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Political Dynamics of Mass Factionalism:

Rethinking Factional Conflict in Guangzhou, 1967

Fei Yan

Tsinghua University

(August 2018)

Abstract

What explains the formation and division of conflict groups? What mechanisms

shape the content and direction of factional alliances? This paper addresses these

questions by re-examining the factional politics and contentious conflicts in

Guangzhou in 1967. Factional conflicts during the Cultural Revolution have long

been identified as a clear divide between factions labeled as “conservative” and

“radical,” respectively, with the former comprised of groups relatively favorable to

the status quo of party authority, and the latter composed of groups opposed to the

existing rule. This interpretation, however, does not withstand closer scrutiny in light

of the more extensive evidence available today. Focusing on the prominent case of

Guangzhou, the paper argues that the positions of both factions were interactive and

strategic in nature. Their rivalry, rather than preexisting and being ideological in

nature, developed as a result of tactical maneuvers and an ever-shifting set of

interactions among local rebels, military authorities, and political actors in Beijing.

Finally, the paper discusses the implications of this more dynamic interpretation of

factional conflicts during the Cultural Revolution for understanding contentious

politics in Maoist China.


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Introduction

When the storm of the “January revolution”—a mass movement to seize local

political power—swept from Shanghai throughout the nation in early 1967, Mao’s

Cultural Revolution became chaotic, prompting the collapse of civilian government in

virtually every one of China’s provinces, cities, and lower levels of government

administration.1 Immediately after the declaration of a power seizure, insurgent

rebels, composed of both students and workers, broke into rival camps that fought

with one another over their respective places in the new power structure. As

negotiations to establish new governments reached a deadlock, clashes between

competing factions became more frequent and violent, forcing Beijing to send

military forces to stabilize the regional turmoil in the interim.

Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong, where the provincial government was

taken by local rebels on January 22,2 was no exception to this period of unrest. Hong

Yung Lee was the first scholar to describe the Guangzhou factional conflict, framing it

in terms of opposing collective identities that existed before the movement began. In a

highly influential analysis he identified a “bi-polar” radical-conservative conflict

structure between the Red Flag Faction (Hongqi pai 红旗派) and the East Wind

Faction (Dongfeng pai 东风派), contrasting their respective political identities vis-à-

1 Bu Weihua, Zalan jiu shijie: Wenhua da geming de dongluan yu haojie (Destroy the Old World: The

Catastrophic Turmoil of the Cultural Revolution) (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2008), pp. 400-428;

Andrew Walder, China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp.

236-42. For a detailed account of Shanghai January power seizure, see Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun, Proletarian

Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1997). Wu Yiching, The Cultural

Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), chapter

4. 2 Yan Fei, “Rival rebels: The political origins of Guangzhou’s mass factions in 1967,” Modern China, vol. 41, no.

2 (2015): 168-96.


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vis the nature of the power seizure and the role of the armed forces. According to Lee,

the Red Flag faction was deemed “radical” because, first, they were in favor of

seizing power in order to fundamentally restructure the legitimacy of the existing

political system; and, second, they explicitly challenged the military’s role in

maintaining order, even attacking in some instances. The army was framed by Lee as

an inherently conservative force, given its institutional interest in preserving the basic

social order and political structures; thus, whatever faction opposed the armed forces

had to be “radical” by definition. In contrast, the East Wind faction opposed the initial

power seizure and proactively collaborated with the military to restore the prevailing

political arrangement (in which they were deeply invested), a stance that earned them

the label of “conservative.” The boundaries of these two political alliances, according

to Lee, were consistent and unbreakable. The two warring factions adopted clearly

distinct and opposing political identities and maintained them until the great alliance

was imposed by central authorities in late 1968.3

This characterization of a radical-conservative split has been widely accepted

and become almost canonical. For example, based on a survey of former high-school

students from Guangzhou, scholars find that factional struggles pitted a

“conservative” alliance supportive of local authority and military army against a

“radical” alliance that sought to overthrow them.4 This implies a clear-cut and

3 Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 1978), pp. 1-10, 229-43, 336-8; Hong Yung Lee, “The radical students in Kwangtung during the

Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly, no. 64 (1975): 645-83. 4 Stanley Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton) (Boulder, CO:

Westview Press, 1982); Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen and Jonathan Unger, “Students and class warfare: The social

roots of the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton),” The China Quarterly, no. 83 (1980): 397-446.


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immutable factional identification, linking group-specific identity with pre-existing

social divisions and political interests. Once the groups were formed, their identity

remained fixed and non-changeable. As Rosen argues, “the socio-educational

cleavages that led to the establishment of Red Guard organizations in 1966 remained

constant throughout the Cultural Revolution, with new issues that arose in the

movement quickly becoming associated with the existing factional split.”5 Yet

Rosen’s study also noted that this divided factional participation was much less clear

among college students at the university level.6 It is also not known whether

informants in these surveys switched factional affiliation at some point in time, and

whether their “radical” and “conservative” identity toward the status quo changed

during the course of the movement process. Similarly in Wuhan, Wang also portrays

the same bi-polar radical/conservative divisions, asserting that actors’ prior position

was the most crucial factor in determining which side one took in the Cultural

Revolution.7 According to Wang, this political division “was the case not only in

schools but also in factories, not only in Wuhan but also in other parts of China.”8

The ostensibly deep-rooted foundations for this factional conflict were, in reality,

quite loose. During the tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution, the basic

elements of the movement itself changed many times: each phase of the rebel

movement distinguished itself by means of different actors, agendas, targets, and so

5 Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton), p. 109. 6 Ibid., pp. 5, 106. 7 Wang Shaoguang, Failure of Charisma: The Cultural Revolution in Wuhan (New York, NY: Oxford University

Press, 1995); Wang Shaoguang, “New trends of thought in the Cultural Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary

China, vol. 8, no. 21 (1999): 197-217. 8 Wang Shaoguang, “The structural sources of the Cultural Revolution,” in Kam-yee Law (ed.), The Chinese

Cultural Revolution Reconsidered: Beyond Purge and Holocaust (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.

58-91, at p. 76.


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on. The make-up and the dynamics of factional alliances, I suggest, were much less

clear-cut than hindsight would suggest. As Chinese scholar Xu Youyu argues, the

typical radical-conservative cleavage between groups “for” and “against” the

overthrow of regional governments in 1966 has been conflated with later splits over

the issue of power seizure and reconstruction of local governments in 1967 and 1968.9

Other recent work also questions the reigning “fixed opposing political alliances”

interpretation and provides empirical evidence of political dynamism in factional

formation. In Beijing, Walder observes that factional conflicts among college students

only emerged when work teams were dispatched to Beijing universities in June

1966.10 Rebel students had to decide for themselves “whether to accept the work

team’s apparent change of heart, or whether to consider it discredited by its earlier

behavior and demand its withdrawal,” which “in turn generate[d] new divisions, new

interest, and new identities, and subsequently form[ed] two sides of an antagonistic

conflict.”11 In Nanjing, Dong and Walder find that local rebels split into two factions

over the issue of power seizure in January 1967, but that this political division only

intensified into factional struggles due to a series of political negotiations over the

status of Jiangsu First Party Secretary. This political deadlock eventually forced the

intervention of the military forces, which were, in turn, then drawn into factional

9 Xu Youyu, Xingxing sese de zaofan: Hongweibing jingshen sushi de xingcheng ji yanbian (Rebellion of All

Hues: The Formation and Evolution of Red Guard Mentalities) (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1999),

pp. 18-21, 81-109. 10 Andrew Walder, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2009). Work teams were a batch of outside delegations of party officials sending into schools during June

and July of 1966. In particular, “they tended to act in much the same way as the party committees they had come to

rescue, and suppressed students who had opposed these committees.” See Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Ten

Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993), p. 75. 11 Andrew Walder, “Ambiguity and choice in political movements: The origins of Beijing Red Guard

factionalism,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 112, no. 3 (2006): 710-50, at p. 737.


