VI. The Cultural Revolution—The World Turned Upside Down by Evil Possession
The Cultural Revolution was a grand performance put up by the communist specter as it possessed the entire China. In 1966, a new wave of violence rolled onto China’s land, and an uncontrollable red terror shook the mountains and froze the rivers. Writer Qin Mu described the Cultural Revolution in bleak terms:
It was truly an unprecedented calamity: [the CCP] imprisoned millions due to their association with a [targeted] family member, ended the lives of millions more, shattered families, turned children into hoodlums and villains, burned books, tore down ancient buildings, and destroyed ancient intellectuals’ gravesites, committing all kinds of crimes in the name of revolution.
Conservative figures place the number of unnatural deaths in China during the Cultural Revolution at 7.73 million.
People often mistakenly think that the violence and slaughter during the Cultural Revolution happened mostly during the rebel movements, and that it was the Red Guards and rebels who committed the killing. However, thousands of officially published Chinese county annuals indicate that the peak of unnatural deaths during the Cultural Revolution was not in 1966, when the Red Guards controlled most of the government organizations, or in 1967 when the rebels fought among different groups with weapons, but rather in 1968 when Mao regained control over the entire country. The murderers in those infamous cases were often army officers and soldiers, armed militiamen, and CCP members at all levels of the government.
The following examples illustrate how the violence during the Cultural Revolution was the policy of the CCP and the regional government, not the extreme behavior of the Red Guards. The CCP has covered up the direct instigation of and involvement in the violence by party leaders and government officials.
In August 1966, the Red Guards expelled Beijing residents who had been classified in past movements as “landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists” and forced them to the countryside. Incomplete official statistics showed that 33,695 homes were searched and 85,196 Beijing residents were expelled out of the city and sent back to where their parents had originally come from. Red Guards all over the country followed suit, expelling over 400,000 urban residents to the countryside. Even high-ranking officials, whose parents were landlords, faced exile to the country.
Actually, the CCP planned the expulsion campaign even before the Cultural Revolution began. Former Beijing mayor Peng Zhen declared that the residents of Beijing City should be as ideologically pure as “glass panels and crystals,” meaning that all residents with a bad class background would be expelled out of the city. In May of 1966, Mao commanded his subordinates to “protect the capital.” A capital working team was set up, led by Ye Jianying, Yang Chengwu and Xie Fuzhi. One of the tasks of this team was to use the police to expel Beijing residents of bad class background.
This history helps make clear why the government and police departments did not intervene but rather supported the Red Guards in searching homes and expelling more than two percent of Beijing residents. The Minister of Public Security, Xie Fuzhi, required the police not to intervene in the Red Guards’ actions but rather to provide advice and information to them. The Red Guards were simply utilized by the Party to carry out a planned action, and then, at the end of 1966, these Red Guards were abandoned by the CCP. Many were labeled counterrevolutionaries and imprisoned, and others were sent to the countryside, along with other urban youth, to labor and reform their thoughts. The West Town Red Guard organization, which led the expulsion of city residents, was established under the “caring” guidance of the CCP leaders. The order to incriminate these Red Guards was also issued after being revised by the secretary-general of the State Council.
Following the removal of the Beijing residents of bad class background, the rural areas started another round of persecution of bad class elements. On August 26, 1966, a speech of Xie Fuzhi was passed down to the Daxing Police Bureau at their work meeting. Xie ordered the police to assist the Red Guards in searching the homes of the “five black classes” (landlords, rich peasants, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists) by providing advice and information and helping in their raids. The infamous Daxing Massacre [8] occurred as a result of direct instructions by the police department; the organizers were the director and the CCP secretary of the police department, and the killers were mostly militiamen who did not even spare the children.
Many were admitted into the CCP for their “good behavior” during similar slaughters. According to incomplete statistics for Guangxi Province, about 50,000 CCP members engaged in killing. Among them more than 9,000 were admitted into the Party shortly after killing someone, more than 20,000 committed murder after being admitted into the Party, and more than 19,000 other Party members were involved in killing in one way or another.
During the Cultural Revolution, class theory would also be applied to beatings. The bad deserved it if they were beaten by the good. It was honorable for a bad person to beat another bad person. It was a misunderstanding if a good person beat another good person. Such a theory invented by Mao was spread widely in the rebel movements. Violence and slaughter were widespread following the logic that the enemies of the class struggle deserved any violence against them.
From August 13 to October 7 of 1967, militiamen in Dao County of Hunan Province slaughtered members of the “Xiangjiang Wind and Thunder” organization and those of the “five black classes.” The slaughter lasted 66 days; more than 4,519 people in 2,778 households were killed in 468 brigades (administrative villages) of 36 people’s communes in 10 districts. In the entire prefecture consisting of 10 counties, a total of 9,093 people were killed, of which 38% were of the “five black classes” and 44% were their children. The oldest person killed was 78 years old, and the youngest was only 10 days old.
This is only one case of violence in one small area during the Cultural Revolution. In Inner Mongolia, after the establishment of the “revolutionary committee” in early 1968, the cleansing of class rank and purging of the fabricated “Inner Mongolia People’s Revolutionary Party” killed more than 350,000 people. In 1968, tens of thousands of people in Guangxi Province participated in the mass slaughter of the rebel faction “422” organization, killing more than 110,000.
These cases point out that those major acts of violent killing during the Cultural Revolution were all under the direct instigation and instruction of CCP leaders who encouraged and utilized violence to persecute and kill citizens. Those killers directly involved in instructing and executing the killing were mostly from the military, police, armed militia, and key members of the Party and the Youth League.
If during the Land Reform the CCP used peasants to overthrow landlords to obtain land, during the Industrial and Commercial Reform the CCP used the working class to overthrow capitalists to gain assets, and during the Anti-Rightist Movement the CCP eliminated all intellectuals who held opposing opinions, then what was the purpose of all the killing during the Cultural Revolution? The CCP used one group to kill another, and no one class was relied upon. Even if you were from the workers and peasants, two classes upon which the Party relied in the past, if your viewpoint differed from that of the Party, your life would be in danger. So in the end, what was it all for?
The purpose was to establish communism as the one and only religion dominating the entire country, controlling not just the state but every individual’s mind.
The Cultural Revolution pushed the CCP and Mao Zedong’s cult of personality to a climax. Mao’s theory had to be used to dictate everything and one person’s vision had to be embedded in tens of millions of people’s minds. The Cultural Revolution, in a way unprecedented and never again to be matched, intentionally did not specify what could not be done. Instead, the Party emphasized “what can be done and how to do it. Anything outside this boundary could not be done or even considered.”
During the Cultural Revolution, everyone in the country carried out a religious-like ritual: “ask the Party for instructions in the morning and report to the Party in the evening,” salute Chairman Mao several times a day, wishing him boundless longevity, and conduct morning and evening political prayers everyday. Nearly every literate person had the experience of writing self-criticism and thought reports. Mao’s quotations such as the following were frequently recited. “Fight ferociously against every passing thought of selfishness.” “Execute instructions whether or not you understood them; deepen your understanding in the process of execution.”
Only one “god” (Mao) was allowed to be worshiped; only one kind of scripture (Mao’s teaching) was allowed to be studied. Soon the “god-making” process progressed to such a degree that people could not buy food in canteens if they did not recite a quotation or make a greeting to Mao. When shopping, riding the bus, or even making a phone call, one had to recite one of Mao’s quotations, even if it was totally irrelevant. In these rituals of worship, people were either fanatical or cynical, and in either case were already under the control of the communist evil specter. Producing lies, tolerating lies and relying on lies became Chinese people’s lifestyle.
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