Hazardous Duty

When it comes to risky occupations these days, the diplomat from Red China takes second place to no one. Last winter 30 embassy aides in Moscow were pummeled by irate Russians while they tried to protect a Chinese propaganda display. In April, Indonesian troops had to be called out to disperse a mob that was preparing to burn down China's Djakarta embassy. Ten Chinese aides ousted from India two weeks ago filed into their plane wearing conspicuous bandages on their heads. Expelled in reprisal for Chinese violence against two Indian diplomats, the Chinese said they had been beaten in New Delhi. Last week two Burmese climbed over a back wall at China's embassy in Rangoon and knifed an economic-aid specialist to death.

In Burma, the outburst started after Chinese embassy aides started passing out Mao Tse-tung badges and little Red bibles of Mao-think. The government banned both the badges and the bibles, and a crowd of Chinese students in Rangoon retaliated by taking their teachers as hostages and beating up newsmen. The Burmese struck back by sacking Chinese-owned shops. Burma's military ruler, General Ne Win, declared martial law in Rangoon, and his men fired into mobs which had made three assaults on the Chinese embassy. In turn, Peking denounced the riots as inspired by a "militarist fascist rule" and sent Chinese by the thousands to demonstrate and smash windows at the Burmese embassy in China.

Though they seem determined to dish out as much as they take, the Chinese by last week were suffering from such acute persecution feelings that when four of their diplomats in East Germany were killed in an auto crash, the embassy hung out posters saying: "Down with the East German revisionists who murdered our comrades."

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