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struggles.12 And similarly, in Changsha, Wu records that the splits between two

contending factions were driven largely by “the contingent consequence of

conjunctural yet separately determined events and process,”13 rather than being

rooted in pre-existing social antagonisms. Far from just intensifying existing political

cleavages, factional struggles frequently redrew alliances as the political environment

underwent a chaotic period of change. Dikötter also makes clear the shifting nature of

influences and allegiances over the period of 1966 to 1968, but his work is somewhat

vague on the Guangdong experience, “Those on both sides were fueled by mutual

hatred, but also by the belief that they, rather than the opposition, were faithful

followers of the Chairman…The situation changed constantly, with bewildering

reversals in fortune dictated by the whimsical policies emanating from Beijing. People

drifted towards different sides of the divide, ending up fighting their own friends,

colleagues, and even family members.”14

The present paper continues these debates by reexamining factional conflicts in

Guangzhou, a case that stands as one of the exemplars of mass factionalism in

existing scholarship. My key research question is whether the two factions in

Guangzhou were, indeed, preexisting and ideologically opposed groups distinguished

by their respective political identities toward the status quo. By reconstructing the

evolution of factional alliances in Guangzhou in the spring of 1967, I seek to

12 Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder, “Nanjing’s failed ‘January Revolution’ of 1967: The inner politics of a

provincial power seizure,” The China Quarterly, no. 203 (2010): 675-92; Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder,

“Local politics in the Chinese Cultural Revolution: Nanjing under military control,” The Journal of Asian Studies,

vol. 70, no. 2 (2011): 425-47. 13 Wu Yiching, “The great retreat and its discontents: Reexamining the Shengwulian episode in the Cultural

Revolution,” The China Journal, no. 72 (2014): 1-28, at p. 17. 14 Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962–1976 (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing,

2016), pp. 145-6.


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demonstrate that the fundamental divide between Guangzhou’s rival factions was

actually constituted in a dynamic process as different groups confronted concrete local

political issues and urgent strategic demands. In particular, the involvement of

military forces and Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit to the area sharply changed the local

political context and broke the balance of power between the emerging factions. The

rapid shift of these exogenous signals forced Guangzhou rebels to make consequential

choices, which prompted, in turn, a major reshuffling of factional alignment in 1967.

Factional identities and boundaries were thus not a stable expression of the 1966

division between supporters and opponents of the status quo, but a constantly

evolving field of political interactions among local rebels, military authorities, and

political actors in Beijing. In short, I argue that the divisions between factions that

have so often been taken for granted and treated as the basis for organizing analyses

of the Cultural Revolution, were in fact much more dynamic and strategic in nature

than previously understood, and thus are not an explanation but a question to be

explained.

Given the strict research restrictions that Communist China imposed upon

scholars before 1980, previous students of the Cultural Revolution could only rely on

a small collection of local newspapers from 1960s, supplementing these with

interviews from ex-cadres and refugees in Hong Kong—sources of data arguably

biased against the regime.15 This paper, in contrast, draws upon a wealth of primary

sources that are only recently available in a 52-volume compilation of provincial Red

15 Michel Oksenberg, “Sources and methodological problems in the study of contemporary China,” in Doak

Barnett (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 577-606.


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Guard tabloids, handbills, and local gazettes.16 Another vital source consists of

published and unpublished personal memoirs of key eyewitnesses and participants,

including former rebel leaders and provincial party leaders who were extensively

involved in some key political events. The unpublished materials were collected in

my field trips in Guangzhou in 2011 and 2012. These new data permit me to

reconstruct the formation and evolution of factional conflict in Guangzhou, thus

offering a fresh perspective that challenges traditional interpretations still dominant in

published scholarship.

Guangzhou Factionalism in early 1967

When Mao’s Red Guard movement spread from Beijing to Guangzhou in the

summer of 1966, various Red Guard organizations, fighting teams, and rebel groups

were formed. These groups were of different sizes, ranging from as small as a couple

of members to large groups consisting of thousands of members. These local groups

were formed at major colleges and factories and subsequently converged into rebel

allies with identical political orientations in challenging local leaders in late 1966,

while the only “conservative” group who supported the provincial party committee

was disintegrated, after it became clear that Mao supported the overthrow of local

party authorities.17

16 Song Yongyi (ed.), A New Collection of Red Guard Publications, Part III: A Comprehensive Compilation of

Red Guard Tabloids from the Provinces, 52 vols (Oakton, VA: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 2005). 17 Hai Feng, Guangzhou diqu wenge licheng shulue (An Account of the Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area)

(Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1971), pp. 54-64. In Beijing, when support of or opposition to the work

teams was the core issue in 1966, labels like “conservative” and “radical” made some sense and red guards were

split into so-called “rebels” and “royalists”. However, these labels became fundamentally ambiguous and contested

in 1967 when movement unfolded. See Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962–1976,

chapter 10.


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Factional cleavage in Guangzhou originally developed over the timing and

format of the January 22 power seizure in 1967. These rival factions did not display

identifiably different political stances toward China’s social and political system.

Rather, the fundamental issue was about the power seizure itself, the form that it took,

and which groups held what position in the new power structure.18

Upon the central authority’s call to seize power from the civilian government in

January 1967, Guangzhou’s rebel groups were unable to agree on how exactly to do

so. One wing of the rebels asserted that it was essential to strike immediately, while

another was suspicious of an early seizure of power and insisted that broader rebel

unity had to come first. When the rebels arguing for immediate action went forward

with their plan, they left the other rebel groups behind. Once they had seized power—

at least provisionally—however, the attacking rebels adopted a unique supervisor-

subordinate mode in which all of the top provincial officials, including First Party

Secretary Zhao Ziyang, were permitted to remain in their posts. Zhao and his

colleagues were pledged to perform their duties under supervisors appointed by the

attacking rebels.

The rebels left out of the power seizure, however, instantly opposed these

arrangements, and accused their former allies of conducting a “fake” power seizure

designed to protect officials who had previously carried out the “bourgeois

reactionary line,” as the entire party leadership of the province still staffed the

government under loose rebel “supervision.” The opposing rebels pointed to this

18 These developments are detailed in Yan Fei, “Rival rebels: The political origins of Guangzhou’s mass factions

in 1967.”


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alleged flaw to justify their opposition to a takeover that left them on the sidelines.

The power takers, on the other hand, claimed their actions were “very good with

absolutely correct direction,” and charged that those who opposed the new

arrangements were in fact “conservatives.” A number of attacking government rebel

groups, including Zhongshan University Red Flag (Zhongda Hongqi 中大红旗) and

Workers Alliance (Gong Lian 工联), soon merged into a city-wide mass coalition

known as the Provincial Revolutionary Alliance (PRA, or Shenggelian 省革联). This

political dispute marked the beginning of a rebel rivalry between two increasingly

antagonistic “sides,” both of which claimed the exclusive mantle of the “revolutionary

left.” At this time, their split centered around tactical issues that emerged in the course

of the rebel movement, rather than different political or ideological standpoints per se.

Unable to settle their differences over the seizure of power in Guangdong, the

two sides were soon embroiled in a series of seizures and counter-seizures. The

factional competition for power and influence intensified to such an extent that the

central authority was forced to step in. Reversing its policy of the non-involvement of

the army, the central authority issued a directive demanding that the military actively

support the “broad masses of revolutionary leftists.” Huang Yongsheng (黄永胜),19

the commander of the Guangzhou Military Region, was put in charge of keeping

order in the interim.

The order, however, did not explicitly explain how to identify which mass

19 General Huang Yongsheng was born to a poor peasant household. He participated in the Long March and

became commander of a regiment in Lin Biao’s Division in 1937. After the Communist takeover in 1949, Huang

was named as a member of the Central-South Military Committee headed by Lin, and further promoted as the

commander of the Guangzhou Military Region in 1955. A close associate of his superior Lin Biao, Huang

maintained firm authority in Guangzhou.


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organizations were leftist and which were not. With all the factions claiming to be the

true revolutionary leftists following Mao Zedong, “support the left” was an

ambiguous directive, to say the least. Without clearly defined political objectives, the

local army was forced to exercise their own judgment regarding competing rebel

claims, and how to respond when local rebel groups resisted their authority. As a

result, the armed forces inadvertently became entangled in the local factional rivalries,

exacerbating cleavages among the already divided rebel factions.

Military Crackdown

On March 15, 1967, the Guangdong Military Control Committee (MCC) was

established as the highest authority at all levels of administration in the province, with

Huang Yongsheng as Chairman.20 By this time, Guangzhou’s political forces were

deeply fragmented. Rebel groups formerly united in opposition to the Guangzhou

authorities were now on opposite sides, and groups initially united in support of the

power seizure had also divided against one another. The central axis of conflict in

Guangzhou would soon shift from divisions in the rebel ranks to conflicts between

one wing of the rebel movement and the army.

