Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Conference—made a great effort to do away with the Party's absolute
leadership over the army, to abrogate political work, to reject the army's
tasks of participating in socialist construction and doing mass work, and
to abolish the local armed forces and the militia; in this way, they tried
to completely negate Chairman Mao's thinking on the people's army
and the people's war. They vainly hoped to refashion our army according
to the bourgeois, revisionist military line so that it would become an
instrument for their usurping leadership of the Party and the
government, and for realizing their personal ambitions. The Enlarged
Session of the Military Commission held after the Party's Lushan
Conference thoroughly settled accounts with them in regard to their
crimes and dismissed them from office. This was a great victory for Mao
Zedong's Thought!
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On August 5, Mao egged the Red Guards on by posting his own big-
character poster saying “Bomb the headquarters!” at the door of the
Communist Party Central Committee Headquarters. Unnerved, the
Central Committee gave in to Mao's tactics by dismissing moderates
and recruiting radical Maoists into its ranks.
On the dawn of August 18, 1966, Mao propelled his new personality
cult to a frenzy among the Red Guards when he spoke to one million
of them at a rally in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He mingled and chat-
ted with the crowds for several hours, and the next day news of the rally
was splashed all over China's newspapers. This produced a craze for
Red Guard rallies at Tiananmen Square for much of the rest of the year.
The last rally, held in November 1966, was the largest, with more than
2.5 million people attending.
These huge Red Guard rallies were possible because students all
over China simply quit school and adventurously traveled all over
China to “make revolution” and do quixotic battle against the phan-
tom counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries. They were given free
passage on China's train and bus system to just about anywhere,
which enabled the Red Guard generation to see more of China than
any other generation in Chinese history. The ultimate destination
for millions of Red Guards was, of course, Beijing, especially after
the news media reported that Mao himself was known to review the
rallies at Tiananmen Square. The fondest dream of any Red Guard
was to lay eyes on the Chairman, even if only for a few fleeting
and frenzied seconds. Liang Heng, a young student who traveled all
the way from Hunan in southern China to attend a Red Guard rally
at Tiananmen Square, conveys in his memoirs the intensity and flavor
of the rallies:
