This week's cover story on China's durable Premier Chou En-lai and the course he is charting for his nation challenged the China watching expertise of TIME staffers in Hong Kong, New York and Washington. The story was written by Richard Bernstein, who studied Chinese culture and language at Harvard and on Taiwan, and spent five weeks touring the mainland in 1972. Bernstein was a guest in peasants' homes on a North China commune and slept in a coed factory dorm in Shenyang. Though he found the political control "sobering," he was impressed by the people's "hopefulness, dedication and lack of cynicism." For this assignment, he was assisted by Reporter-Researcher Sara Medina, who has been working on China stories for TIME since before the Cultural Revolution in 1966. From Washington, Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter, who accompanied Henry Kissinger on several Peking visits., reported the assessments of State Department China experts. Says Senior Editor Ron Kriss, who supervised the cover project, "The People's Congress marks a new stability in Chinese politics-- at least for now -- and the decisions ratified there will affect China for the rest of the century."

The main files came from TIME'S Hong Kong bureau. In spite of the thaw in U.S.-China relations and the bureau's proximity to the mainland, a mere 18 miles as the wu-ya (crow) flies, our correspondents in the crown colony must piece together news from travelers, diplomats, refugees, provincial Chinese newspapers and radio broadcasts. Their task is made easier because all three have had first-hand experience on the mainland. Bureau Chief Roy Rowan, who chatted with Chou En-lai in Peking in 1973, began on-the-scene reporting of the Chinese civil war for LIFE in 1947. Rowan covered the conflict from the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek's armies in Manchuria to the fall of Canton in 1949. Correspondent Bing W. Wong grew up on a small island off the coast of China's Fukien province, attended Amoy University and in 1950, as Communist control spread, left for Hong Kong, where he became one of the colony's most respected China analysts. When Radio Peking flashed an announcement of the completed People's Congress, both English and Chinese TV camera crews went to Wong's apartment to get his assessment. David Aikman, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese and Russian history at the University of Washington in Seattle before joining TIME in 1971, has made two trips to the mainland. In a skillful display of Pekingology, Aikman deduced that major events were taking place in the Great Hall of the People from two obscure but telling bits of news: provincial leaders had left their home towns and in Peking, hotel bookings were up.

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