IN THE nine years since Mao Tse-tung took ' power in Peking, China has become shrouded in a fog of ignorance almost as thick as in the days of Marco Polo. Three weeks ago, determined to separate fact from fiction, TIME correspondents in 13 bureaus around the world began a mass assault on the Bamboo Curtain. Their chief weapons: interviews with scores of latter-day Marco Polos ranging from British M.P.s to Argentine M.D.s, plus a mining of the exhaustive studies of Red China now being carried out in U.S. and British universities, and intelligence findings in many nations. Piece by piece, these findings were reported to Associate Editor Bob Christopher, a longtime student of the Far East who served as a Japanese-language officer in World War II and a Chinese-language officer in the Korean war. When the pieces were put together, what emerged was a documented picture of a national drive for power unparalleled in terms of human energy and forced sacrifice--but far less awesome, in terms of results achieved, than Red China's masters (and nervous enemies) proclaim.

To find out where Red China does stand today, see FOREIGN NEWS, The Year of the Leap.

IN A week of fast-breaking Foreign News stories, most of the rest of the news did not have to be laboriously dug out of statistics or pried out of travelers. On the hint of trouble in the Sudan, Curtis Prendergast flew into Khartoum from Johannesburg, arriving the day the generals took over. In Tokyo, Alexander Campbell filed a detailed story on the crown prince's betrothal that no Japanese newspaper had yet dared print. In Berlin, a TIME correspondent learned about Mayor Willy Brandt's late-hour habits while talking far into the night with the man whose strong nerves are now being put to the test by Russia. Correspondents in Rome and Cairo filed stories on the weird assault on the former Aga Khan's widow. In Ghana, a reporter was on hand to see what may prove to be the historic meeting between two of Africa's rising young leaders, the Prime Ministers of Ghana and Guinea, a unique merger of independent nations once British and French.

But not all the news had to be gathered at airport ceremonies or palace interviews. Correspondent Prendergast, for example, was all too aware of the spreading American craze for hula hoops by discovering one whirling about in Johannesburg, encircling his own nine-year-old daughter.

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