Resource 5-5

Struggle Sessions Why has ‘probably’ been used?

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In August, 1966, Mao Zedong called for the start of a Cultural Revolution at the meeting of the Communist Central Committee. He urged the youth of China to become its “Red Guards” and to punish party officials and any other persons who showed capitalist tendencies. Mao probably wanted to use the Cultural Revolution to rid the Chinese Communist Party of his opponents. Mao knew that other party leaders were planning to take his place, so he appealed directly to his supporters among the people to join him in a Cultural Revolution. He also believed that communist revolution had to be a continuous process in order to keep the country free of capitalism. Mao's call was answered by the students, some as young as primary school, who organized themselves into the first groups of Red Guards. They were joined later by workers and soldiers. In their enthusiasm, the Red Guards began to attack people that they saw as enemies of Communism. The Guards conducted so-called "struggle sessions," in which they heaped abuse and public humiliation upon people accused of capitalist thoughts (usually these were teachers, monks and other educated persons). These sessions often included physical violence, and many of the accused died or ended up being held in re-education camps for years, where they were forced to do hard labour and punished repeatedly. Here is an example of a struggle session as recounted in the book Enemies of the People: You Xiaoli was standing, carefully balanced, on a stool. Her body was bent over from the waist into a right angle, and her arms, elbows stiff and straight, were behind her back, one hand grasping the other at the wrist. It was the position known as "doing the airplane." Around her neck was a heavy chain, and attached to the chain was a blackboard, a real blackboard, one that had been removed from a classroom at the university where You Xiaoli, for more than ten years, had served as a full professor. On both sides of the blackboard were chalked her name and the many crimes she was alleged to have committed...

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