The March 14 air disaster in which a Trident crashed into a Peiping factory was the result of negligence and killed or injured 44 persons, Red China said.
Laos accused Red China of sending troops up to three kilometers into its territory and of plotting to overthrow its pro-Soviet government.
Mainland China indicated all is not well with the Communist revolution in Shanghai. Posters advise that mobbing railway stations, delaying meetings and "beating up cadres" is against the law.
MARCH 17 - U.S. intelligence analysts said the Soviet Union is conducting large-scale military maneuvers near its southern border with Red China, the New York Times reported.
Thousands of Laotians marched through the streets of Vientiane, the capital, demonstrating against alleged Red Chinese attempts to overthrow their government.
There were still 103 Chinese Communist fishing boats on the high seas off Tsushima Island between the Korean Peninsula and southern Japan, the Fukuoka Fishery Office said. A fleet of about 180 Red Chinese boats, some armed with machine guns, first appeared in the area on March 7 as Soviet warships headed southward.
European Communist parties, including those in Western democracies, have rallied behind Moscow in its condemnation of Red China's invasion of Vietnam.
Teng Hsiao-ping said he is "satisfied" with Red China's four-week invasion of Vietnam. Hanoi offered to begin peace talks March 23 if Peiping withdraws all its troops.
Ethiopia ordered the closure of Peiping's Hsinhua news agency office in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and the expulsion of the agency's two correspondents.
MARCH 18 - Vietnam called Peiping a liar, said Chinese Communist troops were still in Vietnam and labeled Red China a direct enemy of Indochina.
The Soviet Union said the Red Chinese are massing large numbers of troops on the Laotian border, "creating the threat of a large-scale military attack on that country."
The Central Intelligence Agency said economic, social and ideological stumbling blocks may push the 1985 target of mainland China's ambitious post-Mao industrial modernization drive into the 1990s.
MARCH 19 - Columnist Stanley Karnow charged President Jimmy Carter with being "overly timid" in dealing with the Chinese Communist invasion of Vietnam. Karnow said the Carter administration could have taken certain initiatives to contribute to a measure of calm in Southeast Asia.
Vietnamese forces wiped out more than 62,500 aggressors in fighting from February 17 to March 18 along the Red Chinese-Vietnamese border, the deputy chief of staff, Cao Van Khanh, said in Hanoi.
Red China proposed to delay peace negotiations with Vietnam until next week and turned down a proposal that the talks be held at the frontier.
Vietnam called on the nation to continue its general mobilization in face of Red China's new military adventures.
Red China and Japan agreed to extend their eight-year US$20 billion trade pact by five years to 1990.
Laos is strengthening its forces on the border with Red China and preparing for joint military operations with (pro-Vietnamese) Cambodian troops against forces of the ousted Khmer Rouge regime in the Lao-Cambodian border region, Lao military radio said.
MARCH 20 - Eyewitness reports again and again confirm the impression that lethargy prevails in factories on the Chinese mainland and indeed at all places of work, said Klaus Bender of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Hanoi said a Chinese Communist call for talks was intended to trick Vietnam into lowering its guard, but that full war mobilization is being maintained. Hanoi also said Chinese Communist troops remain in Vietnam.
MARCH 21 - The Peiping Workers' Daily indicated that the Chinese Communist party would not discuss the right or wrong of the "cultural revolution" until a later date. The newspaper said: "Important historical questions are not good for (Red) China's cause."
Teng Hsiao-ping struck a serious blow against liberalization of the living style in Red China by demanding the arrest of people "selling state secrets to foreigners."
MARCH 22 - Albania has urged the people on the Chinese mainland to rise against "the savage and barbarous aggression of the fascist clique of Teng Hsiao-ping and Hua Kuo-feng to halt the sanguinary hands of their criminal leadership."
An estimated 28,000 "illegal emigrants" have successfully defied the Chinese Communists to flee to freedom in Hong Kong so far this year, the Washington Post reported.
An American citizen who lived in Red China for 34 years, including 16 years in jail, recounted in New York his ordeal during the "cultural revolution" in New York. Sidney Rittenberg, who worked for the "New China News Agency" and Radio Peiping, said he was detained twice, the last time for 10 years until 1977, on spy charges. He was held incommunicado and questioned for long hours.
