Seventeen years ago, when the Chinese Communists usurped power on the mainland, they made use of young people — especially of university and college students on Red-infiltrated campuses. But from that moment until the summer of 1966, the Communists carefully avoided placing power or responsibility in the hands of the young. At the orders of Mao Tse-tung, young people were indoctrinated, brainwashed, and turned against their ciders. Yet in recent years Mao has admitted his failure to produce a new generation of Communist leaders who could be trusted to take over from the old guard. He complained that the younger generation was soft and interested only in pleasure. This failure is reflected in an aging Red hierarchy. The average age of the Central Committee is 64, that of the Politburo 66. Mao is almost 73. At 58, Lin Piao is the youngest of the elite.
Then out of the blue, in mid-August, Mao and Lin Piao loosed upon the mainland hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of rampaging teen-age Red Guards. They crowded into Peiping for two massive rallies, both attended by Mao and the descending pecking order of his Red cohorts. Guards also were sent rooting after "bourgeois elements" in other cities. For three weeks they raged across the land — attacking, beating, reviling. Their targets were the so-called "national capitalists", anyone who showed any sign of conspicuous consumption, overseas Chinese, foreigners, and all who failed to worship Mao as a deity. They also destroyed property - anything of foreign origin or of a luxurious nature. Whether by order or out of their own anti-intellectualism, they smashed Chinese cultural treasures.
After less than a month, the elderly Peiping leadership began to show some alarm. Witch-hunting Red Guards were told to stay away from factories and farms, and to stick strictly to their pursuit of the bourgeoisie. Control measures were enforced through the "People's Liberation Army". Even so, public endorsement of the Red Guard movement continued. The teen-agers were hailed as the wave of the future and as mentors of the PLA. The big question was why. Speculation ranged through these possibilities:
Why the Guards?
* Mao's awareness that a new fanatical leadership must be found if the Chinese Communists are not to follow the Russians into revisionism.
* For the intensification of mainland socialism. There have been many hints of a new "leap forward" attempt that would require renewed sacrifices by peasants and workers. Communist grumbling about the private farm plots and semi-free markets has been increasing.
* For the reinforcement of Mao's faltering rule and more effective suppression of simmering anti-Communism. Red Guards intimidated and clashed with many people. Their victims may be unleashed by Lin Piao.
* For the creation of war fever and elimination of any opposition to possible intervention in Vietnam or confrontation of the United States.
* For completion of the "great proletarian cultural revolution", which was strongly anti-intellectual and which was boomeranging against the Mao regime. The Red Guards were able to undertake reprisals and punishments too childish to be carried out in the name of the Communist hierarchy.
The Communists apparently had already sent vigilant squads to complete the cultural revolution at universities and in other organizations and enterprises, but these hard-line activists were repulsed. If the intellectuals were fighting back, as seemed likely, what better weapon with which to attack them in the Communist way of thinking than children?
Truth about the Red Guards probably was multiple. They were organized and sent into action for more than one reason. Despite all the talk about ideology and the many denunciations of revisionism, the Chinese Communist apparatus has always been opportunistic. When the Great Leap Forward failed in the late 1950s, the regime relaxed socialism to permit the private plots that saved the mainland from massive starvation. Even in the beginning, the services of the "national capitalists" were utilized to keep the economy rolling.
High Price
Peiping has paid a high price for the Red Guards, however. Of Communist parties, only that of Switzerland had a kind word to say about them. Even Albania was silent. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europeans have led the way in making denunciatory statements. Never has Chinese Communist international standing been lower. Internal repercussions also may be serious. Pitched battles have pitted the teen-agers against workers, peasants, intellectuals, and older students. By turning children against their elders in outbursts of persecution and sadistic violence, the Peiping tyrants have sacrificed what little unity was left to them.
Without much doubt, the emergence of the Red Guards was a sign of weakness and not of strength. They were introduced with great fanfare in the "Square of Heavenly Peace" at Peiping on August 18. More than a million persons were on hand. Mao Tse-tung mingled with the throngs of Guards, who wore red armbands and PLA-type uniforms, for nearly two hours before the rally began.
This was the occasion on which "defense minister" Lin Piao first reviewed the proceedings "shoulder to shoulder" with Mao and then spoke on the latter's behalf. "President" Liu Shao-chi was listed eighth among those on the platform and did not speak. One who did speak was Chen Po-ta, chief of the cultural revolution, representing students and teachers and presumably Red Guards.
