Red Guards ( ) were a mass
movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in
China
, who were mobilized by Mao
Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.
Origins
The first
students to call themselves "Red Guards" in China were a group
of students at the Tsinghua University
Middle School who used the name Red Guards to sign two big-character posters issued on
25 May and 2 June
1966. The students believed that the
criticism of the play
Hai Rui Dismissed from
Office was a political issue and needed greater attention.
The group
of students, led by Zhang Chengzhi
and Nie Yuanzi, originally wrote the
posters as a constructive criticism of Tsinghua
University
's administration, which was accused of harboring
"intellectual elitism" and "bourgeois" tendencies.
However,
they were denounced as "counter-revolutionaries" and "radicals" by
the school administration and fellow students, and were forced to
secretly meet amongst the ruins of the Old Summer Palace
. Nevertheless, Chairman
Mao Zedong ordered that the manifesto of the Red
Guards be broadcast on national radio and published in the
People's Daily newspaper. This action gave
the Red Guards political legitimacy, and student groups quickly
began to appear across China.
Due to the factionalism already beginning to emerge in the Red
Guard movement,
Liu Shaoqi made the
decision in early June 1966 to send in
CCP work teams. These work groups
were led by
Zhang Chunqiao, head of
China's
Propaganda Department, and were the attempt by the Party to
keep the movement under its control. Rival Red Guard groups led by
the sons and daughters of cadres were formed by these work teams to
deflect attacks away from those in positions of power towards
bourgeois elements in society, mainly intellectuals. In addition,
these Party-backed rebel groups also attacked students with 'bad'
class backgrounds (these included the children of former landlords
and capitalists). These actions were all attempts by the CCP to
preserve the existing state government and apparatus.
Mao, concerned that these work teams were hindering the course of
the
Cultural Revolution,
dispatched
Chen Boda,
Jiang Qing,
Kang Sheng,
and others to join the Red Guards and combat the work teams. In
July 1966, Mao ordered the removal of the remaining work teams
(against the wishes of
Liu Shaoqi) and
condemned their 'fifty days of White Terror'. The Red Guards were
now free to organise without the restrictions of the Party and,
within a few weeks, on the encouragement of Mao's supporters, Red
Guard groups had appeared in almost every school in China.
Role in the Cultural Revolution
On the
18th August 1966, Mao met a million Red Guards formally in an
audience given in Tiananmen Square
, when he donned a Red Guard armband to demonstrate
his support for the movement and its objectives. It was this
rally that signified the beginning of the Red Guards' involvement
in implementing the aims of the Cultural
Revolution.
The 11th Plenum, meeting in August, had ratified the 'Sixteen
Articles', a document that stated the aims of the
Cultural Revolution and highlighted the
role students would be asked to play in the movement. After the
August rally, the Cultural Revolution Group directed the Red Guards
to attack the '
Four Olds' of Chinese
society (old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas).
For the
rest of the year, Red Guards marched across China in a
campaign to eradicate the 'Four
Olds'. Old books and art was destroyed, museums were
ransacked, and streets were renamed with new revolutionary names
and adorned with pictures and the sayings of
Mao. Many famous temples, shrines, and other heritage
sites were attacked and, in total, 4,922 out of 6,843 were
destroyed.
However, attacks on culture quickly descended into attacks on
people. Ignoring guidelines in the 'Sixteen Articles' that
stipulated that persuasion rather than force were to be used to
bring about the
Cultural
Revolution, officials in positions of authority and perceived
'bourgeois elements' were denounced and suffered physical and
psychological attacks. Intellectuals were to suffer the brunt of
these attacks. An official report in October of 1966 reported that
the Red Guards had already arrested 22000 'counterrevolutionaries'.
Occasionally, the Red Guards brought large a group of targeted
people for
firing squads, who left some
randomly chosen people alive while others around them were shot.
This "Chinese roulette" was said to leave a bullet of fear and
repression inside the brain.
The Red Guards were also tasked with rooting out 'capitalist
roaders' (those with supposed 'right wing' views) in positions of
authority, This search was to extend to the very highest echelons
of the
CCP, with many top party officials, such
as
Liu Shaoqi,
Deng Xiaoping and
Peng
Dehuai being attacked both verbally and physically by the Red
Guards.
However, the Red Guards were not to go about their activities
completely unchallenged. When Red Guards entered factories and
other areas of production, they encountered resistance in the form
of worker and peasant groups who were keen to maintain the
status quo. In addition, there were bitter divisions
within the Red Guard movement itself, especially along social and
political lines. The most radical students often found themselves
in conflict with more conservative Red Guards.