At this point, the key issue that produced the new factional alignment was

whether to oppose or support the army authorities. These military commanders

typically sought to strike against those who openly confronted the army and promote

20 Guangzhou shiwei dangshi yanjiushi (Party History Research Centre of CPC Guangzhou Municipal

Committee), Zhonggong Guangzhou dangshi dashiji (Guangzhou Party History Annals) (Guangzhou: Guangdong

People’s Press, 1991), pp. 287-9.


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others they considered most amenable and cooperative. Having already been attacked

by the PRA forces in a series of offensive incidents—most notably, the February raid

of the military headquarters—the MCC started to pressure the PRA directly. The

public campaign to discredit the PRA started with an anonymous letter from a

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) solider. The letter, published in the Nanfang Daily,

stated that “PLA did not, does not, and will not support the PRA.”21 Soon after this,

the army ordered the arrest of the six top leaders from the PRA. The New Beida’s

Liaison Office to Guangdong then published an article denouncing the January 22

power seizure as a factional maneuver.22 The Military Region distributed more than

six million copies of the article for circulation throughout the province.23

In the meantime, the MCC moved swiftly to crack down on organizations

aligned with the PRA, banning those who had been involved in the seizure of power.

Chief among their targets was the August 1 Combat Corps (Bayi Zhandou Bingtuan

八一战斗兵团), which was primarily comprised of demobilized army veterans and

factory workers deemed to have a “good” political background.24 For example, out of

the 350 workers working in the hair-dressing tools factory, seventy-five of them were

already Combat Corps members. Of these seventy-five, eleven were party members,

making up more than one-thirds of the total party membership in this factory. Nine of

the seventy-five were also already Youth League members, making up two-thirds of

the total League membership in this particular factory. Out of the twenty-four political

21 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 93. 22 Zhongxue Hongweibing (Middle School Red Guard), May 1968. 23 Guangzhou Gongren (Guangzhou Workers), No.1, July 1968 (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Workers Revolutionary

United). 24 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 62.


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propagandists in the factory, fifteen were also already Combat Corps members. And,

on top of this, all activists on the production group and leaders of trade union groups

were also part of the Combat Corps. Similarly, amongst the Postage and

Telecommunications Factory units, only eight percent of the workers had “bad class”

labels.25 In general, then, only a small number of those in the August 1 Combat Corps

had what was deemed a “complicated” political background, and the overwhelming

majority was from better-off social groups.26

This fact clearly contrasts with fixed structural analyses that attribute political

actions to participants’ pre-existing sociopolitical status quo. According to Hong Yung

Lee and other scholars, the comparatively radical mass organizations were largely

composed of underprivileged social sectors that sought to challenge party and military

establishment. Yet, if this were the case, then it would be difficult to explain why the

August 1 Combat Corps—mainly comprised of people with a higher class

background—opposed the army. It seems then, at least in the Guangzhou context, that

such structural interpretations are factually incorrect.

Even though the August 1 Combat Corps had not participated in the January 22

power seizure, it had a reputation as an outspoken and radical supporter of the PRA. It

had attacked Guangzhou Military Region as a core anti-PLA unit on February 8. It

was consequently declared “counterrevolutionary” by the Military Region. It was also

accused of stealing state property and secrets, disrupting the city’s transportation and

25 Hongse Baodong (Red Rebellion), No. 12 & 13, 8 July 1967. 26 Gang Bayi (Steel August 1), 15 October 1967, p. 2 (Guangzhou: Mao Zedong’s Thought August 1 Combat

Corps).


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production, and attacking the public security organs.27 The rapid rate of growth of the

August 1 Combat Corps was probably an important factor in the decision to ban it.28

Formed in mid-January with 5,000 members, within three weeks it had expanded to

approximately 70,000 members in the Guangzhou area alone.29 Accordingly, large

groups of personnel of the August 1 Combat Corps were arrested and detained.

Organizations that had made contact with the Combat Corps were also persecuted to

varying extents.30

The second chief target was the Pearl River Film Studio East Is Red (Zhuying

Dongfanghong 珠影东方红), a cadre organization, that was declared “illegal” and

banned from conducting any activities.31 Like the August 1 Combat Corps, the most

active supporters and all the core leaders of this particular mass organization were

party or Youth League members.32 Moreover, the Harbin Military Engineering

Liaison Station was taken over by the local military authorities and ceased to

function.33 The political activities of the Zhongshan University Red Flag and

Zhongshan University August 31 Combat Corps virtually came to a halt.34

Despite these harsh measures, the Military Region claimed that during this

27 Statement by the Guangdong Military District “Bayi zhandou bingtuan de fangeming zuixing” (“The

Counterrevolutionary Crimes of the August 1 Combat Corps”), 1 March 1967, in Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in

the Canton Area, pp. 103-6. 28 Ye Shuming, “Chi Zehou fangtan,” (“Interview with Chi Zehou”) Huaxia Wenzhai (China News Digest)

(Supplement), no. 466, 22 November 2005. 29 Liu Guokai, Guangzhou hongqipai de xingwang (The Rise and Fall of Guangzhou’s Red Flag Faction) (New

York: Broad Press Publisher, 2006), p. 75. The August 1 Combat Corps claimed that those who joined their

organization would be assigned a job with a monthly salary of 80 yuan, see Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the

Canton Area, p. 106. 30 Gang Bayi (Steel August 1), 15 October 1967, p. 2. 31 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, pp. 108-9. 32 “Zhujiang dianying zhipianchang liangtiao luxian douzheng gaishu,” (“An account of two-line struggle in Pearl

River Film Studio”) Cong Touyue (Cross the Summit), April 1967. For a detailed account of the core leaders’

political status and social background, see Wang Chao, Guangzhou dianyingjie de zaofanzhe: Zhuying

Dongfanghong (Rebels in the Guangzhou Film Industry: Pearl River Film Studio East Is Red), (Hong Kong:

Zhongbao Zhoukan, 1969), pp. 26-30. 33 Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton), p.133. 34 Liu Guokai, Red Flag Faction, p. 73.


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period “not one student has been arrested.”35 According to another report, however, a

total of 1,196 rebel leaders from various mass organizations were arrested and

imprisoned during this crackdown, and more than 16,000 were forced to register as

members of “reactionary organizations” and subjected to various forms of struggle

sessions to confess their errors.36 Those who were imprisoned had to “work for an

hour every morning, and write self-criticisms and confessions to their many ‘criminal

activities’ for the rest of the time.”37 A special investigation found that “many [of

these prisoners] were put to tortures. Some were badly beaten up, and those who were

sick could not get treatment.” Even those who were not arrested were subjected to

other forms of punishment, whether attacked at the mass criticism meetings, forced to

confess their crimes, or even dismissed from their jobs.38 The month-long military

crackdown was later referred to by the PRA forces as the “March Black Wind,” and

the feeling of the supporters of the PRA was summed up by one participant: “We

carefully recorded all debts we would someday collect from the [opponents].”39

Choosing Sides

Under military pressure, many rebel groups chose to change their allegiance

when threatened, revealing that their motives were clearly not rooted in their prior

35 Gang Bayi (Steel August 1), 15 October 1967, p. 2. 36 Bu Weihua, Destroy the Old World, p. 458. 37 “A letter to Premier Zhou by Qianjunbang [The Massive Cudgel],” (“Qianjunbang zhanshi gei zhou zongli de

xin”) Red Flag, 29 August 1967 (Guangzhou: New First Headquarters). 38 Gang Bayi (Steel August 1), 15 October 1967, p. 2. This investigation also recorded a specific case: “Huang

XX, a demobilized soldier whose wife was dead, was arrested and imprisoned over 20 days, so that his three

children were left alone. The young ones had no food and clothing and had to eat banana skins from garbage

heaps.” 39 Gordon Bennett and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (Garden City,

NY: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 165.


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social statuses or political ties. They withdrew from the PRA, and the alliance fell into

a steep decline.40 Guangzhou Medical College Red Flag, a main supporter of the

PRA, announced it was quitting the alliance.41 The membership of Zhongshan

University Red Flag declined from 1,110 to 300, and the Workers Alliance from

around 30,000 to 3,000.42 The number of splinter groups joining the opposing side

also increased. In the case of Zhongshan University, for example, some members of

the Red Flag withdrew their membership to join the opponent group. The defectors

formed a new organization and billed themselves as the only genuine revolutionary

rebels on campus.43

During this period, the other wing of the rebel movement, led primarily by the

Earth General Headquarters and the Red General Headquarters, gained momentum.

