秉 bing3

争 zheng1

zheng looks a lot like bing but its meaning is somewhat different.

bing3 means to grasp hold maintain hanziyuan.net/#秉

zheng1 means to contend fight contest hanziyuan.net/#争

both have a hand grasping in the middle coming from the right hand side. but bing3 just has he2 a grain stalk which that hand is grasping whereas zheng1 now features a second person ren2 abbreviated on top (it’s either dao1 knife or ren2 person, it’s abbreviated and polysemic, keyword daozitou). Originally that second person/knife was a hand and the two were contending for a slab of meat.