Canada has made another giant wheat sale to the Peiping regime—possibly US$100 million worth—a UPI dispatch from Ottawa said May 21. An unofficial report set the amount at 50 million bushels.
This is the fourth sale under a long-term agreement with Peiping that began July 1, 1963, and runs to July 31, 1966. Previous sales have totaled 107.5 million bushels, or about $200 million worth.
French Trucks
Peiping has ordered 1,000 heavy-duty trucks from France's Automobile Berliet for about US$30 million, according to London's Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph.
Purchase of the trucks, eminently suitable for military purposes and priced at US$30,000 each, is the biggest deal ever made by Peiping's "State Trading Corporation" with a Western country, the papers said June 8.
Automobile Berliet is discussing the possibility of manufacturing or assembling vehicles on the Chinese mainland, the papers said. M. Paul Berliet, president and managing director of the French company, said "another very substantial deal" is pending with the Peiping regime, probably for road building machinery.
The papers also quoted reports from Peiping that it has ordered 3,000 trucks from Russia and is buying small numbers from Eastern European countries.
Opium Exports
The Bombay weekly Current said May 29 that "reliable estimates" put opium exports from the Chinese mainland in 1964 at 10,000 tons.
The weekly said that though the narcotics traffic never before had been extended to Communist countries, Soviet police recently discovered a Peiping heroin network in Iskutsk on Lake Baikal in Siberia.
The weekly said "it is an open secret that the Japanese Communist Party depends very largely on finances gained from (Red) Chinese dope traffic; in the Sudan, the Reds have also been giving generous handouts".
Hainan Reinforced
Peiping has mobilized military strength and manpower on strategic Hainan island and has virtually transformed it into an armed camp, Taipei press sources said.
It said there are about 80,000 Communist troops on Hainan, which is east of the Gulf of Tonkin. Some 200 military planes and a dozen submarines are based there. The military force also includes 180,000 to 190,000 militiamen, all of whom have been called up for assistance in air and coastal defense.
Large quantities of munitions have been sent to Hainan to prepare it for either defense or offense. In the latter sense, Hainan has become a base for infiltration and subversion in Southeast Asia, especially against the Philippines and Malaysia, the sources said.
Joint Command
The Viet Cong and Pathet Lao have established a joint military command with headquarters in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to enlarge the war in Southeast Asia.
Well-informed sources in Taipei said the "joint military command" is ready to send 300,000 "volunteers" to North Vietnam and Laos.
North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong and Prince Souphanouvong of the Pathet Lao visited Kunming twice last April to talk with Peiping "leaders". This led to the establishment of a military alliance and the joint command headed by Lin Piao, Peiping's "defense minister". Located at That Khe in nearby Kwangsi province, the North Vietnamese branch headquarters is under the command of North Vietnamese Defense Minister "Marshal" Vo Nguyen Giap.
Peiping Troops in Vietnam
Approximately 30,000 elite Red Chinese troops have been sent to North Vietnam and Laos, a Chinese lawmaker said in Taipei June 10.
Tao Yung, convener of the foreign affairs committee of the Legislative Yuan, ascribed his information to a message received from friends living in areas bordering Yunnan, Burma and Laos.
The information said Peiping's troops reached North Vietnam and Laos by railway.
Earlier, Taipei intelligence sources disclosed May 26 that the Peiping regime has stepped up military preparations in Southwest China and especially in areas bordering North Vietnam.
The sources called attention to two new developments in the feverish Red preparations:
First, Peiping has completed the renovation of first-line air bases along the China-North Vietnam border and on Hainan island. Jet interceptors were moved in as U.S. air strikes came closer to Hanoi and Haiphong.
Second, Peiping announced May 26 that conventional ranks are being abolished in the Chinese Communist armed forces.
The Chinese Communists began to intensify war preparations in South, Central and Southwest China in April. Mobilization of people and resources is more far-reaching than during the 1950-53 Korean War, according to reports reaching Taipei.
The Sunday Express of London reported May 23 that the Peiping regime had begun a vast movement of troops, rockets, guns and ammunition southward toward the Vietnamese border.
Geoffrey Thursby, the paper's Hongkong correspondent, said that military equipment and troops are poised to cross the border if Mao Tse-tung gives the signal.
"The buildup of supplies has been so immense that two weeks ago the railway line between Canton and Peking, the (Red) Chinese capital, was closed to civilian traffic," Thursby reported.
Moscow's Charge
Moscow implied May 27 that the Peiping regime was instigating world war over Vietnam as the only way to unite the divided Communist movement.