According to an internal report, their membership skyrocketed to more than 500,000

in total.44 This number was likely an exaggeration but the movement was clearly

growing rapidly and becoming the dominant rebel force in Guangzhou. They sided

with the local army in its attacks on their rivals in the PRA. Their support of the army

was due to its role in vanquishing their opponents. They became a staunch supporter

of the army’s actions, and referred to the March events not as a “Black Wind” but as a

victory for the “East Wind,” declaring that during March, “the East wind prevailed

40 Zhao Cong, Wenge yundong licheng shulue (An Account of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (Hong

Kong: Union Research Institute, 1974), p. 582; Alan Liu, Political Culture & Group Conflict in Communist China

(Santa Barbara, CA: Clio Books, 1976), p. 83. 41 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 115. 42 Guangzhou Gongren (Guangzhou Workers), No.1, July 1968. 43 This rebel organization was called “Zhongshan University Revolutionary Rebel Committee (Zhongda

gezaohui)”, see Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 102. 44 Guangdong Military Control Committee, Guangzhou shi shixing junshi guanzhi hou de fanying (The Situation

after Military Control in Guangzhou), 30 March 1967.


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over the West wind.”45 The city-wide alliance that they built from that point forward

became known as the East Wind faction.

Meanwhile, in response to Chairman Mao’s call to form a “three-in-one

combination” government system, the MCC proceeded to establish a pilot

revolutionary committee at the Guangdong Railway Bureau. Initially, the pro-PRA

rebels declared a power seizure there on January 23. When martial law was imposed,

however, the Military Region supported a cadre organization, Spring Thunder (Chun

Lei 春雷), so that civilian officials would be admitted into a newly-established

revolutionary committee.46 With clear support from the PLA, Spring Thunder rapidly

expanded its membership from 70 to 13,000 within only twenty days, with the

majority of participants being factory workers and office employees.47

Central’s Intervention

The balance of power between contending factions quickly shifted again in April.

Civilian radicals in Beijing viewed the military crackdown in Guangdong and other

regions with alarm and pressed for a less assertive and repressive stance toward local

rebels. As a result, on April 2, People’s Daily published an editorial,48 warning the

military leaders of Wuhan, Chengdu, and other areas not to suppress the revolutionary

actions of the rebels.

45 Ye Shuming, Bainian jidang: 20 shiji Guangdong shilu (The Exciting History of Guangdong in Twentieth

Century) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Education Press, 2002), p. 1608. 46 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, pp. 112-3. 47 Guangtie Zongsi (Guangzhou Railway General Headquarters), No. 1, 15 July 1967. 48 This editorial was personally edited by Wang Li. See Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, Turbulent Decade: A History of

the Cultural Revolution (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), pp. 232-3.


18

By seizing on the revolutionary young militants’ minor mistakes and attacking

them for trivial faults, some people have totally repudiated the revolutionary

young militants’ general orientation. Worse still, some have gone so far as to

impose the label “counter-revolutionary” once again upon the revolutionary

young militants and to help the conservatives to reconstruct their dead

organizations.49

On April 6, the Military Affairs Commission further issued a ten-point directive

to limit the army’s authority to intervene in factional disputes. This directive

explicitly called a halt to the military repressions of mass organizations, no matter

whether they were “revolutionary or controlled by reactionary elements, or whether

their position is clear or not.” It ruled that the PLA had wrongly disbanded the mass

organizations in provinces like Anhui, Fujian, Inner Mongolia, and Guangdong, and

that the disbanded mass organizations should immediately be rehabilitated with

“remedial measures.” The order stipulated further that “no action shall be taken

against the masses who intruded into or assaulted military organs in the past,” and that

before taking any important action on current events, “a report should be made to the

Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) and All Army Cultural Revolution

Group.”50

49 “Zhengque duidai geming xiaojiang,” (“Proper Treatment for the Little Revolutionary Soldiers”) People’s

Daily, 2 April 1967. 50 Bu Weihua, Destroy the Old World, pp. 464-5.


19

Noticeably, whereas the eight-point order issued on January 28 had favored the

army’s authority,51 the new ten-point order redressed the balance in favor of the local

rebels. Anti-PLA riots broke out everywhere in response to the new order.52 In order

to reconcile such contradictory orders and to restrain the militant rebels from

retaliating against the PLA, the Centre further promoted a new slogan of “supporting

the army and cherishing the people” (yongjun aimin 拥军爱民) in mid-April.53 This

slogan was broadcast in the media, written on billboards, embossed on Red Guards

badges, and even painted on the weapons of the armed forces.54 However, this

ambiguous slogan was not very helpful in resolving the conflicts. The PLA and

militant mass groups interpreted the slogan in terms of their own political interests:

military commanders stressed the part about supporting the army, while the rebels

emphasized the idea of cherishing the people.55

Zhou Enlai’s Visit

On April 14, Premier Zhou Enlai flew to Guangzhou and his visit brought about

a sharp turn in the fortunes of the rebels. Obviously aware of the harsh treatment the

PRA forces had received, the Premier was anxious to keep the situation in Guangzhou

51 On January 28, 1967, the Military Affairs Commission issued an eight-point directive which gave the army

authority to defend itself against mass attacks. See “Batiao mingling” (“Eight-point order”), 28 January 1967, in

Chen Donglin and Du Pu, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo shilu, Wenhua dageming de shinian, di san juan (The

History of the People’s Republic of China, Ten Years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Vol. 3) (Jilin: Jilin renmin

chubanshe, 1994), p. 223. 52 However, Jiang Qing insisted that “the spirit of the first document was in conformity with that of the second.”

She also declared that “anyone who tried to cite one against the other was either a ‘bad person’ or a comrade

‘committing a mistake.’” See Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 181-2. 53 “Relie xiangying yongjun aimin de haozhao,” (“Warmly respond to the call to support the army and cherish the

people”), Hongqi, 1967, No. 6. 54 MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, p. 182. 55 “The current campaign of ‘Supporting the Army and Cherishing the People,’’ Union Research Service, vol. 47,

no. 15, 23 May 1967.


20

under control. This intention was consistent with Zhou’s moderate stance to maintain

public order in the cities. The Guangzhou Trade Fair was just getting underway and

the Beijing authorities were taking no chances of jeopardizing this important event.56

The Military Region, in the central leadership’s view, had not succeeded in healing

the rift between the two factions, but had only reinforced and deepened the schism. If

the grievances of the oppressed rebels were not redressed appropriately, this could

exacerbate their sense of alienation and thereby increase the probability of violence

breaking out.

However, the conflicts Zhou came to settle were not so easily resolved. Despite

his desire to avert a potential violent conflict, Zhou himself became a source of

factional contention when his instructions sharply changed the content and trajectory

of local group politics and eventually led to the split of two citywide factional camps.

In a speech given at a citywide mass rally on the evening of April 18, Zhou

acknowledged that the local PLA had made mistakes, but he reaffirmed that military

control in Guangdong was still necessary and instructed that Huang Yongsheng not be

attacked.57 Zhou specifically ordered the rehabilitation of the Pearl River Film Studio

East Is Red.58 At this point in time, however, he did not mention the decision to ban

the August 1 Combat Corps nor did he say anything about the release of leaders

arrested during the March, thus implicitly condoning the army’s action.

56 The Guangzhou Trade Fair was held biannually in Guangzhou during the first three decades of the Communist

era, 1950s-1970s. See Daniel Tretiak, “The Canton Fair: An academic perspective,” The China Quarterly, no. 56

(1973): 740-8. 57 Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi (Central Party Literature Research Center), Zhou Enlai nianpu

(xiajuan) (Zhou Enlai Chronology [Vol. 3]) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1997), pp. 145-6. 58 Zhuying Dongfanghong (Pearl River Film Studio East Is Red), No. 15, 31 October 1967 (Guangzhou: Pearl

River Film Studio Editorial Department).


21

In an effort to show a spirit of reconciliation, Zhou inadvertently stoked further

factional conflict. The Premier first conceded that the January 22 power takers had

made mistakes, but those mistakes were not errors of orientation. He also declared

that the main organizations under the besieged PRA, the “Three Red Flags” (sanmian

hongqi 三面红旗) —Zhongshan University Red Flag, Guangzhou Medical College

Red Flag, and South China Engineering College Red Flag, as well as Workers

Alliance and Red Flag Workers—were “leftist organizations.”59 This essentially

reversed the March military crackdown, and revived the fortunes of the pro-power-

seizure PRA forces.

