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Cultural Revolution: The Rise, the Fallen, the Aftermath

and the Factors of the Red Guard Movement  

It’s a popular knowledge that Mao Zedong is the father of the Chinese Revolution.

One of the former members of the Red Guards, An Xi Jiang said, “At that time people

worshipped him as God,” as Mao played a big role in the Cultural Revolution era, one of the

most important era in Chinese history. The cultural revolution which has long-lasting effects

on Chinese people and the country’s political culture is an era where the Chinese ‘old’ culture

was destroyed since it was considered unsuitably matched to the new culture and also the era

of eliminating the foreign influences throughout China (Karl, 2010, p. 118) The students

movement during the era called the Red Guards is one of the unforgettable movement since

the movement was very much related to violence and coercion. With his teaching and

revolutionary, Mao Zedong mobilized these students to get rid of anyone that is opposed to

the revolution. This literature review aims to explain the historical events happened in China

using Red Guards as the center of the research or study.  This paper start with how and when

the Red Guards formed, followed by the fallen of the Red Guards and the possible factors

behind the movement.

The Red Guard Movement: The Rise and The Fallen (1966-1968)

During the Cultural Revolution-era, Chinese literature was dominated by the literature

written about the Red Guards movement. Various scholars tried to study the actions and

motivations behind the movement. Most of the literature written are focusing on Mao’s role

and the use of violence done by the members to eradicate the so-called “capitalist roaders”

(Xiaowei, 2006, p. 1) The scholars during the Cultural Revolution, either Western or Chinese

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scholars are describing Mao as the leader behind the movement. As Dorman (1971) claimed

in his article, direct personal inspiration and ideology were given by Mao himself to these

students (p. 267) The infamous The Little Red Book, a book contains quotations from

Chairman Mao is instrumental to the propaganda used by the Red Guards. The Red Guards

forcibly get rid of the people that they thought are the enemy of Communism. These people

they classified as the enemy are the bourgeois, the capitalist, even their own teacher which

follow China’s ‘old education system. It was seen as such a nice move since the Red Guards

could accomplish Mao’s dream to get rid of the capitalist or bourgeois or anyone that aren't

fully adopting the Communist lifestyle. In other word, Mao used the Red Guards for his own

‘agenda’.

Media is the Red Guards weapon to change public perception at the start of the

movement. The students such as Kuai Dafu and Wang Fan, the leaders of two big Red

Guards organizations, made posters that humiliate the enemy. In Kuai and Fan case, they

made a poster that calls the school’s committee a revisionist criminal because of the

committee want to build a separate canteen for the female student which is categorized not in

line with Communism vision that everything should be equal regardless gender and status

(Xiaowei, 2006, p. 1) The Red Guards has a massive control over the media at that moment.

The words violence and coercion also used by many scholars when they write about the Red

Guards movements. In his book, Shen (2008) noted that the members shouldn’t sympathize

the people they humiliated and beaten to death in order to be the true revolutionaries. 

The Red Guards then was disbanded on 8 July 1968. Russo (2005) explains that the

dissolution of Red Guards is the result of a meeting between Mao and five leaders of the most

famous Red Guards organizations. The reasons behind the disband are Mao’s disappointment

towards the Red Guards movement which mostly involved violence and the fact that he can’t

control them anymore (p. 536) The Red Guards movement left effects on the members or the

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people who born or live during the movement. Chen (1999) reveals in his article that both in

Mao’s era and the post-Mao era, the Red Guard’s generations’ socio-economic life was not

really good and mostly suffering in their lifetime. The Red Guards generation are the Chinese

born in 1959-1961, most of them suffered from famine during their childhood and they don’t

have a chance to get proper education since in their adolescence they have to endure the

Cultural Revolution where the government sent them to the countryside (Chen, 1999, p. 219)

In the Cultural Revolution era they only learn courses proposed by the government which

mainly revolve around Mao’s teaching. With their so little education, since many of them

aren’t qualified to enter universities, made them unprepared for the era after Mao’s, Deng’s

reform era. In Deng’s era, college degree is a must since it was one of the requirements for

any jobs application. Their lack of education gets them eliminated from the competition even

before really starting, and left them behind to do the low salary jobs in the urban area.

