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Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement
Fractured Rebellion is the first full-length account of the evolution of China’s Red Guard Movement in Beijing, the nation’s capital, from its beginnings in 1966 to its forcible suppression in 1968. Andrew Walder combines historical narrative with sociological analysis as he explores the radical student movement’s crippling factionalism, devastating social impact, and ultimate failure. Most accounts of the movement have portrayed a struggle among Red Guards as a social conflict that pitted privileged “conservative” students against socially marginalized “radicals” who sought to change an oppressive social and political system. Walder employs newly available documentary evidence and the recent memoirs of former Red Guard leaders and members to demonstrate that on both sides of the bitter conflict were students from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds, who shared similar―largely defensive―motivations. The intensity of the conflict and the depth of the divisions were an expression of authoritarian political structures that continued to exert an irresistible pull on student motives and actions, even in the midst of their rebellion. Walder’s nuanced account challenges the main themes of an entire generation of scholarship about the social conflicts of China’s Cultural Revolution, shedding light on the most tragic and poorly understood period of recent Chinese history.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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August 18, 2024
This book centres on the Red Guard movement in the universities and high schools in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. Specifically, it addresses the problem of factionalism: why did militants inevitably divide into two factions that would then fight for control of any institution they targeted? Conventional scholarship has held that this was basically a fight between conservatives and radicals: the conservatives were people who held privileged positions in the Communist system and wanted to hold on to them, but the radicals had been on the outside and wanted in. What makes this an excellent book is that the author shows that in the places that he investigated, this division was irrelevant.
The author has done an in-depth historical investigation using official speeches, wall posters, minutes of meeting, interviews and other sources to provide a detailed picture of the student movement at key educational institutions in Beijing. These were the places where the Cultural Revolution began, and where, for a time, it was most publicized and influential. He shows that activists from similar backgrounds were reacting to local developments brought on by the Cultural Revolution itself rather than their statuses before it began.
Now, before I talk any more about the book, it is necessary to sketch out briefly what the Cultural Revolution was. The Cultural Revolution was a mass movement initiated by Mao Tse-Tung, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, for a bottom-up transformative revolution in China from 1966 to 1968. After the disaster of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, Mao had been sidelined in the leadership of the party and forced to step down as President of China. In his view, China was becoming a bureaucratized state and running on conservative, bourgeois principles. Mao wanted to use the masses against the bureaucracy of the state and party to transform China into a truly Communist country. To that end, in May 1966, he called on young people to rebel and formed the Central Cultural Revolution Group, headed by his wife, Jiang Qing. Leaders of institutions all across China were denounced by those under them, and mass organizations of Red Guards proliferated to push for Mao’s aims. Officials, scholars, artists, scientists, and others were targeted and made to engage in “struggle sessions”, in which they would be put on a stage in front of thousands and screamed at for their “crimes”, they would be paraded around in dunce caps, beaten, and “jet planed”, made to stand bent over with their arms held out at their sides. Red Guard organizations had their own private jails in which they tortured and executed people. The death toll is unknown, something like a few hundred thousand to a few million people were killed or committed suicide, with many others mentally or physically scarred for life. Statues were torn down, temples and graves ransacked, books burned, and ministries and offices were taken over by Red Guard units, which fought each other for control. Eventually, the state apparatus more or less broke down. The Cultural Revolution ended with martial law being declared and the army being sent in. Even the Communist Party of China now concedes the Cultural Revolution was a huge mistake, and many of those most responsible for the horrors were eventually brought to justice after Mao’s death in 1978.
Walder’s thesis is that factionalism in the educational institutions in Beijing were reactions to elite politics, particularly springing from the events at the very beginning of the Cultural Revolution. From May, 1966, classes were cancelled, but the dormitories were open and food services operating, so the students were at school with nothing to do. Work teams were sent into the schools by the Central Cultural Revolution Group to investigate the leadership of these institutions in June. Now, when they went in, they could either say there were few problems and replace a few people or major problems and replace most people, or target the top leaders or… In reality, these work teams were ill prepared for their jobs and many moved from being rather conservative to more radical in their approach. Others were conservative and were replaced by more radical teams. This was a very chaotic situation. At Beijing University alone, the most prestigious educational institution in China, “230 cadres and teachers were targeted as enemies; 157 were dismissed from their posts, 192 had been put through struggle sessions, 94 had been beaten, and 107 had been paraded on campus in processions where they wore tall dunce hat and placards describing their crimes.” Many were sent to labour camps. Mao ordered the work teams withdrawn from the schools at the end of July, and they transferred control to the students
When the work teams were withdrawn from the schools, two groups were left. The majority faction in most schools had been put in power by the work teams. They generally called themselves the Red Guards. They wanted to criticize the work teams for their excesses but also support them. The minority faction were the students who had been criticized by the work team and now wanted to call the work team back to do “struggle sessions” and rehabilitate their reputations. They generally called themselves “Mao Zedong Thought” or “East is Red” or some such. They jockeyed for power The minority strategy, as it emerged in August, was to go after higher officials in the ministries to support their claims, They had demonstrations and sit-ins at the ministry buildings.