Not until two days later did the Red Guard movement erupt into their initial outburst of noisy violence. Hordes of teen-agers and some older leaders swept through Peiping streets destroying shop and street signs and replacing them with names more appropriate to the anti-intellectual atmosphere of the cultural revolution.
Members of the mobs wore PLA-style uniforms and caps, implying a connection with Lin Piao that since has received much substantiation. Police took no action to stop the hoodlum ism. Some direction came from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League. The CYL headquarters was a gathering place for the rampaging Guards.
In the eastern district of Peiping, where foreign embassies are located, one street name was changed to "Boulevard to Struggle Against the United States" and another to "Boulevard to Extend Aid to North Vietnam". Posters went up everywhere, proclaiming such slogans as "Cultural Revolution", "Red Flag", and "East Wind".
Policy of Violence
By August 23, Red Guards were spitting on professors of Peiping University, whose president, Lu Ping, was sacked in the cultural revolution. Two professors were forced to parade naked on a campus at Shanghai. "New China News Agency" praised Guards as "the most active, the bravest, and firmest of the revolutionary students".
"An expression of conformity among the Red Guards in Peiping," says the caption for this picture originally carried in Sunday Times of London along with a Peiping dispatch of Sept. 3 about the excesses of Red Guards. (File photo)
One Red Guard member wrote in a Peiping daily newspaper: "The future of China belongs to us. The future of the world belongs to us. We must pursue a policy of violence. We must thoroughly carry out the cultural revolution in accordance with Chairman Mao Tse-tung's thought."
Mainland sources said that the basic requirements for Red Guard membership were to have been born after the Communists seized power on the mainland and to be of poorest laborer or peasant stock.
On August 24 the Red Guards demanded that the eight non-Communist political parties dissolve themselves within 72 hours. Actually, these parties hold no power. They are composed of a relatively few intellectuals, businessmen, industrialists, teachers, and overseas Chinese.
At the same time, Guards closed Christian churches and demanded that the color of traffic lights be changed. They said red must always be a symbol of "go" and never of "stop". A red flag was affixed to the dome of the old Italian-style Catholic Nantang Central Cathedral. Posters bearing slogans of the cultural revolution were plastered all over churches.
Attack on Fashions
NCNA again lauded the Guards. A Red Guard statement charged that the former Peiping municipal party committee had "turned a blind eye to remnants of the bourgeois past and even prohibited efforts to make any reform. They were taking the revisionist and capitalist road. We must block up all openings that lead to capitalism and mercilessly destroy every hotbed of revisionism."
Young people with long hair were harangued and compelled to cut it. Tight trousers were slit. Girls in slacks were chased off the street. Those with make-up had their faces scrubbed. Any sign of a coiffure brought out scissors for a short bob. Barbers and beauticians were warned to give only the service appropriate to workers, peasants, and soldiers. Tailors and dressmakers were ordered not to "imitate outlandish bourgeois fashions of the West". Booksellers were told to sell only the works of Mao and other similarly dull Communist fare.
More streets were renamed. Prince's Well Street became Prevent Revisionism Street and the Street of Eternal Peace was transformed into East Is Red Street.
On August 25, Red Guard rowdies invaded the compound of the Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic school operated by French nuns and attended by the children of diplomats and other foreign residents of Peiping. This was the first example of violent xenophobia.
The eight nuns were insulted, humiliated, and compelled to perform menial manual labor. Subsequently, these sisters were deported. One of them died the day after reaching Hongkong.
Diplomats and others who tried to intervene at the academy were reviled. The walls of the school were plastered with posters reading: "Get Out, Foreign Devils!", "Chase Out the Running Dogs of Imperialism!", and "Christianity Is the Same as Imperialism".
Attacks on moderately well-off Chinese began at the same time. One family was forced to don red clothing and stand outside their home to be jeered. Posters warned "land owners, rich farmers, and capitalists" to leave Peiping and go to farms for labor reform within three days. Anyone employing servants was ordered to pay them and send them home within five days. Overseas Chinese also were given three days to begin farm labor. Two elderly Chinese were covered with flour and paraded through Peiping for living "like the bourgeoisie". Those whose heads had been close-clipped were similarly driven through the streets to be ridiculed. The mobs spread from Peiping to Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton, and other cities.
Midnight Raids
Subsequently, the ultimatum to leave Peiping was cut to 12 hours. An aged Moslem Inam was beaten and compelled to "confess" to crimes set forth in a poster plastered on the walls of his mosque. Police and Communist Party officials looked on blandly as more and more beatings took place in the streets. Tourists were lectured and insulted for wearing "bourgeois clothing". Shopkeepers were denounced for selling Western goods and for charging interest. One foreign diplomat reported that "almost every square inch of wall space" in Peiping was covered with huge posters. Houses were sacked and the people led away to hard physical labor. Many raids were carried out at midnight.