Chinese Communist authorities rejected demands for more human rights, criticizing those who made them by invoking the threat of "imperialism" and hinting that the regime might under take an offensive against them. Peiping Daily fiercely attacked the call for human rights as "a slogan of the bourgeoisie and not of the proletariat."
Vietnam said Chinese Communist troops had pulled out of one border province entirely. Peiping reported earlier that Vietnamese troops had fired into mainland China along the frontier.
MARCH 24 - Red China protested against pending U.S. legislation that would nearly restore Taiwan's diplomatic status and warned if the bills are signed it would do "great harm" to relations.
Vietnam claimed Red Chinese troops had made new encroachments, extending control along the frontier to 30 disputed areas.
A large number of Red Chinese military advisers were captured in Cambodia during the overthrow of Khmer Rouge Premier Pol Pot and his regime, Hun Sen, foreign minister of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea (Cambodia), said.
Red China admitted that thousands of construction projects have overextended its economy and threatened its modernization program. A conference in Peiping on capital construction ordered a cutback to a level which corresponds to available material and finances, the "New China News Agency" said.
Hundreds of Laotian troops have moved into Cambodia to help in the war against pro-Red Chinese Khmer Rouge rebels, Western military sources said in Bangkok.
MARCH 25 - The Shanghai municipal revolutionary committee has banned the sale of "reactionary" literature, warned residents against stirring up trouble and to put wall posters only in approved locations. The report followed rumors that dissidents were being arrested in the world's most populous city for wall postering, demonstrations and violence.
MARCH 26 - An American scholar warned American businessmen and bankers of a default of debts by Chinese Communist borrowers. Chester Maxey, professor of political science at Whitman College at Walla Walla, Washington, said that in the Chinese Communist ideology, capitalism is robbery and therefore it is fair game for "counter robbery."
Red China announced a series of measures for preventing wholesale purges and personality cults like the ones which surrounded Mao Tse-tung. A new political watchdog organization, the Commission for Inspecting Discipline, said in a long announcement that Red China's political and legal order was disrupted by leaders who grew detached and created personality cults. It blamed the trend on the late minister of defense Lin Piao and the "gang of four."
MARCH 27 - More and more American experts are debunking the myth that Red China has solved the problem of feeding the population. Professor Ivan London and his wife, Miriam, published an article saying that beggars and hungry people are everywhere, although carefully kept away from the tourist routes. Dr. Nicholas N. Eberstadt of Harvard University's Center for Population Studies said malnutrition, overpopulation and poverty may be serious problems for Red China.
A senior Laotian official told reporters that Chinese Communist troops still were occupying three areas of northern Laos but that force would not be used to dislodge them.
The Chinese Communist ambassador to Laos and two correspondents of the "New China News Agency" have left for Peiping and are not expected to return to the Laotian capital, diplomatic sources said.
MARCH 28 - U.S. buyers of Red China's products are having a headache in getting the merchandise delivered on time, the Christian Science Monitor said. Some of the buyers in this country have already been "badly burned" by unfilled deliveries, the paper said.
Red China is warning protesters they will be arrested if they continue demonstrating in support of human rights and democratic reforms.
MARCH 29 - By 47 to 38 percent, Americans feel that Peiping was deceitful by first establishing good relations with the United States and then starting a dangerous war in Vietnam, according to the ABC News-Harris poll.
MARCH 30 - North Korea and Red China have fortified their border as tensions mount after the Red Chinese invasion of Vietnam, Hong Kong sources said.
Vietnam said Red China is preparing for new military adventures in Indochina and warned that it was bound by its treaty with Laos to fight along side the Laotians in case of an attack.
MARCH 31 - Peiping's "four modernizations program" is doomed to failure, said Tokuzo Shimizu, a Japanese expert on Chinese Communist affairs.
The Economist of London said Peiping's venture into Vietnam is now confirmed to have been a matter of hot dispute among policy makers and could provide the pretext for cutting more ground from under foes of Teng Hsiao-ping.