The leadership in
Peking also simultaneously
tried to restrain and encourage the Red Guards, adding confusion to
an already chaotic situation. On the one hand, the
Cultural Revolution Group
reiterated calls for non-violence, but on the other hand the
People's Liberation Army
was told to assist the Red Guards with transport and lodging, and
there were eight rallies in Tiananmen Square between the 18th
August and the 26th November 1966 (in total, twelve million Red
Guards travelled to see
Mao in these rallies).
However, by the end of 1966, most of the
Cultural Revolution Group were of
the opinion that the Red Guards had become too much of a political
liability. The campaign against 'capitalist-roaders' had led to
anarchy, the Red Guards' actions had led to conservatism amongst
China's workers, and the lack of discipline and the factionalism in
the movement had made the Red Guards politically dangerous. 1967
would see the decision to dispel the student movement.
End of the movement
By February 1967 political opinion at the centre had now decided on
the removal of the Red Guards from the
Cultural Revolution scene in the
interests of stability.
In February and March the People's Liberation Army (PLA)
forcibly suppressed the more radical Red Guard groups in Sichuan
, Anhui
, Hunan
, Fujian
and Hubei
provinces. Students were also ordered to return to schools,
student radicalism was branded 'counterrevolutionary' and banned.
However, in the spring, there was a wide backlash against the
suppressions, with student attacks on any symbol of authority and
PLA units.
As a result, on September 5th 1967, an order
from Mao, the Cultural Revolution Group, the
State Council and the Central Military Affairs Committee of the PLA
instructed the PLA to restore order to China.
In the year that followed, the PLA violently put down the national
Red Guard movement, with the suppressions often brutal.
For
example, a radical alliance of Red Guard groups in Hunan province
called the Sheng Wu Lien was involved
in clashes with local PLA units, and in the first half of 1968 was
forcibly suppressed. At the same time, in
Guangxi province, the
PLA carried
out mass executions of Red Guards that were unprecedented in their
nature in the
Cultural
Revolution.
The final remnants of the movement were defeated in
Peking in the summer of 1968. Reportedly, in an
audience of the Red Guard leaders with
Mao, the
Chairman informed them gently of the end of the movement with a
tear in his eye. The repression of the students by the PLA was not
as gentle. After the summer of 1968, some more radical students
continued to travel across China and play an unofficial part in the
Cultural Revolution, but by the
summer of 1968 the movements's official and substantial role was
over.
In popular culture
- In The Last Emperor,
the Red Guard appeared near the end of the film humiliating the
kind prison warden who treated the Emperor of China Puyi
kindly.
- The film To Live has the
Red Guards appearing in a few scenes, showing their various types
of activity.
- Farewell My
Concubine, the Red Guards humiliate Cheng Dieyi and Duan
Xiaolou as they try to overthrow the old society.
- In the film The Blue
Kite, Tei Tou's classmates are shown wearing the red
scarfs of the red guards, and the film ends with the red guards
denouncing his stepfather.
- Jung Chang's autobiography
Wild Swans describes the
atrocities committed by the Red Guards.
- In
Hong
Kong
, TVB and ATV often depicted the brutality of
the Red Guards in films and television dramas. They are
rarely portrayed in film and television programs produced in
mainland China.
- The video game Command & Conquer:
Generals misleadingly named the Chinese standard infantry
unit the "Red Guard".
- The novel about the Cultural Revolution, Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang,
prominently features the Red Guards. The main character often
wishes she could become one.
- In the book Son of the
Revolution, the main character, Liang Heng, becomes a red
guard at age 12, despite the years of persecution he and his family received from
them.
- In the autobiography Gang of
One, Fan Shen provides first hand accounts of his youth as
a Red Guard.
- Li Cunxin makes repeated reference to
the Red Guards in his autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer
See also
Notes
- Chesneaux, p. 141
- Meisner, p. 334
- Chesneaux, p. 141
- Meisner, p. 334
- Meisner, p.334
- Chesneaux, p. 141
- Meisner, p. 335
- Meisner, p.366
- Meisner, p. 339
- Red Guards, ThinkQuest - Library:Discovering China,
Retrieved on May 30,
2008
- Meisner, p. 339
- Karnow, p. 209
- Karnow, p. 232 and 244
- Meisner, p. 339-340
- Meisner, p. 340
- Meisner, p. 340
- Meisner, p. 340
- Meisner, p. 341
- Meisner, p. 351
- Meisner, p. 352
- Meisner, p. 357
- Meisner, p. 361
- Meisner, p. 361
- Meisner, p. 362
References
- Meisner, M; 'Mao's China and After: A History of the People's
Republic Since 1949'; Free Press (1986)
- Karnow, S; 'Mao and China: Inside
China's Cultural Revolution'; Penguin (1984)
- Chesneaux, J; 'China: The People's Republic Since 1949';
Harvester Press (1979)
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