The Red Guards Movement: The Possible Factors of the Movement (1969-1977)

After the Cultural Revolution has ended in 1976, there are more scholars wrote a

bunch of literature about the Red Guards movement. They try to give the readers developed

explanations regarding the events since they have more time to reflect on the Red Guard

movement and linked it with the purpose of the Cultural Revolution. Through the outcomes

and effects of the movement suffered by the former members of Red Guards or people who

born during the era, the scholars come with two theories which may give a further

explanation regarding the topic. These two theories mainly focus to find the answer whether

political factors in the elite party is the cause of the Red Guards movement or social factors

are the cause of the movement.

In Dowland review of Lee’s study she emphasizes that it was the political conflict

within the party leaders during the Cultural Revolution that makes the movement happened

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(Dowland, 2004, p. 2 as cited in Lee, 1978) Mao and Liu Shaoqi have a different

understanding of their ideology. Where Shaoqi believed that in communism the economic

factors is a device to define the class, meanwhile Mao believed that class is defined by

political factors (Fox, 2012, p. 8) But smartly Mao know what to do to win the competition,

as what has been mentioned above he went to these students by himself and doctrine them

with his understanding of the ideology. 

However, Chan, Rosen and Unger (1980) suggested a different theory to understand

the movement. They argue that the major cause of the movement is social factors. At that

time, the government divide their citizen based on the class. The class is divided into three

categories: good class (children of revolutionary cadres, revolutionary army, etc), middle

class (children of peasant families, pre-Liberation shop clerk, etc), and bad class (children of

former capitalist, counterrevolutionaries) as what have been explained in Deng and Treiman

article (Deng & Treiman, 1997, p. 395) The movement may become an event for the good

class to take revenge on the bad class who once lived in luxury before the revolution, or to

maintain their current status, or even to upgrade their status. Through the movement, the bad

class students could upgrade their status by joining the Red Guards where they may have to

abandoned or even hurt their parents since some of the bad-class students are the children of

the capitalists.

There is still no guarantee which from the theories above is the right one. In a couple

of decades, there are more and more scholars study the theory. Some of the members of Red

Guards even began to write about their experiences such as Fan Shen, and this could produce

more theories or perspectives about the topic. Their theories may be the closest to define the

movement since they’re the one who experiences the movement and the outcomes of the

movement. In his book (2008) Shen claimed that he was living in pretence since it’s

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impossible to reject Mao’s teaching. He himself did not agree with the Red Guards actions

which involved extreme violence and coercion.

In conclusion, this paper provided the full story of the rise and the fallen of the Red

Guards and also the factors of the movement explained by two different theories. The key

finding of this study is to have an in-depth investigation regarding the topic and from the

investigation it will shed light upon the possible factors of the movement. For future research

concerning the topic, it would be better if there are more former members of the Red Guards

that could write their own experiences or maybe write works of literature that focus on how

the environments the members lived in at that time could change their behaviour. Usually,

when people are in a situation where they have so much power like what is happened during

the Red Guards movement, people tend to behave in a way they wouldn’t normally do.

(Word count: 1495)

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REFERENCE LIST
Chan, A., Rosen, S., & Unger, J. (1980). Students and class warfare: The social roots of the
red guard conflict in Guangzhou (Canton). China Quarterly, 83, 397-446. Retrieved from,
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S030574100001290X

Chen, Y. (1999). Lost in revolution and reform: The socioeconomic pains of China’s Red
Guards generation, 1966-1996. Journal of Contemporary China, 8(21), 219-239. Retrieved
from,
https://monash.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/113cqvi/TN_proquest60269390

Deng, Z., & Treiman, J. D. (1997). The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Trends in
Educational Attainment in the People’s Republic of China. American Journal of Sociology,
103(2), 391-428. doi:10.1086/231212

Dowland, J. (2004). The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Historiographical Study, 1-18.

Fox, A. (2012). Explaining the Red Guard Movement During the Cultural Revolution.
Writing Exellence Award Winners, 1-22. Retrieved from,
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1027&context=writing_awards

Karl, R. (2010). Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world: a concise history,
118. Durham [N.C]: Duke University Press. Retrieved from,
https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/10.1215/9780822393023-008

Russo, Alessandro. (2005). The Conclusive Scene: Mao and the Red Guards In July 1968.
Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 13(3), 535-574. Retrieved from,
https://read-dukeupress-edu.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/positions/article/13/3/535-574/81173

Shen, F. (2004). Gang of one. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, x-29.

Xiaowei, Z. (2006). “Passion, reflection, and survival”: Political choices of red guards at
Qinghua University, June 1966-July 1968. The Chinese cultural revolution as history, 1-23.
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