A Lesson of Sorts

Dawn was breaking as a trio of trucks and Jeeps rolled into the grounds of the Red Chinese embassy in Burundi's lakeside capital of Bujumbura. Steel-helmeted Burundi troops stood by, watching rows of Chinese stagger out of the low, grey stucco building carrying luggage and huge bundles of documents. Then Peking's Ambassador Liu Yu-feng and his wife glumly entered a black Mercedes for the trip to the airport, where an Ethiopian Airways DC-6 stood waiting. The airport porters were most emphatically ordered not to touch so much as a suitcase handle as the Chinese loaded their 21 tons of luggage aboard the waiting plane. Thus, in less than an hour, did Red China abandon its most successful forward base for subversion in black Africa.

"The Group." As the plane winged off toward Cairo, Western diplomats in the tiny African mountain kingdom breathed a sigh of relief. So did Burundi's ruler, Mwami Mwambutsa IV, 53, who four days earlier had ordered the Chinese Communists to leave. The Mwami had ample reason to be angry. No sooner had Peking established a mission in Bujumbura, in January 1964, than Chinese money began to flow into the pockets of Burundi ministers and politicians. The Reds quickly allied themselves with discontented Watutsi refugees from neighboring Rwanda, inflaming their irredentist cause with propaganda and even arms. Chinese sympathizers were soon so numerous in the 64-member National Assembly that they became known locally as "The Group." At one of the Mwami's diplomatic receptions, Ambassador Liu brazenly walked up to the monarch and began talking. Stiffly, the Mwami rebuffed Liu by saying: "I speak only to ambassadors who know French."

On another occasion, the Chinese showed up at the local Catholic cathedral and settled into one of the front pews, chortling among themselves during Mass. When the worried Mwami ordered all embassy staffs cut to eight foreign nationals, Liu disdainfully ignored him, maintaining that most of his 16-man staff was made up of drivers, cooks and household personnel.

The Boot. The climax came when Premier Pierre Ngendandumwe, a moderate appointed by the Mwami to check Chinese influence, was assassinated only nine hours after naming his government (TIME, Jan. 22). Though the Chinese were not directly tied to the killing, most of the 25 persons later arrested were members of The Group and sympathetic to the Chinese line. Moreover, there was evidence that the Mwami was next on the assassination list. With that, Mwambutsa IV decided that discretion was the better part of diplomacy: he gave Ambassador Liu the boot. Though the Chinese expulsion was defined as "momentary," and Peking may very well return to the sunny shores of Bujumbura, the Mwami clearly had learned a lesson of sorts.

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