Red Guards swarmed through a hospital and assaulted 16 doctors with American or British educations. The doctors were forced to stand in corridors with signs around their necks proclaiming them to be "Medical Reactionaries".
By August 26, the Soviet Union was beginning to pay attention. Pravda carried a lengthy article on the Red Guard movement, and asserted that "anti-Soviet sentiments" were involved. Tass reported the closing of bookstores and removal of all except Mao's works from others. Art shops were said to have been closed or compelled to sell only pictures of Mao.
Nor was Moscow happy about what happened to the recordings of classical music. The Russians are likely to be touchy about the works of Shostakovich and even Tchaikovsky. Moscow charged the Red Guards also destroyed the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, and Bartok.
Tass made quite a thing about the withdrawal of "perfume, scent, powder, cream, and other perfumery" from the windows of the Central Peiping Department Store. and other shops. The news agency also regretted that Red Guards had attacked toys because they "cultivate bourgeois and revisionist habits in children". The Russians have a fondness for toys that no amount of Marx and Communism has been able to wipe out.
Art Objects Smashed
Red Guards smashed old Grecian, Roman, and Chinese pieces of art in front of the Peiping Central Art Academy. Students and instructors of the Peiping Normal Academy were said to have joined the teen-age hooligans in dragging out the art objects and hacking them to pieces as "demons and monsters" of the old ruling classes.
Next the neo-barbarians turned their wrath against the Peiping "constitution", a document always honored more in: the breach than the observance. They demanded that the rights of "former bourgeoisie and capitalists to own lawfully earned incomes, savings, houses, private property, and other mean of life" be ended forthwith. When Guards insisted that the interest on savings of the "capitalists" be suspended, the "People's Bank of China" agreed.
Assault on the few remaining former capitalists — who sold out to the Communists in return for a relatively comfortable life — seemed to mean that the Peiping regime was ready to go back on its promises and complete liquidation of the old propertied class.
The question of "right" and "left" continued to give trouble. A frustrated comic
among the Guards suggested that all traffic should move on the left side. But there was no joke when Guards demanded that drill master of the military call for "Eyes left!" and never "Eyes right!"
When the Guards tried to rename Peiping "East Is Red", the authorities fell silent. NCNA continued to use the old name in its news dispatches. "Peking" means "capital of the North".
Bibles Destroyed
As August neared an end, the regime turned out tens of thousands of workers, government employees, and housewives to back up the Guards in their campaign "to destroy the old world and build a new one". The army and peasantry also were summoned.
Red Guards returned to the Sacred Heart Academy to smash religious statues and tear up Bibles. Before their departure, five nuns were marched into the street, forced to sit in the gutter, and berated as tools of imperialism. Travelers returning from the mainland compared the Guards with the Hitler Youth and Mussolini's castor-oil-cadres. They told of a man who was tied to a lamp post while his head was shaved. Women wearing high heels lost their shoes and had to go barefoot.
In Canton, 300 business establishments were attacked. Signboards were smashed to eradicate the names of those who had established businesses before 1949 (the year of the Communist takeover). Some 600 Canton stores were ordered to change their names. Central Park became People's Park, because "Central is a name often used by the Nationalist Chinese".
Red Guards found a natural target in the Soviet Embassy at Peiping. On August 27 Moscow registered "an emphatic protest" against demonstrations. The Russians charged stonings and mob action prevented a Soviet diplomat from attending an official function. "These outrages are being committed before the eyes of policemen who do not take steps," the Russians charged.
Tass reported Peiping distribution of leaflets claiming that eight Red Guards and one Young Pioneer had been killed by class enemies in Peiping. For the first time, the Chinese Communist authorities began to ask the Red Guards to show some discipline. A Tass correspondent wrote: "The city is filled with Red Guards and with youths without red armbands." Agence France Presse said Peiping was filling up with young people from outlying provinces.
On August 28, People's Daily told the Red Guards to observe discipline in the cultural revolution. The Guards' objectives were endorsed, but the editorial demanded that the Guards not only comply with Mao Tse-tung's principles but preserve the nation's property.
