The Red Guards & Social Impact of the Cultural Revolution

Young people become agents of revolution

The Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 changed the relationship between the Chinese people and the Communist state. Young people were encouraged to challenge established authorities in Mao Zedong’s name. Yet the same leadership later suppressed their organisations and sent many of them away from the cities.

The Red Guards were mass organisations associated especially with school and university students. They were not simply one united organisation: different groups had different backgrounds and loyalties. Mao’s slogan ‘to rebel is justified’ encouraged them to see rebellion as revolutionary duty. Red Guards travelled across China, spreading the movement beyond their own schools and cities. Free rail travel helped them attend rallies and carry their campaigns elsewhere.

Their enthusiasm had several roots. Some resented the privileges of Communist Party officials. Others responded to Mao’s criticism that education favoured an elite. Challenging teachers and officials could therefore feel like an opportunity to overturn an unfair hierarchy. Loyalty to Mao helped turn youthful rebellion into a political movement.

On 18 August 1966, Mao appeared before about a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square. His public support gave students confidence that attacks on supposed enemies of the revolution had approval from the highest authority. Rebellion against teachers and local officials could therefore coexist with obedience to Mao.

Attacking the Four Olds

The Red Guards campaigned to destroy the Four Olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. They claimed that these preserved bourgeois influence and prevented the creation of a new Communist society. These broad categories allowed them to target both cultural objects and people associated with traditional beliefs or ways of life.

Red Guards searched homes for old artefacts, burned libraries, ransacked temples and destroyed ancient relics. Classical literature and music were condemned. At the Girls’ Middle School attached to Beijing Teachers University, Red Guards destroyed books and paintings in August 1966. Such actions caused lasting losses: destroying a book, painting or religious building could erase cultural heritage rather than simply remove an opponent from power.

The campaign also brought fear into ordinary households. Possessions or customs could become grounds for political accusations, and home searches exposed families to intimidation and the destruction of their belongings. The promise of cultural renewal therefore produced both material destruction and attacks on personal security.

Persecution of teachers and intellectuals

Intellectuals, including teachers, scholars and writers, were vulnerable because their knowledge and authority could be labelled ‘capitalist’ or hostile to Mao’s revolution. Regular school teaching stopped in 1966 as students turned to political campaigning. Teachers who had previously exercised authority over pupils could now become their targets.

Persecution went far beyond criticism. At struggle meetings, accused people faced public denunciation, humiliation and pressure to confess supposed political offences. Victims were also beaten, tortured and sometimes killed. In August 1966, Gao Wanchun, principal of Beijing Twenty-sixth Middle School, was beaten and forced to kneel on sharp stones; he subsequently died by suicide. Such treatment demonstrated how completely educational authority and personal protection had broken down.

A particularly clear example was Bian Zhongyun, vice-principal of the Girls’ Middle School attached to Beijing Teachers University. On 5 August 1966, students beat her to death. Her killing shows that the danger to teachers was not merely loss of status or employment: political accusation could lead to lethal violence.

Mao’s encouragement helped create conditions in which attackers felt protected, although there was no official order instructing students to beat their teachers. Group pressure and personal resentment also contributed: some students used the movement to take revenge for earlier school discipline.

These developments damaged more than individual lives and careers. Destroying books restricted access to ideas, while persecuting intellectuals made education and cultural life subject to political accusation. Knowledge and experience no longer guaranteed respect or protection.

Seizing power and dividing communities

Red Guards helped attack people labelled ‘capitalist roaders’: officials accused of taking China away from socialism. This label presented political opponents as enemies of the revolution rather than people with legitimate differences of opinion.

The challenge to authority spread beyond students. By December 1966, workers and employees in factories, government offices and other workplaces were forming their own mass organisations. In January 1967, beginning in Shanghai, rebel organisations seized power from established Party and government bodies. However, rival groups challenged one another, making it difficult to replace the authorities with stable government.

Students themselves did not experience the movement equally. Early Red Guard groups often privileged children from families considered politically ‘red’, such as those of revolutionary officials, while excluding or humiliating students from supposedly ‘bad’ family backgrounds. A young person could therefore be judged by their parents’ identity rather than their own actions. Political divisions entered classrooms and friendships as well as workplaces and government.

Why Mao brought the Red Guards under control

The Red Guards helped Mao remove opponents, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, but their competing organisations also created disorder. Their loyalty was not unconditional. Some Red Guards from senior officials’ families turned against the Cultural Revolution leadership when their own parents were persecuted.

Mao called on the People’s Liberation Army to restore order. The army and Workers’ Propaganda Teams entered schools and other institutions, while revolutionary committees replaced paralysed government bodies. Young people who had been encouraged to challenge authority were now brought back under tighter control.

On 22 December 1968, Mao directed students to go to the countryside for re-education by poor and lower-middle peasants. Sending school graduates away, and assigning university graduates jobs or farm work, helped bring the increasingly troublesome Red Guard movement to an end. The Cultural Revolution itself continued until 1976.

Students lose educational opportunities and face rural hardship

The countryside programme, often called rustication, transformed students’ lives. Its official message was that educated young people would learn from peasants and help build a socialist countryside. It also reduced pressure from urban unemployment and dispersed young people who might otherwise remain involved in political conflict.

Students’ educational opportunities had already been disrupted by the suspension of normal teaching and the abolition of university entrance examinations in June 1966. Rural resettlement then interrupted further study and future career plans.

Some volunteered enthusiastically; others went because of political pressure, peer pressure or coercion. They faced exhausting physical work and rural poverty. Their arrival could worsen an existing surplus of agricultural labour, so hard work did not necessarily produce the promised improvements.

The programme extended beyond the Cultural Revolution: between 1967 and 1980, about 16 million urban middle- and high-school students went to the countryside. This total should not be mistaken for the number of Red Guards. Almost two million belonged to the school-leaving classes of 1966, 1967 and 1968—the central Red Guard generation—while most were younger students.

From enthusiasm to disillusionment

The experience did not affect every young person in the same way. Some retained their commitment, but many found that rural hardship contradicted the heroic promises made to them. Abuse of power by local officials further damaged confidence in the system.

Lin Biao’s death in September 1971 deepened doubts. After the death of Mao’s former designated successor in a plane crash, the authorities accused him of plotting against Mao. For young people who had trusted the leadership, this raised uncomfortable questions about whom they could believe.

Some educated youths formed reading and discussion groups and began questioning Maoist ideas. Living alongside peasants also encouraged some to value compassion, individual needs and everyday survival rather than constant class struggle. The overall impact was therefore both immediate and lasting: persecution, cultural destruction and disrupted education harmed people’s lives, while experiences of disorder and rural hardship led some former supporters to question the movement they had helped create.