APRIL 1 - Wan Li, chairman of the Anhwei provincial revolutionary committee, said in an interview that most Red Chinese cadres were picked up from farmers and they don't know how to deal with modernization plans because of lack of scientific knowledge.
A crackdown by the regime on public demonstrations and criticism stripped Peiping bare of slogans except for a 200-yard stretch on one street.
APRIL 2 - The London Daily Telegraph reported that more than 1,000 Russian aircraft were flown into the extreme Far Eastern sector of the Soviet Union - Sikhote - to take part in large-scale maneuvers near the Chinese mainland border.
Teng Hsiao-ping manipulated Red China's movement of relaxation of controls to undermine his political rivals, then shut it off when he had achieved his objectives, according to the New York Times. Fox Butterfield reported from Hong Kong that Teng is now behind the clampdown on the movement.
A bitter verbal war has broken out between the Red Chinese authorities and political activists whose campaign for human rights and democracy was described by the media as becoming unruly and one-sided. The regime said "abstract talk about democracy will only lead to anarchism."
APRIL 3 - The Asahi Evening News said there is a great shortage of energy for private consumption on the Chinese mainland and that the mainland's capacity to supply oil to Japan is questionable.
Two members of the U.S. Congress who returned from a visit to the Chinese mainland emphasized the backwardness of the Chinese mainland economy. Representative Guy Vander Jagt, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that there were no private automobiles. Representative Frank J. Guarini (D-N. J.) said Red China is just beginning to climb into the 20th century.
APRIL 4 - Vietnam announced it was ready to begin normalization talks with Red China around April 10, dropping an earlier condition that all Chinese Communist troops be withdrawn before negotiations could start.
Chinese Communist police arrested four dissidents trying to put up a wall poster.
An anonymous writer criticized the party leadership for its repression of certain authors of big character posters while the press attacked some young people for hungering after the "rotten" lifestyle of the bourgeoisie, Peiping reports said.
Cash incentives and imported technology have been criticized by trade union officials in Liaoning Province, NCNA said. It said "labor heroes and advanced workers" who attended a recent forum in Shenyang had criticized the use of bonuses as the only means to encourage hard work while overlooking the political and ideological education of the workers.
Red China's hope of getting its athletes into the Olympic Games at Moscow next year receded following a ruling of the London high court. Lord Kilanin, president of the International Olympic Committee, and his executive board studied reports of the decision that the expulsion of the Republic of China by the International Amateur Athletic Federation was invalid.
The severe shortage of housing on the Chinese mainland cannot be solved soon, according to Hobart Rowen of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Red China's recent shift in emphasis away from its "modernization" program has dimmed prospects for Washington-Peiping trade, the New York Times reported.
Red China is delaying its signing of a claims settlement agreement reached in Peiping, apparently because of pique over a Congressional bill on U.S. relations with the Republic of China, the New York Times said.
APRIL 5 - Repression against Red China's political activists continued in Peiping on the third anniversary of the 1976 riots with the arrest of a woman activist who openly defied police despite the threat of imprisonment. Three other Red Chinese were also arrested.
Red China asked the various democratic movements now active in Peiping to understand the difficulties of the regime and not indulge in individualism and ultra democracy.
There has been a reshuffle in the leadership of the Communist party in Canton. Yang Shang-kun was named the first secretary.
Democracy is "lumped together" with other "social evils" like superstition, dancing and youth crime in China mainland's current wave of suppression, according to the New York Times.
At a secret meeting, Red China asked the Soviet Union for high-level talks to maintain normal diplomatic relations, Kyodo news service reported from Peiping.
APRIL 6 - For the first time in two years, the Department of State came out with a public denunciation of human rights violations on the Chinese mainland. John Cannon, the spokesman for East Asian and Pacific affairs, described re ports from Peiping on the arrest of wall poster writers as "disturbing."
Red China accepted Vietnam's invitation to attend peace talks in Hanoi.
Pravda charged Peiping had acted prematurely in moving to terminate the 1950 Soviet-Red Chinese friendship treaty before "necessary amendments and specifications" could be made.
The entire Vietnamese population must take part in the hunt for Red Chinese spies who have inf1ltrated into the country, the Communist party newspaper Nhan Dan said.
