Li, or the principle of social order, prevents the rise of moral or social chaos as a dam prevents a flood. A people who do away with the old principle of social order meet with moral disaster.
—Confucius
Last week Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards went to Shantung province and wrecked the birthplace of Confucius. For 2,400 years, the Chinese have studied his counsels of moderation and nonviolence. The zealots who desecrated his shrine at Chu Fu, reported the Peking People's Daily, had buried Confucianism "once and for all." In the madness that Red China has become, the act was highly symbolic. Mao's
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has all but destroyed the last vestiges of social order. In fact, Mao's "closest comrade in arms" and heir, Defense Minister Lin Piao, admitted via wall poster that "the entire country is now in a state of civil war."
Arrest & Suicide. Violence and dis order continued to rule from the cities of the eastern river valleys to the western desert of Sinkiang. The deposed mayor of Shanghai was hauled through the city's streets atop a trolley car, his head bowed and a placard tied about his neck. Armed battles between pro-and anti-Maoist factions roiled the streets of Canton, and north of the city, in Kiangsi province, an army of anti-Mao peasants was reported gathering—and daring Mao's Red Guards to come and fight them. Wall posters announced the suicide of onetime Army Chief of Staff Lo Jui-ching and other officials, plus the attempted suicides of three other Mao enemies: Party Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping, Economic Planner Po Yi-po, and Supreme People's Court President Yang Hsiu-feng. Marshal Peng Teh-huai, Red China's hero of the Korean War, was reported under arrest.
Tass reported that Red Guards raged through the capital of Peking, sacking and seizing ministries, arresting people at will and generally adding to the anarchy. One Red Guard detachment even arrested another in Peking, and one of the arrested guards turned out to be none other than Chen Siao, son of Chen Yi, Red China's Mao-lining Foreign Minister. Against Mao's teen-age Red Guards, the anti-Mao establishment mobilized tens of thousands of indus trial workers, gave them pay raises and bonuses and sent many of them into Peking or other big cities to protest. Clearly bewildered by the contradictory commands of the wall posters aimed at first one faction, then another, both Maoists and anti-Maoists milled aimlessly through the streets, creating a thousand explosive situations.