Zhou also affirmed the “revolutionary” character of anti-PRA groups, but he later

termed two leading elements of the East Wind Faction—the Earth General

Headquarters and the Red General Headquarters—“conservative organizations”

(baoshou zuzhi 保守组织) and criticized their close association with the PLA, though

they were not “old conservatives” (lao bao 老保) as the PRA charged.60 The

movement of the East Wind was now on the verge of complete collapse. Being

labeled as the “conservative organization” basically ended the anti-faction’s political

career. The label was, at best, a political demotion and, at worst, a sentence to

imprisonment.61 At this point, members focused on self-protection from political

59 “Zhou Enlai dui Guangzhoushi ge geming qunzhong zuzhi daibiao de jianghua” (“Zhou Enlai’s speech to the

representatives of Guangzhou mass organizations”), in Zhongyang Guanyu Jiejue Guangdong Wenhua Dageming

Yundong Zhong Wenti De Zhishi Xuanji (Central Party’s Selected Directives on Guangdong Cultural Revolution),

edited by Guangzhou Pitao Lianwei Hongqi Lianluozhan (The Red Flag Liaison Station of the United Committee

to Criticize Tao Zhu), 1 December 1967, pp. 13-40. 60 “Old conservatives” first emerged in Beijing in June 1966. They were a staunch defender of the party authority

but had virtually disintegrated as a group by the end of 1966. See Yin Hongbiao, “Ideological and political

tendencies of factions in the Red Guard movement,” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 5, no. 13 (1996): 269-

81. 61 Andrew Walder, Fractured Rebellion, p. 260.


22

punishment. To avoid becoming political victims, the Earth General and Red General

headquarters immediately held a protest rally after Zhou’s speech, demanding a clear

definition of how they were “conservative” and where exactly they drew this

“conservative support” from.62

If Premier Zhou’s directives had stopped here, the political stature of the local

forces in Guangzhou would have been the same as those in Shanghai—confrontations

between rebel camps did not occur, as the anti faction was thoroughly disintegrated

and suppressed after they were labeled as “conservative organizations.”63 But instead,

the political mood shifted abruptly overnight and led to a chaotic power struggle

between contending factions in Guangzhou.

On the early morning of April 19, Zhou Enlai flew back to Beijing.64 On that

evening, Chi Zehou (迟泽厚), the secretary of Huang Yongsheng, received a call from

Zhou Enlai’s liaison office instructing them to amend the Premier’s previous speech.

In this modified version, Zhou reaffirmed that both the Earth General Headquarters

and the Red General Headquarters were “revolutionary organizations” (geming zuzhi

革命组织) in Guangzhou. They cannot be arbitrarily categorized as “conservative

organization”—they were only “inclined toward conservatism” (pianyu baoshou 偏于

保守). Zhou also stressed the importance of broad rebel unity and insisted that “one

factional group should not prevail over the other faction group.”65

With Zhou’s latest instructions and this more or less even-handed policy, the fate

62 Ye Shuming, The Exciting History of Guangdong, p. 1612. 63 Andrew Walder, China under Mao, pp. 236-8. 64 Central Party Literature Research Center, Zhou Enlai Chronology, p. 146. 65 Huang Zheng, Junren yongsheng (General Huang Yongsheng: A Biography) (Hong Kong: New Century Media

& Consulting Co. Ltd., 2011), p. 590.


23

of East Wind instantaneously changed. The label of being “inclined toward

conservatism” still placed East Wind on a lower political status than the “leftist

organizations,” but the modified language was enough to guarantee the political

continuity of the East Wind groups in the forthcoming factional struggles. Meanwhile,

the political pressure of the Military Region was also lifted. According to Chi Zehou,

the PLA now “no longer needed to suppress the second rebel alliance after already

cracking down one wing of the rebels throughout the city.”66

New Political Identity

Political identities were not objectively fixed; instead, they crystallized through

an evolving, interactive process. While a novel factional identity known as “East

Wind” had emerged for the first time during the period of strict military control, the

other rebels united together and formed a new political identity in the name of “Red

Flag” as a response to Premier Zhou’s instructions.

With clear encouragement from Beijing and the Premier’s open endorsement for

“leftist organizations,” the pro faction force was revived. A rebel from the Harbin

Military Engineering College who was in Guangzhou at the time observed:

When Premier Zhou came to Guangzhou, the Guangzhou movement began to be

enlivened from the state of being under suppression. The rebels who had been put

under pressure gained their liberty, again raised their flags and began to launch a

66 Ye Shuming, “Interview with Chi Zehou”, 22 November 2005.


24

new battle.67

This immediately increased the political pressure on the Military Region. Over

the next few weeks, close to one thousand imprisoned rebels were released from

prison with a “Notice of Release,” which read: “X has gone through re-education, and

since he was realized his mistakes, has produced a self-criticism, and has behaved

well, he is released.”68 The Guangzhou Military Region admitted that “in defining the

character of the mass organizations…the boundary line between the left, the middle

and the right was blurred and certain revolutionary organizations and revolutionary

masses were attacked and suppressed.”69 Members of the Guangzhou Military

Region even had to submit a self-criticism detailing their mistakes during the course

of “supporting the left.” In the report, the Guangzhou Military Region further

confessed:

In March, we again mistakenly banned and disbanded some mass organizations

such as the “August 1 Combat Corps” both inside and outside the army, and

wrongly arrested certain people. And in adjusting social order and strengthening

public security arrangements in Guangzhou, we also expanded the scope of attack

and arrested people who should not have been arrested. At the same time, we also

suppressed the activities of such revolutionary mass organizations such as the

67 Guangzhou Gongren (Guangzhou Workers), No.1, July 1968. 68 Wang Chao, Pearl River Film Studio East Is Red, p. 115. 69 Guangzhou ribao hongqi xuanchuan zu (The Guangzhou Daily Red Flag Propaganda Departments), Ziliao

zhuanji (Special Reference Material Supplement) (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Gonggelian, 17 November 1967).


25

“Red Flag Commune” and the “August 31 Combat Corps” of Zhongshan

University.70

Apparently, the political tide had now turned in favor of the anti military forces.

Realizing this situation, local rebels had to reconsider their political alignments once

again.

Amongst the first ones to change their tune were the Third Headquarters, South

China Engineering College Red Flag, and Red Flag Workers. The Third Headquarters

did not participate in the January 22 power seizure and subsequently charged that the

PRA had made a “serious error in line.” South China Engineering College Red Flag

was a leading unit member organization of the Third Headquarters and therefore held

the same stand against the PRA. Red Flag Workers took part in the power seizure but

immediately withdrew their membership from the alliance once they were denied the

expected leadership position in the new power structure. After all, all of these rebels

had opposed the PRA before Premier Zhou’s visit to Guangzhou. Some even held

mass struggle sessions against the PRA in February and March.

After the Premier named “the three red flags” as “leftist organizations,” the

South China Engineering College Red Flag—one of the “three red flags”—naturally

aligned itself as standing with the other two “red flags,” both of which were core units

in the PRA forces. According to Gao Xiang, the leader of South China Engineering

70 “Zhonggong Guangzhou junqu weiyuanhui guanyu zai Guangzhou diqu zhizuo gongzuo zhong suofan cuowu

de jiancha” (“Examinations of the mistakes by Guangzhou military commission made during the ‘support the left’

period”), in Central Party’s Selected Directives on Guangdong Cultural Revolution, pp. 3-6.


26

College Red Flag, the reason for their changed position was because:

Though we had opposed the PRA in their January power seizure actions, in this

situation when the PRA had been suppressed with great cruelty by the Guangzhou

Military Region, we must stand out to give them support.71

This explanation sounded logical on the surface, but there was little evidence to

support it in Guangzhou, especially considering the South China Engineering College

Red Flag had been allying with the army in attacking the PRA forces in March.72 A

similar thing also happened with regard to the Red Flag Workers, who tactically chose

to alter their stance after Premier Zhou appraised them, together with Workers

Alliance, as two major leftist organizations in the workers movement in Guangzhou.

The Third Headquarters issued a public statement, declaring that it was the

revolutionary rebels’ spirit to “unite together, fight together, and triumph together.”73

Nonetheless, because of the presence of what Zhou called “the three red flags,”

Third Headquarters, South China Engineering College Red Flag, and Red Flag

Workers banded together with the PRA and now christened themselves the Red Flag

faction—a city-wide rebel alliance that had split over the power seizure and military

control in the early months of 1967, but tactically re-coalesced in middle of April.