APRIL 8 - Two of Red China's main democratic movements, the Human Rights Alliance and the April 5 Tribune, issued leaflets and put up posters hitting back at the authorities who had tried to silence them.
APRIL 9 - Red China has detained 30 to 40 civil rights activists in Peiping and purged three provincial officials labeled as "backbone factional elements of the gang of four," diplomatic sources said.
Despite the rift between the Soviet Union and Red China, a rapprochement is still likely, Dr. Tsai Wei-ping, director of the Institute of International Relations in Taipei, warned.
Democracy apparently served Teng Hsiao-pings purpose in the game of power struggle and is now being liquidated on the Chinese mainland, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review of Hong Kong.
APRIL 10 - "Normalization of relations" between Washington and Peiping tops the list of 10 "most important broken promises" of President Jimmy Carter, according to a study by the North American Newspaper Alliance.
Political and social instability has retarded Red Chinese agriculture so much that it will be several years before modernization in that field can be carried out, a visiting Red Chinese official said in Tokyo.
Five high level officials have been toppled in Mao Tse-tung's home province of Hunan for wild behavior and conspiracy, Changsha Radio said.
Red China's serious management problems were highlighted in an article which complained of overstaffing and inefficiency in government departments.
Red China reported new armed incidents along the Vietnamese border, some of them resulting in deaths.
APRIL 11 - Two highly placed Soviet officials of the Russian embassy in Tokyo said Moscow might consider proposing a nonaggression pact with Red China, if the latter "behaved well" after the termination of the present alliance.
The Peiping Sports newspaper said bourgeois human rights "are in fact bourgeois privilege" and that it was a mistake to ask foreigners to help solve the human rights problem in Red China.
The Chicago Tribune warned Americans of the dangers of fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing by Communist China.
Canton is a listless city with people, old and young alike, loafing aimlessly in the streets, ac cording to the impression of a staff writer of the South China Morning Post.
Nigel Wade of the London Daily Telegraph reported from Peiping that people in Peiping say they have been forbidden to meet foreigners except on official business. Instructions prohibit informal individual friendships.
APRIL 12 - Some Shanghai residents are betting on the downfall of Hua Kuo-feng within this year, according to an intelligence report reaching Taipei. The report said people in Shanghai regard Hua as a member of the "gang of five."
Teng Hsiao-ping told mainland Chinese the leadership would crack down on any extreme demands for democracy, Kyodo news service reported. Teng said Red China would not drift away from the teachings of Mao Tse-tung.
Prime Minister Mastyoshi Ohira has rejected a demand by some quarters that Japan give "special favor" in economic assistance to Communist China.
APRIL 13 - Wall posters appearing recently in Hankow, Hupei Province, and Changchun, Kirin Province, accused the Peiping regime of endless suppression of the people and repression of human rights, intelligence reports from the Chinese mainland said in Taipei.
Laos accused Red China of invading certain regions of the country.
A Red Chinese youth leader warned the younger generation that free thinking does not mean "doing as one pleases" and that the "slogan of democracy" is being used to overthrow the Communist Party leadership.
Red China's Christians belong to the "silent church," worshiping without Bibles or ministers, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
APRIL 14 - A nationwide damper on free expression and pro-democracy wall posters has almost completely eliminated them from major cities across the Chinese mainland, the Washington Post reported.
A Red Chinese delegation led by "vice foreign minister" Han Nien-lung arrived in Hanoi for talks to end the Red Chinese-Vietnamese border dispute.
Red China accused Vietnam of sending armed vessels to the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and said the Vietnamese craft opened fire on a Red Chinese patrol boat.
Red China's provincial press says there have been outbreaks of thefts, sabotage and other disturbances in the country, including an attempt by a handful of political activists to seize power in Chekiang Province.
APRIL 15 - The Chinese mainland will not be a bonanza for American businessmen, a U.S. economist said in Taipei. "I anticipate two-way trade volume in the coming three or four years to increase only by US$1 billion or US$2 billion over 1978's US$1 billion," said Dr. Ramon H. Myers, curator-scholar of East Asian Collections of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.