farm mechanization.
Peiping charged that the British were polluting water it sells to Hongkong. Foreigners get pure water, the dispatch said, whereas Chinese people get the "filthy salt water".
December 9
A Canton Red Guard newspaper predicted that the Chinese Reds would test a 2,000-mile missile next fall. The information was attributed to a Peiping source.
Radio Moscow said a new power struggle had broken out within the top echelon of the Communist Party and that armed forces were patrolling Peiping. The struggle was said to be between supporters of Lin Piao as Mao's successor and those who oppose him.
Peiping denounced devaluation of the Hongkong dollar as a measure to shift "the burden of the British imperialist economic crisis onto the shoulders of the Chinese people".
Two Hongkong terrorists attacked a policeman. One was shot. The other grabbed the gun and killed the policeman, then made his escape.
December 11
Canton clashes near the scene of the international fair resulted in thousands of casualties, a Hongkong newspaper said. Army forces looked on but did not intervene. An explosion at a new Canton hotel killed five. The execution of five anti-Maoists was reported in Kwangtung.
Reports in Taipei said troops along the Taiwan Straits and the North Vietnam border had been ordered to strengthen their defense works and heighten combat readiness. Morale of the Communists is continuing to deteriorate, according to free Chinese intelligence sources.
Peiping granted exit permits to a first secretary of the British embassy and his family. These were the first approved in four months.
India's minister for home affairs told Parliament that the pro-Peiping wing of the Indian Communist Party is preparing for an armed revolution in West BegaI.
December 12
Tass told of growing rebellion against Mao in Fukien. Peiping wall posters called Fukien "a second Wuhan". Maoist emissaries sent to Fukien were arrested.
A Shanghai rally denounced "president" Liu Shao-chi for conspiring to regain power. The report indicated that Liu still retains his CCP membership.
Taipei sources said anti-Communist unity was developing on the mainland. Reports came from Hunan, Szechwan, Fukien and Kwangtung.
Chen Yi, who had been rarely heard of lately and then not in a favorable sense, showed up in Hanoi news agency dispatches with a claim that 2,600 U.S. planes had been shot down over North Vietnam and that the United States "will surely be defeated".
Peiping lashed out at Moscow for recognizing the Democratic Republic of the Congo government of Joseph Mobutu, who was described as a "contemptible flunkey of U.S. imperialism who murdered Patrice Lumumba".
Reports from United Kingdom sources said Peiping had handed over a number of MIG19 fighters to Pakistan. A spare parts depot supposedly was established in Sinkiang.
Canada agreed to sell nearly 80 million bushels of wheat to Red China in a three-year period that began August 1, 1966. Terms are 25 per cent cash when the ship is loaded and the balance in 18 months at interest.
December 13
Mao Tse-tung brought mainland security units directly under control of the Chinese Communist Party, taking the command away from various levels of government. The move apparently was aimed at preventing Liu Shao-chi's supporters from infiltrating the "revolutionary committees" that are supposed to take over the mainland and restore Mao/Lin Piao dominance. Mao also insisted that the prestige of the army "must be resolutely safeguarded". This reflected the increasing attacks on the prestige of the PLA, without which Mao would be quickly toppled.
Armed clashes erupted in Canton once more. Early December battles took the lives of scores and injured hundreds, according to Taipei intelligence sources. Youths "sent down to the countryside" in Kwangtung were rejected by the peasants. Many of them returned to Canton and tried to disrupt the trade fair.
Hongkong Communists were reported to have organized 29 divisions of anti-British forces, each with 4 combat squads enjoined with specific duties.
December 14
Hongkong authorities revealed that of 700 political prisoners released, less than a dozen had applied for government rehabilitation assistance. A colony spokesman suggested that perhaps they were too proud or too stubborn. It was more reasonable to presume they had turned to the Communists for assistance.
December 15
Chou En-lai and Lin Piao were given credit in Hongkong reports for having forced Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, into retirement. The excuse was poor health. Mao apparently was too impotent to interfere.
Communist sources in Hongkong claimed to have rounded up four agents of the Nationalist Government in Kwangtung. They were said to have been disguised as monks.
Chou En-lai was said to have been defended by the Maoist leadership after he was sharply criticized by Red Guards. Chou was attacked for protecting Chen Yi, who was said to have returned to the Mao line-up after three months of brainwashing.
Anti-Maoists were reported to have burned down a PLA camp in Kwangtung.
December 16
Hongkong sources said a top Chinese Communist from the colony had been ordered to Peiping to report on the anti-British campaign. The terrorism was expected to last until after the Chinese Reds had decided whether they could desist without losing too much face.
Taipei sources said the Reds had created a special agency in Kwangtung to carry out long-range infiltration and subversion of Hongkong. The chief was identified as Chen Yu, one-time Maoist "governor" of Kwangtung. Communists reportedly were ready to give up riots and killing in favor of strikes, student demonstrations and other efforts to undermine British civil authority. Other targets would be industry and tourism with the objective of crippling the Hongkong economy.
December 17
Broadcasts by an anti-Mao radio station in Szechwan were reported in a magazine published by the Red Guards.
Anti-Maoist bombs killed many and did severe damage in the northeast Kwangtung city of Swatow.
State Minister Kaneshichi Masuda, the director of Japan's self-defense forces, said Mao Tse-tung is an expansionist and militarist and threatens world peace. He said Peiping is not now much of a nuclear threat but will be by the mid-1970s. Minister Masuda was one of the hosts to Defense Minister Chiang Ching-kuo in Tokyo from November 27 to December 2.
December 18
The United Kingdom Atomic Authority announced that a fourth of the radioactive fallout recorded in Britain early in 1967 was from the Chinese Communist nuclear test of December 28, 1966.