High schools were somewhat different than the universities. The universities recruited from all over China, but Beijing high school students contained a much larger proportion of the children of high officials. They were also the most violent and rebellious. They were the most responsible for the destruction of temples, burning books, and home invasions. The first Red Guards were formed at a high school in Beijing in May and the first teacher beat to death was beat to death by high school students at a high school in Beijing. August, 1966, was particularly violent. Teachers, principals and other authority figures were subjected to struggle sessions, beaten and there were murders and suicides, often multiple in one day. Students rampaged through neighborhoods, beating and murdering landlords and shop owners. They invaded the Culture Ministry and beat and murdered authors and performers, burned books, art, stamps, clothes, everything associated with the “old culture”. About 1300 people were killed in Beijing in August and thousands more terrorized. 144,000 homes were searched and 77,000 people were expelled from their homes. Mao ordered the police to cooperate with the students.
Other high school students were appalled by the violence and organized to stop it. By the end of August, they were being aided by Zhao Enlai. These high school Red Guards then encountered the minority faction of university Red Guards who were besieging the ministries and fought to disperse them. Mao threw his weight against this movement and with the minority faction of university students and the violent high school students. They formed cross-campus support teams and took over most campuses by the middle of October.
The Central Cultural Revolution Group, headed by Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, coordinated and directed the students and their targets, going directly up into the bureaucracy, purging targets at the highest levels. Any Red Guards who crossed the CCRG soon found themselves denounced and often arrested.
In December 1966, Mao encouraged the red guards and their revolutionary allies to seize control of the bureaucracy: cities, ministries, etc. Different Red Guard units showed up at these places and allied with factions within the bureaucracies to take power. But then other Red Guard units showed up and allied with other factions. There were huge fights that led to injuries and almost civil war. The CCRG tried to get the Red Guard units to cooperate with each other but couldn’t. This is because to lose the struggle meant at least professional suicide, so the students were willing to struggle to the end. After all, Mao called an end to the student movement, declared martial law and sent the students to be reformed by labour. Universities were not opened again until 1972.
The author’s point is that people were faced with very difficult decisions that could lead to life or death, and that their class status was not necessarily important when they made those decisions. Members of the bureaucracy or academia or students faced choices when people began to be denounced. Support them or support the denouncers? If you chose correctly, you might at least keep your job or even be promoted. If you chose wrongly, you would at least lose your job, you might be humiliated, beaten or killed. If you were someone who had been denounced, you had a very real reason to try to reverse the verdict, as this was your only way back into the system. This was the real impetus to the factionalism.
This book is an education in how Communist bureaucracies work and it is very excellent. However, it is for specialists. Don’t buy it unless you have some idea already of what the Cultural Revolution or the Red Guards were. It is a detailed study that takes a lot of knowledge for granted. There are many Chinese names and institution names and it can get very confusing very quickly. Also, the author mentions the horrors of the situation clinically. This would be a more interesting book if he spent a little more time on what actually occurred to those on the losing end. Finally, the book concentrates upon educational institutions in Beijing. As the author points out, this was a special situation that did not exist in other places, and so it is difficult to draw lessons from here for the rest of China. More research is needed.
A book like this really makes you think about human nature, and to do so you need to think counter-intuitively. We all like to think we are nice people, and we naturally want to identify with the suffering of the victims. And we think we are from special countries where things like this don’t happen, and so it is something to do with the Chinese or with communism. But the reality is that the kinds of things detailed in this book have happened in many different ways in many different places at many different times, and they are always done by human beings. And the human beings who do them think they are right to do them, and what is being done is correct and proper and necessary and justified. How is it possible for human beings to become like this? If you want to learn something about human nature, think of the students screaming at their bent-over teacher up on stage. Why do they think they need to scream? Why do the people beating the other people think they are justified to do so? Why do the torturers in their secret dungeon think it is necessary to torture people to death? When we watched Schindler’s List, we identified with the prisoners in the concentration camp. But if you really want to learn something, think about why the Ralph Fiennes character thought it was proper to shoot Jews from his balcony. What are the circumstances that make persecutions like these possible? How can we prevent them from happening? That is the proper way to read this book.
The author has done an in-depth historical investigation using official speeches, wall posters, minutes of meeting, interviews and other sources to provide a detailed picture of the student movement at key educational institutions in Beijing. These were the places where the Cultural Revolution began, and where, for a time, it was most publicized and influential. He shows that activists from similar backgrounds were reacting to local developments brought on by the Cultural Revolution itself rather than their statuses before it began.
