In between, there were the violent anti-Chinese riots of June 1967. Angry mobs went on a rampage through Rangoon's Chinatown. Chinese shops and homes were ransacked and looted, and many Sino-Burmese were killed. Breaking out in several cities, the riots were said to be a reaction to the reverberations of the Cultural Revolution among the China-oriented groups of Chinese in Burmese. But they also came at a time when the country was facing an acute shortage of rice,and it was widely suspected that the riots were instigated by the authorities to deflect attention from their inability to deal with the crisis. The authorities did not intervene until mob violence got out of hand and even the Chinese Embassy in Rangoon was attacked.