Conversely, it was now East Wind’s turn to suffer defections from its ranks. The

71 Gao Xiang’s memoir, unpublished manuscript. Gao Xiang was a Communist Youth League branch secretary

during the Cultural Revolution. He was from revolutionary family background and his father was a leading cadre

in the foreign trade field. 72 Liu Guokai, Red Flag Faction, p. 76. 73 Ye Shuming, The Exciting History of Guangdong, p. 1616.


27

defectors either set up their own organizations, which retained their former names

simply prefaced by the word “new”—for example, the New Earth General

Headquarters (Xin Di Zong 新地总),74 or they chose to join the opposite Flag

alliance.75 According to the memoir of a major leader from the Workers Alliance, in

later April, several leaders from the Earth General and Red General Headquarters held

private meetings with leaders of the Workers Alliance and the Zhongshan University

Red Flag. In the meeting, they acknowledged their earlier mistaken challenges against

the PRA and asked for potential cooperation.76 But still, some other members chose

to defend the legitimate status of their organization, hoping sooner or later their fate

would be significantly changed—if Premier Zhou could rapidly adjust his instructions

overnight, it was just as likely, they argued, that he could do so again.77

After all, by this time, two contending factional coalitions had appeared in

Guangzhou. The political identities that motivated this deep division were not

expressions of prior identities (e.g., elites versus masses, revolutionaries versus

capitalists), but rather, rifts that only emerged and developed gradually over time.

Entangled Rivalry

In order to maintain the edge they had gained in March, the East Wind faction

mobilized to fight back. They held a series of city-wide mass rallies to struggle

74 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 201. 75 Xue Shengqin, Shinian renshengmeng: Wenge qinliji (Ten Years of Dream: A Personal Account of the Cultural

Revolution) (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 2007), p. 86. Xue Shengqin was a leader in the Workers

Alliance at that time. 76 Ibid., p. 87. 77 Ye Shuming, “Interview with Chi Zehou”, 22 November 2005.


28

against provincial cadres as a way to demonstrate their genuine revolutionary mantle

and disprove the idea that they were a “conservative” organization.

Immediately after Zhou’s departure on April 19, the Earth General Headquarters

and the Red General Headquarters organized mass struggle sessions to criticize Zhao

Ziyang, among other provincial political leaders for six consecutive days.78 Several

days later, Zhao Ziyang, Ou Mengjue, Lin Liming and others were paraded through

the streets with dunce caps on their heads and placards around their necks.79 In the

meantime, the East Wind unit groups raided the homes of several senior cadres and

published charges of their “counterrevolutionary speeches.” On May 18, they issued a

public declaration to the center, demanding “to pull Tao Zhu back to Guangzhou to

receive thorough mass criticism.” On May 30, the Earth General and the Red General

Headquarters assembled more than 80,000 people at Yuexiushan Square to purge

Zhao Ziyang and Ou Mengjue.80

Meanwhile, the Red Flag faction fought aggressively to rehabilitate and recover

their status from earlier in the year. They intensified their assaults on the regional

military authorities and demanded the release of all those arrested in March and a

clearing of their records. On May 3, more than 2,000 Red Flaggers staged a hunger

strike in front of the Guangzhou Uprising Martyrs Cemetery Park, demanding the

release of one of their leaders in military detention—a demand Premier Zhou in

78 Doupi Dongtai (Reports on Mass Struggles), No. 3, 24 April, 1967 (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Military Control

Committee Cultural Revolution Small Group). 79 David Shambaugh, The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang’s Provincial Career (Boulder, Co: Westview Press,

1984), p. 55. 80 Ye Shuming, The Exciting History of Guangdong, p. 1615-6.


29

Beijing acceded to on May 6.81 On May 7, Zhongshan University Red Flag,

Zhongshan University August 31 Combat Corps, and Workers Alliance jointly

organized a mass rally to bombard “Tan Zhenlin of Guangzhou.” At a similar action

on May 10, several hundred demonstrated at public security station and called for the

“overthrow of Huang Yongsheng” and “liberation of revolutionary rebels.”82 On May

15, a unit group of Red Flag raided the Guangzhou Daily office and shut down the

newspaper, which was controlled under the military control committee.83 At the end

of May, the Flag rebels attacked the public security organs to seize “black materials”

(hei cailiao) compiled by the army.84

The East Wind’s swift and sudden turn on local cadres is a clear demonstration

that there were no fundamental political differences between the two opposing

organizations in Guangzhou identified as relatively “radical” and “conservative.”

Traditional arguments tend to claim that the two factions adopted identifiably

different political orientations toward party establishment. In particular, it is argued

that Red Flag sought to overturn the entire party bureaucracy while East Wind wanted

to maintain a large percentage of cadres in their original posts. A limited purge was

necessary but it had to be implemented in an orderly and peaceful way.85

However, the extent and patterns of factional behavior in Guangzhou were

81 Sanjun Lianwei Zhanbao (Three Services Joint Committee Battle News), 14 September 1968 (Guangzhou:

Three Services Joint Committee of the Guanzghou District). 82 “Jiu Guangzhou Tan Zhenlin dongyuan dahui dongtai,” (“Mobilization Meeting for Struggling against Tan

Zhenlin of Guangzhou”) Guangdong Military Control Committee, May 1967. 83 “Guangzhou Ribao, Nanfang Ribao zuixing lu,” (“An account of misdeeds of Guangzhou Daily and Nanfang

Daily”) Xin Yisi (New First Headquarters), 24 May 1967. 84 Ye Shuming, The Exciting History of Guangdong, p. 1617. “Black materials” were a collection of “reference

material” that was compiled by the communist party-state. They were often used in the denunciation of individuals

isolated as political campaign targets. 85 Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, pp. 316-8.


30

essentially very similar. As the mass movement progressed, the so-called “radical”

and “conservative” factions practiced essentially the same variety of radicalism. For

the East Wind, their vehement attack on power holders was a political maneuver to

remove their “conservative” label. The ultimate motivation was to ensure political

survival in the ongoing local battle. As one participant from the East Wind faction

recalled, “If we did not struggle against top power holders at this critical moment, we

would be treated like royalist baohuang pai and our forces would be eliminated in no

uncertain terms.”86

The consequence is that local governmental cadres were even more tightly

connected to the Red Flag faction. Meanwhile, the Red Flag’s attacks on the army

further strained their relationship with the Military Region. By late spring of 1967 the

rebel rivalry in Guangzhou had intensified. An initially neutral local faction was

increasingly divided into two camps—civilian cadres with the Red Flag alliance and

military units under the East Wind movement.

Shifting Contexts

Soon after, external signals brought more confusion to the local political

environment. On May 19, Kang Sheng (康生), advisor to the CCRG, secretly flew to

Guangzhou. Kang stayed for only one night and met Huang Yongsheng among other

senior military officers at the Military Region’s headquarter.

86 Xu Zerong’s memoir, unpublished manuscript. Xu was a major leader of East Wind during that time. He was

born to a revolutionary family. His father was a People’s Liberation Army general, a commissar with the Political

Department of the Guangzhou Military Region, while his mother had been the head of the Communist Party at

Zhongshan University.


31

The news of Kang Sheng’s visit quickly spread among local rebels. As a radical

power figure of the CCRG, Kang’s arrival made the Red Flag faction believe that the

main purpose of his trip was to further restrain the power of the military authority.

The key members of the Red Flag alliance, Zhongshan University Red Flag and

Zhongshan University August 31 Combat Corps, had regarded CCRG as their patron.

Kang’s visit thus boosted their confidence that he was going to side with them and

give harsher blows to their opponent. On the other side, the East Wind faction viewed

Kang’s presence at the Military Region as a signal that the center was going to issue

new orders to curtail the acts of the Flag alliance. After all, the Red Flaggers’ hunger

strike on May 3 had been denounced by the leaders in Beijing. As such, rebels from

East Wind side were eager to declare that “Kang had secretly interrogated several Red

Flag rebel leaders in custody” and that “the death sentence of Red Flag was

approaching.”87

According to the publicly available materials, the purpose of Kang’s visit was

only to provide some brief instructions on the army’s military training program at

universities.88 As early as March, Mao issued a directive calling on the army to

conduct military and political training in universities, middle schools, and higher

classes of primary schools.89 Yet, it would be difficult to believe that a senior figure

in the Communist Party secretly visited a major city in political turmoil only to

87 Wang Chao, Pearl River Film Studio East Is Red, p. 105. 88 “Kang Sheng dui Guangzhou junqu Huang Yongsheng dengren de jianghua” (“Kang Sheng’s speech to Huang

Yongsheng and other military offices in the Guangzhou Military Region”), 19 May 1967, in Song Yongyi (ed.),

The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database, CD ROM (Hong Kong: Universities Service Centre for China Studies,

Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002). 89 MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, p. 177.


