China: Chaos in Canton

In the South China metropolis of Canton, a West German visitor was stopped cold by the sight of a corpse dangling from a traffic light. “What was his crime?” the traveler asked. His girl guide coolly explained that quite a few people are getting strung up in Canton because “they are political.”

The West German’s grim travelogue reported in Hong Kong last week underscored a common theme in all the stories that drift out of China: a man’s politics can put him in mortal danger anywhere in Mao Tse-tung’s chaotic kingdom these days. But nowhere does the chaos seem quite so complete as in Canton. From day to day in the city of 2.5 million, it is difficult to tell just who is taking sides against whom—and why. Near anarchy has seen one faction of Red Guards pitted against another, and when they have not been otherwise occupied, Mao’s bullyboys have turned on workers. Workers have taken arms against other workers, and vandals have mocked any semblance of authority.

The army has done little to restore order. Reinforced by unpopular Northerners, General Huang Yung-sheng’s local garrison concentrates on trying to keep the cash-earning flow of fruits and vegetables moving down to Hong Kong, 90 miles away. But even that job may soon become tougher as the feuding Cantonese gather stocks of arms. Only last week Peking wall posters complained that Cantonese rebels hijacked weapons from a ship bound for North Viet Nam.

Embarrassed as they are by the disorder in Canton, Maoist chiefs in Peking can do little about it. Last week, as usual, they were preoccupied with troubles in their own backyard. Items: > Demonstrators set a Russian car ablaze, then smashed into the Soviet embassy compound in a brazen display that moved the Kremlin to warn that a “hysterical anti-Soviet campaign” can only lead to a total break in diplomatic relations.

>Red Guards harassed an Italian trade official at a street “trial” after the port of Genoa had refused to allow a Chi nese freighter to unload until it lowered political banners extolling Mao. — Thousands of Maoists brawled among themselves, ignoring the theme of the rally for which they had gathered—”to end demonstrations and clashes.”