![]() It was saved only for the quick thinking of Zhou Enlai, who ordered it to be secured. Even the Forbidden City almost fell victim to the Red Guards. Historical landmarks, temples and palaces were destroyed or vandalised. Architecture, art, antiques, sculpture and works of literature were all torn apart or burnt, and those who possessed them were arbitrarily punished. Signs and street names were torn down or renamed. The last of the eight rallies (November 25th) saw an estimated 2.5 million Red Guards in attendance.įor months, the pro-Mao movement sought out, rooted out and destroyed anything associated with China’s imperial history or, occasionally, Western values. By early November 1966, the numbers attending these rallies had swelled to two million. Over the next three months, Mao would appear before an estimated 13 million Red Guards at eight different rallies in Tiananmen. Mao also stood for several hours while Lin Biao and Red Guards leaders addressed the throng. The Chairman offered his support to the movement by replicating their olive-green uniform, then accepting and wearing the armband favoured by the Red Guards. ![]() On August 18th, Mao appeared in person before a rally of around one million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square. News of this spread quickly and created another surge in the movement. In his return letter, Mao offered a ringing endorsement and his “enthusiastic support” to the Red Guards. This came on August 1st when the Chairman answered letters from the Red Guards from Qinghua. Mao backs the Red Guards A student presents Mao with a Red Guard armband on August 18th 1966Īs popular as the movement was, it was yet to receive the direct endorsement of Mao. They all served a common purpose, however: unflinching loyalty to Mao and a rigid commitment to his ideas. ![]() Their brigades were developed locally and without centralised control, so there was some variation in how they were organised and what they did. State newspapers and radio continued to fuel the movement by repeating dazibao posters and the speeches of Red Guard leaders.īy late July the schools, colleges and urban streets of China boasted thousands of different Red Guard brigades, with membership in the millions. Within a week he had the text of her poster published in state newspapers and read aloud on government radio. Nie’s protest captured the attention of Mao. “Now the people of the whole country, in their great love of the party and of Chairman Mao, and their extreme hatred for anti-socialists, have risen up in a cultural revolution”, she wrote, “but the administration is as not moved. Motivated by personal grudges as much as politics, Nie’s poster accused the university’s leaders of harbouring anti-socialist bourgeois ideas and denying the students’ right to protest and revolt. On May 25th, Nie Yuanzi, a 45-year-old philosophy lecturer, put up a dazibao (‘big character poster’) critical of the university’s administration. This began to change after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee released its May 16th circular, calling for a purge of the “bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government and various sphere of culture”. In the spring of 1966, Mao’s Cultural Revolution was still only an academic debate, confined mainly to universities. ![]() The origins of the Red Guards can be traced to Beijing University.
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