32

discuss a military training program. However, at this point in time, without clear

instructions from Mao, Kang could not take a decisive stand but had to remain silent

on factional contention. Kang himself admitted this later when he met with

delegations in Beijing from both sides on November 14, 1967:

I did go to Guangzhou, but had no important instructions to give. On that

occasion when I went to Guangzhou, I was entrusted by the Central Committee

with one task, that is, to hold talks with a brother party…before I got on my

plane, I said a few words with Comrade Huang Yongsheng for the main purpose

of exchanging information on the situation, not giving any important

instruction.90

Kang’s vague political stance deeply disappointed the Red Flag alliance, the

members of which interpreted Kang’s silence as tacit support for the military

authority and the East Wind. According to Huang Yijiang, the leader of Zhongshan

University August 31 Combat Corps, the Flag rebels were dissatisfied with Kang

because, in their view, Kang intentionally avoided some key questions and “played

Tai Chi” in local issues.91

In fact, Kang’s evasive stance reflected Mao’s intended preference for a chaotic

and perplexing situation. Mao always believed that great chaos was the ultimate

90 “Zhongyang shouzhang jiejian guangdong diqu liangpai daibiao shi de jianghua” (“Central leaders received

delegations of two sides from Guangdong”), 14 November 1967, in The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database. 91 Huang Yijian’s memoir, unpublished manuscript.


33

pathway to achieve great order (dazhi 大治), and that “without destruction there can

be no construction” (bupo buli 不破不立). In a personal letter he wrote to Jiang Qing

on July 8, 1966, Mao said, “there is great chaos under heaven, the situation is

excellent” (tianxia daluan, xingshi dahao 天下大乱形势大好).”92 He developed this

viewpoint further when he received leading military officers on July 13, 1967:

Don’t fear chaos, the more chaos there is, and the longer it goes on, the better.

No matter how chaotic, don’t be afraid. The more afraid you are, the more

demons will appear…The more [chaos] I see the happier I get. The more chaotic

it gets the more there is a third faction that opposes civil war, opposes armed

conflict, and that’s great!93

Kang’s visit thus had no real impact but only brought more confusion to the local

politics. By this point, messages from Beijing were so ambiguous that both factions

believed they had the support of Mao. After all, they all swore fealty to Mao, and

charged their opponents with capitalist and bourgeois tendencies. Both sides were

able to interpret the external signals to suit their own interests, and assert that

unfavorable information was mere rumor or sheer fabrications.

Meanwhile, Kang’s visit further discouraged the military forces from playing an

active role in “supporting the left.” After Zhou’s speech, the Guangzhou Military

92 Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2008), p. 121. 93 Mao Zedong, “Jiejian jundui lingdao ganbu de tanhua” (“Talk with Leading Military Officers”), 13 July 1967,

in The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database.


34

Region had already stopped expressing overt support for one faction or another—once

criticized, the military leaders were anxious to avoid further errors and were therefore

more cautious in their local activities. Now, with Kang’s evasive instructions, the

military was also attempting to strike a conciliatory posture, showing sympathy for

arguments made by both sides. Huang Yongsheng began to appear at mass meetings

for both factions, where he admitted his earlier mistake of neglecting their

revolutionary demands and blandly expressed his support for their revolutionary

activities (Table 1).94 Huang’s equivocal attitude toward both factions in Guangzhou

contrasted sharply with his fellow comrade in Wuhan, where General Chen Zaidao (陈

再道), the commander of the Wuhan Military Region, openly protected one wing of

the rebel movement and disbanded another faction with great force.95

Table 1 Huang Yongsheng’s speech to both factions in 196796

Date Speech to Red Flag Speech to East Wind

5/10

“If the conservative faction comes they will not

be received. They asked me where they are

conservative and I did not respond.”

“Guangzhou’s revolutionary situation in March

was not so good, the revolutionary faction was

suppressed.”

5/11

“In raising the question of why you [Earth

General Headquarters and Red General

Headquarters] were not received, our actions

have already answered it. How can you be not

received today?”

“The so-called ‘March black wind problem,’ I

have never termed it this way. We believe the

94 Huang Zheng, General Huang Yongsheng: A Biography, p. 591. 95 Thomas Robinson, “The Wuhan Incident: Local strife and provincial rebellion during the Cultural Revolution,”

The China Quarterly, no. 47 (1971): 413–38. 96 Liuyue Tianbing (June Celestial Soldier), No. 3, 29 June 1967, at p. 2 (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Third

Headquarters South China Engineering College East Is Red).


35

revolutionary situation in March was good.”

5/24

“At present, the Earth General Headquarters and

the Red General Headquarters have come here

and put up a poster saying they ‘cannot be

knocked down, cannot be suppressed.’ They

oppose us which means we have done it right.”

5/25

“The Premier has said of you [Earth General

Headquarters and Red General Headquarters]

that you have been inclined conservative. My

understanding is that there is a fear that your

revolutionary nature is a little inadequate. Your

strength and political sensitivity is inadequate.”

5/30

“The majority of Doctrine Guards are good…to

strike down with the Earth General Headquarters,

the Red General Headquarters and the Doctrine

Guards is wrong.”97

6/2 “I have never supported the Doctrine Guards and

I shall never support the Doctrine Guards.”

Initial Confrontation

With the PLA now hesitant to act decisively against either faction, starting in

June, the divisions between the East Wind rebels and the revived Red Flag forces

escalated into bloody street fighting.

Not long before, on May 5, Xie Fuzhi (谢富治), Minister of Public Security, had

revealed in a speech to students at Peking University that “armed struggles at

factories, schools and various organs” were taking place not only in Beijing but in

many provinces as well.98 On June 6, the CCP Central Committee and the Central

Military Affairs Committee jointly issued an order to curb the nationwide factional

violence and chaos. The order specifically prescribed seven rules to forbid mass

97 Doctrine Guards (zhuyi bing) was a Red Guards organization led largely by middle school children of high-level

cadre and military background. See Hongqi Bao (Red Banner News), 10 September 1967 (Guangzhou: South

China Engineering College East-is-Red). 98 Philip Bridgham, “Mao’s Cultural Revolution in 1967: The struggle to seize power,” The China Quarterly, no.

34 (1968): 6-37.


36

organizations engaging in armed struggle.99 However, the effect of the order in

regulating the status of mass organizations turned out to be very limited in

Guangzhou.

At the beginning, the violent clashes were sporadic and short-lived. The first

relatively large-scale armed struggle took place on June 15. The Earth General

Headquarters mobilized more than three thousands of their members to attack

Workers Alliance and Red Flag Workers, leading to a violent melee in which more

than twenty-seven people were injured.100 The Red Flag rebels fought back

immediately. On June 18, Workers Alliance and Zhongshan University Red Flag sent

a force of more than one thousand to the Guangzhou Railway Bureau, destroying

office equipment, loudspeakers, and megaphones. At least fifty-nine people from the

East Wind were wounded, and more than thirty were kidnapped as hostages.101

Another battle took place on June 23 when several squads from the Flag alliance

attempted to force their way into the railway station. The attackers injured several

defenders in this incident.102

At this initial stage, the common weapons used by both camps were still the

traditional non-lethal weapons, such as iron clubs, chains, bars, and knives.103 There

was no gunfire, nor petrol bombs, nor reported deaths in these pitched battles. The

first use of modern weapons occurred three days after the Wuhan incident, on July

99 “Liuliu tongling” (“Six-point order”), 6 June 1967, in Chen Donglin and Du Pu, The History of the People’s

Republic of China, p. 281. 100 Liu Guokai, Red Flag Faction, p. 99. 101 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 145. 102 Shengzhi baowei wenhua dageming qingkuang jianbao (A Briefing of the Cultural Revolution by the

Provincial Office), No. 12, 24 June 1967 (Guangzhou: The Second Office affiliated with Guangdong Public

Security Department). 103 Hai Feng, Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, p. 175.


37

23.104 Immediately after seizing weapons from local armories, the East Wind used

rifles to fire at the Red Flag at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall and from that point on, the

use of modern arms spread rapidly to all the groups. In the summer of 1967, large

armed battles with serious casualties between the warring camps broke out in and

around Guangzhou, including a four-hour gun battle at a trade union building in mid-

August and a two large battles at a shipyard and river warehouse complex fought with

guns, bombs, and grenades. In one such battle the large Taigu Sugar Refinery

warehouses burned, destroying all of the refined sugar. Factional warfare plagued

Guangzhou persistently until mid-September when a stricter directive to stop the

armed conflicts was issued from the center.

