Red China: Looking for Chou

China watchers like to keep tabs on the top dozen men of the Communist Politburo. Last week they were asking each other, “What has happened to Chou En-lai?” Peking’s Premier has not been seen at a public function for more than a month. He returned from his tour of Africa last February looking tired and sickly, and he is known to have rested for two weeks in southwest ern China before resuming his duties.

In Hong Kong, en route home, the leader of a Nigerian delegation to a Peking science conference said that he was told that Chou En-lai was “on a holiday.” As evidence that Chou is not in disgrace or about to be purged, his wife, Teng Yingchao, was official host ess last week to the wives of a visiting Cambodian delegation, and Chou’s name recently appeared in its proper official order in a congratulatory cable sent to Ho Chi Minh in honor of the 19th anniversary of North Viet Nam’s independence.

Many China watchers conclude that Chou may be seriously ill, and perhaps is under treatment by the Italian specialist in heart ailments who was recently summoned to China supposedly to treat Party Boss Mao Tse-tung. There remains one other possibility: Chou En-lai may be in seclusion preparing the groundwork for the often postponed party congress, which has not met since 1956, though supposed to assemble every four years.