Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guards waged a decade of violence as they ‘grasped political power from the barrel of a gun’

THE death toll from the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution, as with the Great March that secured Mao Tse-tung’s control over China in 1949, remains indefinite 50 years after it began on May 16, 1966.

Red Guards hold Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book aloft in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in 1966.

“WHILE depicting the cruelty of war, we should not dwell excessively on its horrors,” instructed Chinese Communist dictator Mao Tse-tung in April 1966.

Four weeks later, young Red Guards took the esteemed leader of 700 million people at his word in a bloodthirsty cultural revolution that killed at least 500,000 people, and possibly millions.

Among almost 100 villagers clubbed and strangled in Daxing County as “evil elements” accused of coming from landlord families were four of Fu Yueying’s five children.

They died in August 1966, as Red Guards obeyed Communist Party calls for youth to smash the “four olds”: thinking, habits, culture and customs. Fu, whose youngest child fled and vanished, survived because her second husband had an acceptable “class background”.

Young rebels also destroyed art, statues, books and artefacts from China’s past. The death toll from the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution, as with the Great March that secured Mao’s control over China in 1949, remains indefinite 50 years after it began on May 16, 1966.

Still, estimates that Mao’s proletarian utopia cost 40 to 70 million lives are close to the fatalities Mao envisaged in 1948, when he noted “one-tenth of the peasants”, or about 50 million of 500 million people, “would have to be destroyed” to facilitate agrarian reform. The Communist Party Central Committee estimated in 1948 that 30 million landlords and rich peasants would be eliminated.

Mao’s instructions on managing real and imagined political opponents circulated globally from 1964, when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army published 200 Quotations from Chairman Mao in a red vinyl-covered book. Among them was: “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Two years later, after a meeting of China’s 25 Politburo members, Mao released the May 16 Notification, implying enemies of the Communist cause had infiltrated China’s Communist Party.

Chinese communist leader Zhou Enlai and prime minister, Chairman Mao Tse-tung review troops celebrating the 18th anniversary of the republic in 1967.

The first target in Mao’s campaign to oust opponents was Beijing mayor Peng Zhen. Although part of the 1949 Communist Revolution, Peng’s relationship with Mao soured after the disastrous Great Leap Forward from 1958.

Mao’s Leap to modernise agriculture and industry forced peasants into 5000-strong communes, organised through decentralised ideologically suitable committees, to make steel in backyard furnaces. Mass diversion of farm labour into small industry was disastrous for agriculture, exacerbated by three years of natural calamities. Some 20 million people died, mainly from starvation, between 1959 and 1962.

Peng sided with Communist Secretary General Deng Xiaoping to blame the famine on Mao’s poor management. Deng dropped Great Leap ideology in favour of economic management. Mao interpreted generally favourable reactions to Deng’s economic reforms as a loss of prestige.

In January 1965, the Politburo made Peng head of the Five Man Group to correct anti-socialist ideas in art and literature. Peng, unlike Mao, did not consider dissenting cultural ideas a government matter, arguing they needed academic debate to “seek facts from truth”. The Group was replaced in May 1966, when Peng was purged and later harassed by Red Guards.

Launching his Cultural Revolution, Mao encouraged the masses to root out right-wing capitalists who had “infiltrated the party”. Mao’s notice warned against class enemies who “wave the red flag to oppose the red flag”, advising the only way to identify them was through “the telescope and microscope of Mao Tse-tung Thought”.

Mao’s ally, Defence Minister Lin Biao, on May 18, 1966, permitted violence while seizing “sources of production” from “landlords”. Lin called for destruction of traditional beliefs, customs and thinking, while Mao’s wife Jiang Qing identified ideological errors in feature films.

The Cultural Revolution first concentrated on schools after Communist leaders proclaimed some Chinese educators belonged to exploiting classes and were poisoning students with capitalist ideology. Middle school and university student rebels in Beijing adopted traditions of the 1949 Revolution and began calling themselves Red Guards, the soldiers fighting to protect the Revolution and Mao thought.

Donning old revolutionary uniforms with red arm-bands, they brought chaos to classrooms as informal courts identified teachers and lecturers as bad elements.

With Deng denounced, student rebels forced his eldest son out a window, leaving him paralysed. Beijing street and shop names changed: Blue Sky Clothes Store became Defending Mao Zedong Clothes Store, Cai E Road became Red Guard Road.

“We hail the proletarian revolutionary rebel spirit of young Red Guard fighters,” a newspaper wrote in June 1966. “Chairman Mao has said: ‘In the last analysis, all truths of Marxism can be summed up in one sentence: To rebel is justified’.”

As the Cultural Revolution gained momentum, by 1976 Tibetan monasteries were destroyed and countless people classified as evil elements were tortured and killed.

“A revolution is not a dinner party ... or doing embroidery,” Mao advised. “A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Originally published as Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guards waged a decade of violence as they ‘grasped political power from the barrel of a gun’