The Pearl's Grisly Flotsam

Swollen to flood stage by recent rainstorms, the muddy Pearl River last week washed some grisly flotsam onto the shores of the islands that hug South China. On Hong Kong and Macao, 43 bodies drifted to shore--many brutally slashed and six of them trussed, their arms and legs roped to their necks. The Pearl's cargo confirmed, in dramatic fashion, reports from the mainland by travelers, press and radio that the worst factional fighting in a year is spreading throughout much of China, particularly its southern half.

On with School. Armed with everything from bamboo poles to rifles, thousands of workers and students have clashed in bloody battles throughout Kwangtung province and the neighboring Kwangsi region. In the countryside, some peasants have torn up roads leading to their villages to keep out marauding bands of fighters. Repeatedly, during the past month, the railway from Nanning, Kwangsi's capital, to the North Vietnamese border, has been cut.

Reports are also trickling out of fighting in a dozen other provinces, including Yunnan, Szechwan, Sinkiang and Inner Mongolia. Some of the worst fighting has been in Canton, Kwang-tung's capital and the south's largest city (pop. 2,500,000), where several hundred have been killed in clashes centering on the downtown Pearl River bridge. The victims found in the Pearl last week were probably Cantonese.

The first major clashes in Canton broke out at Sun Yat-sen University, where students are bitterly divided into radical and conservative groups. As with most factions elsewhere in China, their enmities are based less on ideology (both groups use names connecting them with the Cultural Revolution) or loyalty to Chairman Mao Tse-tung (both idolize him) than on matters of self-interest. The conservatives want to get on with school and closer to prestige jobs, while the hotheaded radicals enjoy the disruptions that keep them from being reassigned to farmwork.

"Chicken" with Vans. The fighting began when the radicals stormed the campus, which was held by their opponents; besides guns, their hardware included flamethrowers, presumably stolen from the army. Some of the university's green-roofed buildings were set ablaze, and conservatives later claimed that 47 of their number had been "barbarously killed." At one point, trapped for three days in the physics building, they dashed off a telegram to Mao detailing the carnage and pleading for his help. Elsewhere in Canton, the two rival factions staged the Cultural Revolution version of "chicken": lining up some 20 military vans in two rows, they roared toward one another and collided head-on in a tangled heap of metal. Those who survived shot their way out of the wreckage.

The party leadership seemed genuinely aghast at the violence. Shanghai's daily Wen Hui Pao recently conceded that some of the ruling provincial and municipal revolutionary committees are "not in a state" to function effectively. Reason: "The split between the right and the left." Radio Canton complained that "the class enemy" was sabotaging efforts to control floods caused by the rising Pearl. Mao himself, however, seems to be egging on the feuds, after giving orders only last March for "unified rule." His latest thoughts from Peking carry shrill epithets about the danger of "rightist deviation" and the necessity of "leftist factionalism." In fact, despite the violence, soldiers in Canton have received orders from Peking not to interfere with the fighting unless directly fired upon.

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