The seizure of power in the Foreign Ministry by radicals contributed to the anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon as well as the subsequent rift in bilateral ties. In 1971, Zhou Enlai told the visiting Ne Win that ‘China’s government tried its best to confine the Rangoon event to the negotiation between the two governments then’. 74 Obviously, the state of affairs could not be controlled by Zhou, and the radicals who had taken over the Foreign Ministry and China’s Embassy in Burma continually aggravated tensions. Zhou explained that