Chen Yi was not acting as the foreign minister virtually since early in 1967, and lost power to Wang Li in August. On 24 October 1967, Zhou Enlai asked the visiting President of Mauritania to pass on three messages to Kim Il-sung, Norodom Sihanouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser: ‘We always instruct Overseas Chinese that they should abide by the local laws; but we can’t control their actions; we don’t conceal that our Embassies abroad made some mistakes but we can correct them at any moment.’
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