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Armed with their cash bribes, many first went on a spending spree for what passes for luxury goods in China. As a result, sales of watches, radios and cotton goods were belatedly banned, and the Maoists issued orders freezing wages and bank withdrawals. In Shanghai, where Mao backers and anti-Mao farmers fresh from the country confronted one another, the anti-Mao city authorities were accused of trying to withdraw more than $400,000 in funds at a stroke. Trying to get the country's industry running again without its regular workers or managers, Maoist students took over in some places. That they were not faring well was as much as admitted by Peking's People's Daily, which complained that the anti-Maoists "think themselves wonderful and imagine that none of their work can be done without them. They are waiting to see us make laughingstocks of ourselves."
Peace & Quiet. Well aware that industrial chaos aided neither side in the power struggle, both factions last week seemed to be giving Mediator Chou En-lai a chance to get the assembly lines moving again. Chiding both the Red Guards for their excesses and the opposition for its stubbornness, Chou, according to wall posters, spent all night settling an aircraft-engine ministry strike. When one workers' group complained that a rival group had smashed its "publicity car," Chou snarled that he would like to see all publicity cars smashed "so maybe Chairman Mao could get a little peace and quiet."
The influx of Red Chinese diplomatic staffs summoned back to Peking from their posts around the world continued, bringing the total to an estimated 200 diplomats from some 30 missions. Some will no doubt be purged; the survivors, Japanese analysts suspect, may have a significant say in Chinese foreign policy after the purge is over. That there is hardly anyone minding the diplomatic store abroad for China in the meantime does not much matter; torn asunder by strife at home, Peking has little it can—or wants to—say to the outside world.