Tours Called Off
Red China's new tourism business ground to a halt. On August 28, only nine persons entered Red China from Hongkong. Normally the number is 100 or more. At the Portuguese colony of Macao, the Communist "China Travel Service" suspended group tours to the mainland. At least six tours were canceled. The last to reach Canton was hounded by the young hoodlums.
Also in Canton, security forces had to be called out to prevent Guards from wrecking a television station. Foreign establishments were stoned. A Czechoslovak national intercepted by the Guards was insulted. Shops catering to overseas Chinese were ransacked. Western-style furniture was thrown into the streets. Chinese visitors were marched through the streets with "Capitalist" signs hung around their necks.
Demonstrations by hundreds of thousands were mounted in front of the Soviet Embassy in Peiping. However, the official warnings to be careful had begun to take hold. Chants and slogans and banners were bitter — but the violence was much toned down. Nevertheless, Izvestia complained of "hooligan actions". The anti-Soviet rallies continued through August 29 and 30, and on the second day involved more than half a million persons. Forces of the PLA kept demonstrators 500 meters from the embassy building.
Both PLA and People's Daily trumpeted new testimonials to the Guards, as if to make up for the tempering of violence. PLA said the army must learn from the militant teen-agers, who "have accomplished so much in so little time" as vanguards of the cultural revolution. People's Daily called for extension of Red Guard activities to the countryside so as to flush out all the "bloodsuckers and sworn enemies of the people".
On the last day of August Red Guards gathered along the Hongkong border and screamed imprecations at the "dirty imperialists". Persons returning to Red China were given leaflets telling them to dress properly, not to cut or wear their hair in bourgeois fashion, and to support the cultural revolution.
A report from Canton said two Red Guards were killed in a barbershop after they accused barbers of giving Teddy-boy haircuts and using "capitalist-smelling" pomade and brilliantine.
Second Big Rally
Another huge Peiping rally attended by Mao Tse-tung and the fast-changing Communist Party hierarchy was held August 31. This time the specific purpose was to hail the Red Guards. Lin Piao again spoke for Mao, acclaiming the "proletariat revolutionary spirit" of the Red Guards and declaring: "We firmly oppose any attempt to suppress you. Your revolutionary actions are very fine. We hail and salute you!"
However, Lin also sounded a note of caution. "We must act in accordance with the teachings of chairman Mao Tse-tung," he said, "and carry out the struggles by reasoning and not by coercion or force.
Don’t hit people. This applies, too, in struggling against those persons in power who are taking the capitalist road and against the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists."
From a Prague newspaper came reports of a clash between Red Guards and some 140,000 workers in Chingtai. Injured were said to have totaled 140. The municipal committee engaged in an anti-Red Guard demonstration. Resistance to the Guards also was reported from other cities and towns.
As September began, the Red Guards talked as belligerently as ever but engaged in less violence. An article in People's Daily boasted that the Guards were reserves of the PLA and ready to fight the United States in Vietnam or any place else. Peiping Radio said the Guards would organize themselves on a combat basis and undergo military training.
Further Clashes
On September 4 the Communists announced that Lin Piao had become commander in chief of the Red Guards, that "marshal" Ho Lung would be chief of staff and Chou En-lai "adviser".
The Soviet Union and Eastern European governments waxed increasingly critical of the Guards and the cultural revolution. Tass said the movement was anti-Soviet. Correspondents in Moscow predicted a new campaign of Peiping vilification. Hungarian Communist sources described the movement as "not revolutionary violence but brutality",
On September 5, both the Japanese and Yugoslav press reported new clashes between Red Guards and the people. One Japanese source said "the whole country is wrapped up in an atmosphere of tumult". Locales of violence included Tientsin, Hopei, Cheng-sha, Siang, Chengchou, Langchow, and Tsingtao. Another report told of battles between Red Guards of Peiping and those of other cities.
By September 7, the Communist Party sharply told the Guards to keep their noses out of agriculture and industry, and observed that the teen-age demonstrators knew nothing of either. They were also told to keep out of discussions with workers and farmers, "who are the main force of the revolution and 100 per cent capable of carrying out the revolutionary movement themselves".
A Peiping report via Prague said Red Guards who flocked into Peiping had been told to go home. Posters appeared suggesting that many "doubtful elements" were trying to exploit the movement to serve selfish interests.
Soviet criticisms became more scathing on September 8. Russian newspapers quoted an Australian Communist source as saying the Red Guard movement "cannot be regarded as anything but a caricature of the ideas and principles of Communism. The Red Chinese leaders are dragging the ideas of Communism through the mud.”
