Dispelling misconceptions about the red guard movement: The necessity to re‐examine cultural revolution factionalism and periodization

Abstract This paper argues that the Chinese Communist Party's 1981 official definition of the "Cultural Revolution" was a gross distortion of historical reality. In presenting the "Cultural Revolution" mainly as one of power struggle among the ruling elite, the official version denies that there were serious conflicts within society. It also covers up the fact that a main thrust of the violence in 1966–69 was directed against what the Rebel Red Guards called "the bureaucratic class" or the "red capitalist class". The re‐periodization of the "Cultural Revolution" from three years (1966–69) to ten years (1966–76) was a conscious attempt to try to obfuscate what actually happened in the years from 1966 to 1969. By manipulating historical facts, even today the CCP is able to continue to suppress members of the Rebel Faction, who had led in challenging the ruling authorities in the Sixties. The last major suppression of rebels took place in the mid‐Eighties in the political campaign to "Weed Out the Three Types of People". The Party was able to do so with ease because Chinese society has accepted its distorted version of Chinese history. The article ends by poiting out how this distorted history of the Cultural Revolution has had a pernicious effect on the democracy movement in China. Notes Anita Chen is a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian National University and the author of Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation, (London: MacMillan Press, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985). The Chinese translation of the book is Mao Zhuxi de Haizimen, (Tianjin: Bohaiwan Chubanshe, 1988). She is also co‐auther of Chen Village Under Mao and Deng (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). With Zhu Xiaoyang, she is currently finishing a Chinese‐language book entitled Symbolism and Undercurrents ‐ The 1989 Protest Movement. Her most recent research has focussed on Chinese workers and trade unions.