The Soviet Communist Party organ Pravda, in one of the sharpest attacks on Peiping's policy in recent weeks, wrote:
"It would be incorrect to hold that only a world war can bring about the unity of the socialist camp and of all the world Communist movement.
"Marxist-Leninists see their task not in waiting for a world war to break out, but in averting a chain of events that is liable to trigger it off by the joint actions of the progressive democratic forces."
The Pravda article by A. Sevastyanov also reproached Peiping for refusing to cooperate in Moscow's new drive to force "united fronts" of foreign leftist and non-Communist elements throughout the world.
"It would be an utter mistake, "Pravda said, "to assess the participation of the working class and its (Communist) parties in a broad anti-imperialist alliance as some sort of a 'dissolution' or as a loss by the Communists of their identity and alleged transition to the fatal road of conciliation."
The statement, without mentioning the Red Chinese by name, accused the Peiping leadership of distorting Communist theory to suit its own purposes.
K's Fate Foreseen
On the same day, May 27, Peiping unleashed a savage new attack on the leaders of the Soviet Union and predicted that they would meet the same fate as deposed Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev.
The attack was made in an article by "Observer" in the Peiping People's Daily.
The article, pegged to Indian Premier Lal Bahadur Shastri's recent visit to the Soviet Union, and accused the Soviet leadership of lining up with India to oppose the Peiping regime.
The article charged that Shastri and the Indian "reactionaries" are in trouble economically and have become isolated internationally. It said:
"To cope with this difficult situation, the Indian reactionaries have, in addition to relying on their Washington benefactors, pinned their hopes on Moscow. We must say that Shastri's trip was not in vain.
"Money he obtained. The Soviet leaders acted handsomely. It was reported that they promised him economic aid worth $900 million.
"Political capital he also got in plenty. The Soviet leaders left no stone unturned to lavish praise and heap honors on him ...
"The reason why the Soviet leaders set such store by Shastri and praise him to the skies is that he is a rare anti-(Red) China cavalier as well as Washington's pet. The record of this prime minister of India is striking witness to the fact that Shastri is the loyal successor to Nehru in his anti-(Red) China policy ...
"The joint Soviet-Indian communique specially emphasized the need for the adoption of effective measures against any proliferation of nuclear weapons' and mentioned the impermissibility of the 'use of force' to solve 'border and territorial disputes' ... Thus it is clear that the Soviet leaders and the Indian reactionaries are bedfellows in opposing socialist (Red) China ...
"The more Khrushchev's successors fraternize with the Indian reactionaries, the more clearly will their revisionist face be exposed ... "
Threat to Press
The Jakarta-based "Afro-Asian Journalist Association", a front for the Peiping regime, is trying to infiltrate the Philippine press, according to Manila Bulletin columnist Oscar S. Viliadolid.
In a May 30 article entitled "Foreign Agents At Work", Villadolid said the efforts of the association "are starting to payoff handsomely in terms of Filipino quislings."
He wrote: "The propaganda efforts of these agents are all over some of Manila's mass-circulation dailies and periodicals, university and college organs, and a number of highly specialized magazines put out by labor and friendship groups that are no more than front organization for the more rabid exponents here of alien ideologies.
"The more brazen approach of these foreign governments can easily be noted in the National Press Club. It is well known among NPC members, for instance, that the Jakarta-based Afro-Asian journalist association can open doors for any Filipino newspaperman desiring to know about Communist China, Indonesia and nations engaged in the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. This association, which is nothing more than a front for Red China's journalist group, has for its latest promotional activity the sending of acceptable journalists or public relations men to cover the forthcoming second Afro-Asian conference in Algiers. Peiping and Jakarta are principal sponsors of the meeting."
Thailand Beware!
Well-informed sources in Europe and the Far East reported in the early part of June that Peiping and Hanoi are doubling their efforts to undermine the foundations of Thailand—in a pincer movement from both the northern and southern sectors of the kingdom.
The weekly Asia Magazine, published in Hongkong, said in its June 6 issue that more and more Thai subjects of Chinese origin are being sent back from the Chinese mainland to northeast Thailand, some "armed with faked Nationalist Chinese passports". At the same time Malayan Communist guerrilla leader Chin Peng is busy reviving and regrouping his Malayan People's Liberation Army" inside Thailand's southern border, the weekly said.
The underground Thai Communist Party, it is said, maintains three principal "fronts" established for it by the Peiping regime, all believed to be based in southwestern China: "Thailand Independence Movement", "Thailand Patriotic Front", and the new Thai "Patriotic Workers' Union".
The International Press Service of West Berlin reported June 2 that Chin Peng's forces, mostly overseas Chinese who failed to take over Malaya in a decade-long guerrilla campaign, now number only about 500 or 600 men and women but constitute "a real danger".
Aside from these forces with direct Chinese Communist connections, there are some 40,000 North Vietnamese "refugees" living in northeastern Thailand.
The Hanoi regime is trying to use them as a vanguard to topple the Thai government.
Peiping maintains training camps for Thai Communists in Yunnan province. Communist military highways lead through northern Laos to the Thai border, the International Press Service said.
It added that Thai Communists maintain liaison offices in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, and Canton, capital of Kwangtung province, to arrange the transport of trained guerrillas and war material to Thailand.
Reds Ambushed
Anti-Communist guerrillas ambushed a Red infantry regiment in Yunnan May 7, killing and wounding more than 300, according to Taipei sources.
Quoting reports from behind the Iron Curtain, the sources said the group of some 400 guerrillas routed the Red regiment at Cheli in southern Yunnan near the Burmese border. The anti-Communist fighters demolished two ammunition depots and a single span suspension bridge over the Lantsang (Mekong) River.
Cheli is the "capital" of the so-called "Hsi Hsueng Pan Na Thai Autonomous District" inhabited mostly by minority peoples related to the Thais.
Cheli, at the southern tip of Yunnan province near the junction of Burma and Laos, is the Chinese Communist terminus of the Red military highway network in northern Laos.
The Taipei sources said the guerrilla unit was part of a force in the Burma-Yunnan border area. Guerrillas from this force penetrate Yunnan from time to time, ambushing Red troops and distributing anti-Communist leaflets and posters.
Laos Intervention
Gen. Ouane Rathikone, commander-in-chief of the Laotian armed forces, said in Bangkok June 1 that an undetermined number of Peiping's troops are in Laos helping the Communist Pathet Lao forces in their revolt against the Vientiane government.
Gen. Rathikone said Laotian forces had intercepted field messages in the Chinese language and Chinese supplies in Sam Neua province. He confirmed that there had been daily encounters between Pathet Lao forces and government ·troops in the Sam Neua area.
Chou Lays an Egg
Chou En-lai's call for African revolution during his Tanzania visit caused widespread indignation in Kenya.
Press reports from Nairobi June 7 quoted a Kenya government spokesman as saying: "It is not clear to the Kenya government what is ripe or what form of revolution he (Chou) has in mind, but the Kenya government wishes it to be known that Kenya intends to avert all revolutions irrespective of their origins or whether they come from inside or are influenced from outside.
"It will also be remembered that the Kenya government recently banned the booklet entitled Revolution in Africa which attacked not only the leadership of our President but also of the President of Tanzania and the Prime Minister of Uganda."
The East African Standard of Nairobi commented: "Once before he (Chou) said this about Africa but now he embraces two more big slices of the world to be conquered by the Communists.
"Even allowing for his almost pathological hatred of the United States, this exhibition of malice against the capitalist system will not win many points... Imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism are as dead as the dodo in this part of Africa.
"What is more, the foreign policies here are non-aligned. East African and neighboring countries are free and sovereign. Their governments have been elected by the people.
"The revolution he (Chou) advocates, therefore, would be to overthrow popular African governments. His words help to set independent peoples on their guard."
Canton Sabotage
Canton, principal metropolis in South China, continues to be one of the major targets of anti-Communist guerrillas. In May, a railway station and sawmill were blown up.
A bomb exploded in Canton's Wong Sha railway station about midnight May 27, according to dispatches from Hongkong. No casualties were reported but traffic was halted the next day.
A large sawmill in Canton was blown up in mid-May. More than 40 buildings and many machines in the compound of the stateowned mill were destroyed, the Tien Tien Jih Pao (Everyday News) of Hongkong said May 30, quoting a visitor from Canton.
It said Communist forces found anti-Communist newspapers and leaflets in the area.
The people of Canton are buying Hongkong currency and gold in the black market as a result of developments in the Vietnam war, the paper said.
1,484 to Macao
Freedom-seekers are reaching the Portuguese colony of Macao in increasing numbers. For the first five months, 1,484 escaped from Chinese Communism.
Press reports from Macao said the biggest influx was in April, when 365 refugees arrived. Another 348 arrived in May. Refugees said food shortages on the mainland are growing worse.
Thirty-eight refugees who reached Hongkong were sent back to the mainland. The Hongkong government classified them as "illegal immigrants."
A Central Daily News dispatch from Hongkong said June 2 that a large number of people, including Communist soldiers, were crowding the Canton-Kowloon railway, waiting a chance to escape.
Quoting a traveler from Canton, the report said the number of freedom-seekers was estimated at 20,000.