Starting in October 1967, the central leadership decided to pull back and impose

revolutionary committees in every province.105 However, the process of rebuilding

political order was prolonged and contentious. In Guangzhou, rival factions were

trapped in a fierce factional competition for their relative influence and positions in

the new government apparatus. Particularly divisive was the issue of cadre

representation. The questions of which cadres from the old government were to be

purged and which ones were to be installed in the new government became intensely

contested. The two rebel groups competed to attract cadres to their side. When a cadre

joined one faction, he or she immediately became a target for repudiation by the other.

Each side had powerful incentives to denounce the cadres stood on the other side and

104 “7.23 Zhongshan Jiniantang daxuean jishu,” (“A record of July 23 the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Incident”)

Guangyi Hongqi (Guangzhou Medical College Red Flag), 5 August 1967. 105 MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, p. 239.


38

defend those who pledged to it. This bitter rivalry pushed the center to forge

agreement about the leadership of the new revolutionary committee—or more

accurately, force the local rebels to accept the candidates ultimately decided upon by

Mao himself.

Discussions

This paper rethinks the nature of mass conflict during this phase of the Chinese

Cultural Revolution. Factional alliances, which have conventionally been understood

as rooted in fundamental status and identity differences between supporters and

opponents of the status quo, were, I argue, produced through tactical and political

conflicts involving local actors, military forces, and central political figures.

By the time the army imposed Beijing’s order to restore military control in late

February of 1967, Guangzhou’s political forces were deeply fragmented. The January

22 power seizure had gradually divided local rebel groups into pro and anti factions.

Their disagreements about the timing and form of the power seizure led them to take

different stances toward the military authorities when they arrived to “support the

left.”106 The army used a series of sweeping and repressive measures against the pro

power seizure groups. As a result, military forces quickly became entangled in the

rivalry between the two city-wide rebel alliances, which, by March 1967, pitted the

faction that carried out the January 22 power seizure against a dissident rebel faction

that sought to revoke it—with the former lately constituting the main forces of the

106 Yan Fei, “Rival rebels: The political origins of Guangzhou’s mass factions in 1967.”


39

Red Flag faction and the latter making up the East Wind faction.

One important reason why the Red Flag has been designated as the “radical”

faction is that it fought aggressively against the military forces. Previous analysts

have framed the army as an inherently conservative force that sought to restore order

and preserve the core of the communist system; therefore, opposing the armed forces

is seen as an inherently radical stance. Conversely, the East Wind faction has been

characterized as “conservative” because it aligned with the regional army in

Guangzhou, a political stance associated with defending authority and social order.

However, a closer look at this rivalry suggests a very different interpretation. The

East Wind supported Huang Yongsheng and the Military Control Committee, but they

did so not out of any desire to restore the status quo ante, and certainly not because

they had more vested interest in the status quo than the Red Flag. They supported the

local military solely because the army suppressed their factional opponent, and

supporting the military was thus a means to seize an opportunity to weaken their

opponent and boost their own political fortune. The Red Flag, on the other hand,

accused the army of trying to reverse a genuine mass power seizure, and challenged

their opponents’ status as “counter-revolutionary organization.” The Red Flag

regarded themselves as the true “revolutionary left” and were thus loathe to see their

rivals assume leadership of the local movement. By tracing the twists and turns of this

political drama in which groups jockeyed for strategic position, it becomes clear that

the famous Guangzhou factions originated in tactical disagreements within the rebel

ranks, and evolved into an intense rivalry over their different political maneuvers


40

toward military forces.

This paper also reveals that the political boundaries of the two rebel alliances

were not fixed, as previous analyses suggest; instead, each rebel group and constituent

unit tactically chose their alignments, often re-splitting and re-coalescing in continued

efforts to position themselves on the winning side. This indicates that, again, the

divide between the two factions was much more situational and strategic in nature

than we have previously understood.

The Cultural Revolution, in Rana Mitter’s term, was the period in twentieth-

century history during which “language was most separated from meaning.”107

Official doctrines were frequently ambiguous and contradictory and, at key points,

they would suddenly reverse without warning or explanation. Especially after the

civilian state apparatus was dissolved during the January power seizure, no one was in

a position to claim that his or her interpretations of a message from Beijing was

authoritative. Without a hierarchical communication channel, each party in the

movement attempted to interpret and manipulate external messages to develop “novel

forms of political language”108 that would serve their own tactical interests.

In the context of Guangzhou, with the military’s continuous crackdown in

March, one could easily imagine that the pro power seizure force would eventually be

crushed by the armed forces. However, political signals changed rapidly and brought

about ambiguous outcomes. In early April, when the center restricted the hand of

107 Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (New York, NY: Oxford University

Press, 2004), p. 209. 108 Wu Yiching, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, p. 51.


41

regional forces throughout the country, control over the Guangzhou Military Region

was weakened. Two weeks later, Premier Zhou Enlai visited Guangzhou—an event

that became an exceedingly important turning point that only exacerbated local

factional conflict. During his short stay, Zhou publicly applauded five mass groups as

“leftist organizations,” while reprimanding two leading elements of the East Wind as

“inclined toward conservatism” for their close association with the armed forces. His

display of favoritism toward the Red Flag caused its ranks to swell and the balance of

forces to equalize. But then in May, Kang Sheng’s secret visit and his only vague

political stance further complicated the already complex situation. This ambiguity

tempted both sides to believe that what they failed to gain from Kang’s visit could

now be won in the streets with greater probability of success.

Under these highly unpredictable and often ambiguous conditions, Guangzhou

rebels had to act quickly, sparing little time to ponder the meaning of external political

changes, let alone how to respond to them. Some activists regarded the political

ambiguity as providing a lucrative opportunity to maximize their own share of power

in the movement. Some strategically shifted their organizational membership and

chose to stand on the seemingly favored side in the hopes that their affiliations would

shield them from political victimization. Others chose to stick to their original group,

not because they had vested interests in defending their pre-existing social or political

identities, but because they predicted that their loyalty would be rewarded when the

political winds changed yet again.

Factional alliances, therefore, are to be understood by looking at the contingent


42

and interactive choices made during the course of the movement, not at collective

identities and structurally entrenched interests that ostensibly existed before the

movement began. In Guangzhou, local rebels repeatedly took sides and adopted

different political stances at each unique turning point as the movement unfolded

during the spring of 1967. Their choices created new identities (“Red Flag” and “East

Wind”), new political motives, and new sets of allies. This dynamic process of

political conflict led to broken alliances and shifting opposition between two wings of

Guangzhou’s rebel organizations.

The Larger Implications

What larger implications does a local study contribute to the broader

understanding of the Chinese Cultural Revolution? How do factional behaviors of

ordinary social actors in places like Guangzhou shape communist history?

First, this study reveals that group positions adopted by mass actors during crisis

reflect neither coercion nor ideology, but are driven by the logic of collective

decision-making in situations of high uncertainty. In a highly unstable and ambiguous

political context, similar structural interests framed by previous social institutions and

status differences are invariably transformed by the unfolding of events and their

outcomes. In particular, collective actors’ actions and identities are shaped by tactical

interpretations of uncertain political conditions. During this process, new political

identities emerge and clash. These identities are not expressions of pre-existing social

identities, but dynamic relationships negotiated and renegotiated over time. Yet, these


43

newly-formed group identities become so firmly and quickly entrenched that they blur

previous factional distinctions and eventually sustain quite violent conflicts of even

greater scale and influence.

Second, reconstructing the processes of local political conflict provides insight

into subsequent political developments in the final years of the Mao era. A key feature

of the institutional logic of the Chinese polity was that ordinary citizens were strictly

monitored and politically labeled in ways that affected their welfare and futures. Local

actors had to struggle constantly to gauge the change in political tides and locate

themselves on the winning side. As a result, factions fought to keep their opponents

from gaining the upper hand and attaining the power to victimize their rivals. This

logic was evident during the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign in 1974 in

Nanjing, during which local veteran cadres directed the campaign against army

officers who dominated the government apparatus. These ordinary cadres had suffered

in the early purges of the Cultural Revolution, but when they sensed the political

opportunity to do so, they tactically maneuvered to attack their military rivals and

increasing their own access to power.109

109 Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder, “Nanjing’s ‘second Cultural Revolution’ of 1974,” The China Quarterly

no. 212 (2012): 893–918.

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