Now, before I talk any more about the book, it is necessary to sketch out briefly what the Cultural Revolution was. The Cultural Revolution was a mass movement initiated by Mao Tse-Tung, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, for a bottom-up transformative revolution in China from 1966 to 1968. After the disaster of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, Mao had been sidelined in the leadership of the party and forced to step down as President of China. In his view, China was becoming a bureaucratized state and running on conservative, bourgeois principles. Mao wanted to use the masses against the bureaucracy of the state and party to transform China into a truly Communist country. To that end, in May 1966, he called on young people to rebel and formed the Central Cultural Revolution Group, headed by his wife, Jiang Qing. Leaders of institutions all across China were denounced by those under them, and mass organizations of Red Guards proliferated to push for Mao’s aims. Officials, scholars, artists, scientists, and others were targeted and made to engage in “struggle sessions”, in which they would be put on a stage in front of thousands and screamed at for their “crimes”, they would be paraded around in dunce caps, beaten, and “jet planed”, made to stand bent over with their arms held out at their sides. Red Guard organizations had their own private jails in which they tortured and executed people. The death toll is unknown, something like a few hundred thousand to a few million people were killed or committed suicide, with many others mentally or physically scarred for life. Statues were torn down, temples and graves ransacked, books burned, and ministries and offices were taken over by Red Guard units, which fought each other for control. Eventually, the state apparatus more or less broke down. The Cultural Revolution ended with martial law being declared and the army being sent in. Even the Communist Party of China now concedes the Cultural Revolution was a huge mistake, and many of those most responsible for the horrors were eventually brought to justice after Mao’s death in 1978.
Walder’s thesis is that factionalism in the educational institutions in Beijing were reactions to elite politics, particularly springing from the events at the very beginning of the Cultural Revolution. From May, 1966, classes were cancelled, but the dormitories were open and food services operating, so the students were at school with nothing to do. Work teams were sent into the schools by the Central Cultural Revolution Group to investigate the leadership of these institutions in June. Now, when they went in, they could either say there were few problems and replace a few people or major problems and replace most people, or target the top leaders or… In reality, these work teams were ill prepared for their jobs and many moved from being rather conservative to more radical in their approach. Others were conservative and were replaced by more radical teams. This was a very chaotic situation. At Beijing University alone, the most prestigious educational institution in China, “230 cadres and teachers were targeted as enemies; 157 were dismissed from their posts, 192 had been put through struggle sessions, 94 had been beaten, and 107 had been paraded on campus in processions where they wore tall dunce hat and placards describing their crimes.” Many were sent to labour camps. Mao ordered the work teams withdrawn from the schools at the end of July, and they transferred control to the students
When the work teams were withdrawn from the schools, two groups were left. The majority faction in most schools had been put in power by the work teams. They generally called themselves the Red Guards. They wanted to criticize the work teams for their excesses but also support them. The minority faction were the students who had been criticized by the work team and now wanted to call the work team back to do “struggle sessions” and rehabilitate their reputations. They generally called themselves “Mao Zedong Thought” or “East is Red” or some such. They jockeyed for power The minority strategy, as it emerged in August, was to go after higher officials in the ministries to support their claims, They had demonstrations and sit-ins at the ministry buildings.
High schools were somewhat different than the universities. The universities recruited from all over China, but Beijing high school students contained a much larger proportion of the children of high officials. They were also the most violent and rebellious. They were the most responsible for the destruction of temples, burning books, and home invasions. The first Red Guards were formed at a high school in Beijing in May and the first teacher beat to death was beat to death by high school students at a high school in Beijing. August, 1966, was particularly violent. Teachers, principals and other authority figures were subjected to struggle sessions, beaten and there were murders and suicides, often multiple in one day. Students rampaged through neighborhoods, beating and murdering landlords and shop owners. They invaded the Culture Ministry and beat and murdered authors and performers, burned books, art, stamps, clothes, everything associated with the “old culture”. About 1300 people were killed in Beijing in August and thousands more terrorized. 144,000 homes were searched and 77,000 people were expelled from their homes. Mao ordered the police to cooperate with the students.
Other high school students were appalled by the violence and organized to stop it. By the end of August, they were being aided by Zhao Enlai. These high school Red Guards then encountered the minority faction of university Red Guards who were besieging the ministries and fought to disperse them. Mao threw his weight against this movement and with the minority faction of university students and the violent high school students. They formed cross-campus support teams and took over most campuses by the middle of October.
The Central Cultural Revolution Group, headed by Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, coordinated and directed the students and their targets, going directly up into the bureaucracy, purging targets at the highest levels. Any Red Guards who crossed the CCRG soon found themselves denounced and often arrested.