On September 9, Japanese sources reported rioting in Sian and other places as workers and peasants resisted Red Guard attempts to interfere with their lives. Peiping Radio admitted that soldiers, workers, peasants, and students had held meetings throughout the mainland in connection with the Red Guard movement. Many of these involved discussion of Red Guard controls.
Hongkong Assailed
Frustrated at home and with no more names to change, the Guards turned on the British crown colony of Hongkong, which means "fragrant harbor". Red Guards asked how a remnant of "imperialistic colonialism" could be called fragrant, and suggested the name of Hongkong be changed to "Oppose Imperialism City" or "Expel the Imperialists City". They insisted mail to Hongkong should be so addressed and Hongkong postal authorities said some was received.
A traveler returning from the mainland told of having to wash his own dishes after a meal at a restaurant. The Red Guards had decreed this to save manpower for harvest-time. Many of the young teen-agers also seemed headed for the farm, although not voluntarily so.
On September 10 came a report that "premier" Chou En-lai had gone to Peiping University to apologize for the actions of the Communist Party Central Committee and the Peiping municipal committee.
The activists were dispatched to schools and organizations throughout the country after The cultural revolution began, but many attacked "correct" leaders and were rebuffed. It was said that 90 per cent of the activist squads had acted wrongly, and that it was this failure which led to summoning of the Red Guards.
Although clashes between the Red Guards and the people continued, Peiping was said to be quieting down. Guards took down some of the posters they had plastered on almost every building. Goods began to go back on store shelves. Some beauty shops reopened. However, shoe dealers still were careful not to display any pointed footwear.
Japanese sources said the Red Guard reform most likely to stick is that of stopping interest payments to some former capitalists.
However, there were other signs that the madness was not yet over. Moslems in South China were forced to cat pork. Tea was banned in Canton as a bourgeois beverage. The Guards tried to arrest a factory manager in the city and a melee involving 700 workers and Guards broke out. Fifty were injured. The manager had tried to prevent the Guards from cutting a worker's hair.
Kangaroo Trials
Travelers from the mainland told of kangaroo trials conducted by the Red Guards — similar to the "people's court" summary executions of the early Communist period. Those on trial were charged with offenses against Mao Tse-tung. Some 2,000 suicides of the persecuted were reported in Shanghai and Canton alone.
People's Daily spoke of "powerful functionaries of the Communist Party" who had rebelled against Central Committee control and tried to turn workers and peasants against the Red Guards. The functionaries were not identified, except as "power-holders who tread the path of capitalism inside the party". The implication was of further purges.
Military garrisons continued to hold meetings for discussion of the Red Guard. It appeared that Lin Piao and the PLA were moving into a position of direct command over Guard activities.
By September 12 evidence of a further shake-up in the Peiping top hierarchy began to filter out of the mainland. "New China News Agency" listed Chou En-lai as a member of the seven-man standing committee of the Central Committee politburo but not as one of the party's five vice chairmen.
Kang Sheng, who has emerged as one of Mao's top lieutenants, was listed as a member of the standing committee, top organ of the Communist Party. He presumably was promoted to that level in August.
Before the cultural revolution began, the standing committee was composed of Mao, "president" Liu Shao-chi, Chou En-lai, Liu,Chu Teh, Chen Yun, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping. All except Teng also were vice chairmen under Mao.
The new standing committee, based on listings by NCNA during the August 18 mass rally in Peiping, may be made up of Mao, Lin Piao, Chou En-lai, Chen Po-ta, Tao Chu, Teng Hsiao-ping, and Kang Sheng. This would mean that Liu, Chu Teh, and Chen Yun have been dumped. It is also possible that Lin Piao is the sole remaining vice chairman.
Governor Sacked
Also in mid-September came revelation of the sacking of Chen Yu, "governor" of the rich southern province of Kwangtung. The chief city of Kwangtung is Canton, where the Red Guard met still resistance. "Mayor" Tseng Sheng was roughed up by the Guards when he urged them not to abuse overseas Chinese coming from Hongkong and Macao. Chen also was close to ousted Peiping "mayor" Peng Chen. There was no announcement of Chen's dismissal, merely the word that "vice governor" Lin Li-ming had taken over.
The one certainty on the Chinese mainland today is that as long as the Communists remain in control, more violence and suffering lie ahead for the people. The army can unleash the Red Guards again at any time. That is what Mao wants the people to understand. He hopes that the Red Guard violence already experienced will intimidate the mainland's millions and undermine the anti-Mao, anti-Communist movement that threatens to destroy the Peiping regime.