In December 1966, Mao encouraged the red guards and their revolutionary allies to seize control of the bureaucracy: cities, ministries, etc. Different Red Guard units showed up at these places and allied with factions within the bureaucracies to take power. But then other Red Guard units showed up and allied with other factions. There were huge fights that led to injuries and almost civil war. The CCRG tried to get the Red Guard units to cooperate with each other but couldn’t. This is because to lose the struggle meant at least professional suicide, so the students were willing to struggle to the end. After all, Mao called an end to the student movement, declared martial law and sent the students to be reformed by labour. Universities were not opened again until 1972.
The author’s point is that people were faced with very difficult decisions that could lead to life or death, and that their class status was not necessarily important when they made those decisions. Members of the bureaucracy or academia or students faced choices when people began to be denounced. Support them or support the denouncers? If you chose correctly, you might at least keep your job or even be promoted. If you chose wrongly, you would at least lose your job, you might be humiliated, beaten or killed. If you were someone who had been denounced, you had a very real reason to try to reverse the verdict, as this was your only way back into the system. This was the real impetus to the factionalism.
This book is an education in how Communist bureaucracies work and it is very excellent. However, it is for specialists. Don’t buy it unless you have some idea already of what the Cultural Revolution or the Red Guards were. It is a detailed study that takes a lot of knowledge for granted. There are many Chinese names and institution names and it can get very confusing very quickly. Also, the author mentions the horrors of the situation clinically. This would be a more interesting book if he spent a little more time on what actually occurred to those on the losing end. Finally, the book concentrates upon educational institutions in Beijing. As the author points out, this was a special situation that did not exist in other places, and so it is difficult to draw lessons from here for the rest of China. More research is needed.
A book like this really makes you think about human nature, and to do so you need to think counter-intuitively. We all like to think we are nice people, and we naturally want to identify with the suffering of the victims. And we think we are from special countries where things like this don’t happen, and so it is something to do with the Chinese or with communism. But the reality is that the kinds of things detailed in this book have happened in many different ways in many different places at many different times, and they are always done by human beings. And the human beings who do them think they are right to do them, and what is being done is correct and proper and necessary and justified. How is it possible for human beings to become like this? If you want to learn something about human nature, think of the students screaming at their bent-over teacher up on stage. Why do they think they need to scream? Why do the people beating the other people think they are justified to do so? Why do the torturers in their secret dungeon think it is necessary to torture people to death? When we watched Schindler’s List, we identified with the prisoners in the concentration camp. But if you really want to learn something, think about why the Ralph Fiennes character thought it was proper to shoot Jews from his balcony. What are the circumstances that make persecutions like these possible? How can we prevent them from happening? That is the proper way to read this book.
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July 24, 2025fascinerende, gruwelijke geschiedenis, waar ik tot nu toe eigenlijk helemaal niets van afwist. studenten en scholieren krijgen carte blanche om stafleden te purgen en dat ontaard in complete chaos met honderden facties met eigen privégevangenissen.
goed gestructureerd werk, argument is overtuigend, sommige stukken zijn iets excessief maar wel nuttig voor de verdere onderbouwing. erg sterk.
verder opvallend hoeveel vrouwen hier een rol spelen (ook bij het brute geweld).
goed gestructureerd werk, argument is overtuigend, sommige stukken zijn iets excessief maar wel nuttig voor de verdere onderbouwing. erg sterk.
verder opvallend hoeveel vrouwen hier een rol spelen (ook bij het brute geweld).
November 28, 2022
+ The author challenges the mainstream "social conflict theory" in Cultural Revolution studies, arguing that the main cause of red guards' factionalism is short-term political interactions which alter the interests and identities of the students step by step, instead of static pre-revolutionary social interests.
+ Nice introduction on Beijing Red Guard Movement, since existing academic materials about this topic are mainly restricted to university level.
- The narrative is too brief, ignoring the heterogeneity of different red guard factions. You will not read about the ideological orientation and other distinct features of each faction.
- Content about the high school picket corps is worth doubting.
+ Nice introduction on Beijing Red Guard Movement, since existing academic materials about this topic are mainly restricted to university level.
- The narrative is too brief, ignoring the heterogeneity of different red guard factions. You will not read about the ideological orientation and other distinct features of each faction.
- Content about the high school picket corps is worth doubting.
February 8, 2023
A classic sociological examination of the Beijing Red Guard movement for the years of the Cultural Revolution proper. Well researched, evidenced, and convincingly argued.
June 18, 2018
Reliable book, but a bit tedious to read
November 3, 2022
With every attempt to understand the Cultural Revolution it becomes more and more inscrutable. Communist Mean Girls
February 11, 2025
I enjoyed it. Well-researched and convincing arguments. Helped me on understanding the multiple divisions and splits that happened among Beijing Red Guards.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews