In what circumstances did you join the Red Guards in Canton?
1966 was an important year in China. In the period preceding June 1966, the political atmosphere in the country was very tense. We felt that there would be an explosion fairly soon. In Peking High School, students had declared themselves Red Guards under the slogan: 'To Rebel Is Justified'. In our school in Canton in the same month there were only a few of us who were rebels, though we were very active. A few dozen in a school consisting of 1,400 students. We felt suppressed and uninvolved in the country's politics. Our life was dull, routinist and pedestrian. Before the cultural revolution I was very interested in reading political texts—Marx, Lenin, Mao—and was regarded as being strange since we were not supposed to show any independent interest in politics. In school, politics meant being taught what the Party line was on this or that subject.
The June Red Guards represented a trend to think independently. Our political level was very low and we put forward no demands as such. We merely made wall-posters condemning the section of the Party in the school. I'd always hated the school headmaster who was totally useless, a fact everyone in the school was aware of. He was there because he was a Party member. He was a super-bureaucrat who ate separately not only from us students, but even from the rest of the teachers. While compelling us to take part in physical training, he used to stand at a distance under an umbrella. He was extremely authoritarian. In June 1966 our wallposters denounced him in rather emotional terms. We also snatched some of the rifles kept in the school and hid them. There were between 20 and 30 rifles in the school, but they were under the control of the children of PLA soldiers who also studied in the High School.
In June, in almost every school the section of the Party was overthrown by the students. For a short period the administration was elected by us. That was why Liu Shao Chi sent his work-teams to reestablish control. The work-teams claimed to support the cultural revolution, but in fact they suppressed us and warned us not to fight against the Party section. Instead, they attempted to divert our wrath towards the non-Party teachers and it was on their instructions that many ordinary teachers were insulted and humiliated. Our spontaneity was crushed. I was personally very angry about this and put up a wall poster condemning the intervention of the work-teams and referring to both them and the Party section as gangsters. Then the work-team organized students to attack me and denounce me for being right-wing, argued back, but during debates I was muzzled and held physically with my arms tied behind my back. From July to October I was completely isolated in my school and students kept well away from me.
By August it was obvious that Mao wanted to overthrow Liu, but the latter was very powerful within the Party apparatus and Mao was unable to deal with him via the Party constitution. So he decided to utilize the masses outside the Party to overthrow Liu. A mass movement of students was at this time being suppressed by Liu Shao Chi's work-teams. If Mao hadn't supported the struggle of the Red Guards he would have been defeated. Thus in August, Mao announced the sixteen points of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards were officially recognized. This action seemed to vindicate the June Red Guards as being genuine leftists and encouraged us to fight the capitalist roaders'.
My isolation began to decrease and students began to speak to me again, but the school was still under the control of conservative elements (sons of Red Army soldiers). From August to October the minority Red Guards began to regroup. Our main difference with the conservatives was that they supported the work-teams, but the conservatives did everything possible to steer the struggle well clear of the Party bureaucracy. They did so by making scapegoats of the students who were of bourgeois origins and the latter were victimized rather brutally. Though I attacked the conservatives in very strong terms for their behaviour, which culminated in them actually killing a number of teachers and students of bourgeois origin. You must understand that this was a deliberate and conscious diversion. The period lasted from August to October 1966.
In October, I left for Peking to observe the Cultural Revolution at its base and stayed there for three days. I saw the wallposters, but not Mao, met others like myself and then returned to Canton. I travelled with hundreds of others, free of charge, in trains, ferries, trucks. It was a fantastic experience seeing the country in this manner. We really did feel liberated travelling in this fashion without any restrictions and in the company of lots of other youths, discussing quite freely things we had not thought about in the past.
When I returned I immediately set up a Red Guard HQ in our school, and we named our group 'The East Is Red Commune'. It consisted of about forty students at the start.
What did you discuss in 'The East Is Red Commune' and what actions did you initiate?
The first action we took was to destroy the files of our school because they were used to keep the students under control. The Party section, when dissatisfied with any student, opened a file on him which could be used against him in the future. For instance, such files could be utilized to prevent dissidents from reaching university and also to harm their job prospects. The files were an important weapon against us. After we had expropriated the files, I read the dossier on myself and could hardly recognize the picture it painted. We published the files, exposed them as lies and showed the Party bureaucrats to be a bunch of liars.
As a matter of interest, what was written in your file?
[illegible] He ought to be carefully watched. Will be dealt with when movement subsides.'
But to continue: our second action was to release the [illegible] of other students. We organized mass meetings and [illegible] to participate. We also brought the Party bureaucrats before the class. We did not attack them physically, but asked them [illegible] any questions [illegible].
[illegible]
[illegible] adored him, especially myself. Why? Because it [illegible] liberated me. He had given us a new lease of life and you must understand that even a break with routinism represented a big step forward for us. You can imagine the impact it had on all of us. As we saw it, Mao represented us in the top circles [illegible] he defended our actions and [illegible] us. [illegible] though I adored Mao, there were a few suspicions at the back of my mind. It was an instinctive suspicion. I could not rationalize it or explain it, but it was probably due to the critical spirit which I had developed and which later enabled me to criticize Mao. But this was rare, I repeat, rare amongst students in my school and was [illegible].
[illegible] political discussion inside the [illegible]?
Yes, we constantly analyzed the revolutionary situation and our own struggle. There was no theoretical discussion—we were not educated enough. We were so obsessed with ourselves that we could not even think of the Vietnamese comrades except sporadically.
How then did your struggle continue?
Our rebellion was not only confined to our school. We took it to the Canton County section of the Party. We knew that the work-teams and Party section in school had been guided by the Canton Party leadership. We joined with other local Red Guard groups to raid the Canton Party HQ. Two hundred of us carried out the action, representing all local schools. We got hold of the Party files and published what was contained in them on wall posters. The files showed us the fight taking place within the Party bureaucracy as well as the plots to suppress us, etc.
Then we went to the factories, joined the production line and ate and lived with the workers. We put up wall posters in the factory exposing the privileges of Party bureaucrats in the factories. You must know that inside the factories those small numbers of workers who had protested had been even more repressed than us. The Party section inside the factory consisted of a privileged minority compared to the rest of the workers. We linked up with the rebellious workers and called ourselves the Red Flag Faction (RFF). Within the RFF there were many small groups—workers, students, teachers, etc. There was no centralized leadership. We used publicly to burn the official publications of the Party bureaucrats to show our complete contempt and disgust and we put out our own publications attacking the Party.
In December 1966 there was a rebellion among the peasantry and some militants set up a group called: 'The Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants' RFF'. They fought against Party members in their own communes. In December, though we were in a minority, we were in control of the situation because of our anti-bureaucratic initiatives; but we were still nowhere like as strong as the conservative Red Guards, if you compared our respective strengths on an overall basis. In the universities, it is true, there were twenty revolutionary Red Guards for each conservative. But in the schools the forces were roughly 60:40 in their favour; in the working class, there were only 10,000 rebels out of a workforce numbering nearly a million; and in the peasantry, there were only a few thousand rebels out of several million peasants. But although the conservatives were very numerous, their morale was low, they had lost the will to fight and many began to move towards us.
How did the struggle develop in 1967?
January to June 1967 constitutes the middle stage of the struggle for power between the people and the bureaucrats. By the end of 1966 the Party bureaucracy was in a state of collapse. Mao's alliance with us had put him on the left and our main target had been Liu Shao Chi. But our conflict with the bureaucracy on every level had objectively also put us on a collision course with Mao.
A brief digression: did you really believe that Liu was a 'capitalist roader'—an agent of imperialism?
Yes, I did. But we understood capitalism in a different way from Mao. We started from the viewpoint of being oppressed and suppressed. And for us, therefore, anyone who oppressed the masses must be a capitalist. Mao meant it in a different way, of course. He meant it economically, politically and culturally. There were many other bureaucrats apart from Liu who were oppressors, but Mao did not denounce them. We did.
Should we return to 1967?
Yes. In 1967 the mass movement matured rather rapidly and its morale rose. And we began to understand and appreciate problems that we had not even been in a position to think about in the preceding seventeen years. Many of us reasoned that we had been suppressed because we had no power and concluded that therefore we had to have power. Thus the storm period of January begun—the 'seizure of power' period. In December 1966 the bureaucrats had used a new tactic. They abandoned the administration throughout the country, hoping to create complete chaos. This forced us to begin to run affairs ourselves. In January 1967 in Shanghai, the workers and students seized power. Within a few days the same thing happened in Canton and elsewhere.
What happened in Canton? How did you 'seize power'? What changed?
We simply got the administration of the whole of Canton under our control. The bureaucrats were smashed. We occupied the Party headquarters and [illegible] the bureaucrats to hand over authority to us and to announce on the streets and in the press that we, the RFF, held power. I was responsible for the administration of some schools. In the schools the students elected their own representatives to run them.
Did the bureaucrats announce this on the radio as well?
No, the radio stations were shut down, as Mao did not want any reports of what was going on to reach the outside world.
To continue: in factories, the workers elected their own representatives to run the factories. Similar events occurred in newspaper offices. But we were very naive. In seizing power, we had no idea of what we were doing or what its implications were. The Paris Commune, workers' democracy, soviets, meant nothing to us. The struggle had impelled us forward, but we had no real, politically sophisticated leadership to direct our advance. As a result, inside the RFF disputes arose solely on administrative questions related to the exercise of power. This will give you an idea of the low level of political consciousness.
How long did this situation last?
From early 1967 onwards, Mao began to separate himself from us. He wanted the struggle to end and started to move against us. When he visited Shanghai he attacked the comrades there for calling themselves a commune and told them that a commune meant a structure in which the base dominated. He said that this indicated that they did not want any leadership from the Party. He told them that the Party leadership was necessary and instructed them to change their name to 'revolutionary committee'. It was here that he formulated his idea of the 'tripartite alliance': in other words that revolutionary power should be organized by revolutionary cadres (i.e. the Party), military cadres (i.e. the PLA) and mass representatives (a temporary concession). The process whereby the Maoists took power back into the hands of the Party and army was set into motion. Thus the army 'joined' the Cultural Revolution in order to stabilize the situation. By the end of February there were clashes between army units and Red Guards.
What happened in Canton and what was your own experience?
After we seized power and established the commune we discovered that the Party bureaucrats were in touch with the army. Some had fled to the army and sought its protection against us. This made us conscious that we also had to fight the army. On 8 February 1967 we invaded the military area and held demonstrations there. We captured some army propaganda cars and used them to appeal to soldiers to join us. The military bureaucrats were furious. No armed soldiers joined us, but clerks, and other army workers joined.
Meanwhile in Peking a number of Party leaders were beginning to get really alarmed and were beginning to oppose Mao because of his inability to control the situation. They (under the discreet control of Chou Enlai) began to suppress the movement in Peking by using the military. This was a tremendous boost for the bureaucracy nationally and the bureaucrats began to re-emerge, link up with the army and suppress dissident groupings all over the country. In many places they used force, but not in Canton. They arrested many people, banned the RFF, established military control and seized back power. From the information which was spread on the level of gossip and common talk, we heard that 'Lin Piao had been opposed to these actions, but had been over-ruled'. The Party leaders who organized the repression were opponents of Lin Piao. So from February 1967 the intervention of the army started and continued till they had restabilized the situation.
Were there any doubts building up at this time in relation to the role of Mao himself?
No. Mao was reported to have been hesitant on the question of using troops till September 1967, when he threw his weight behind the suppression.
When did you realize that the Cultural Revolution was over?
In September 1967, I returned to my school and discovered that the old headmaster was back. However the atmosphere was restive and nobody really settled down. I should have mentioned that in August 1967 there were arms raids all over the country and many of us stole arms. That time there was little resistance to these raids, but in April 1968 we tried again and this time the army shot back and many comrades were killed.
What happened in China in May 1968? As you know in France there was a big upheaval led by workers and students and we even read that there had been solidarity demonstrations in Peking. Does this mean that while Mao and the bureaucracy had ordained that the Cultural Revolution be ended, it nonetheless continued?
There certainly were demonstrations in Peking and we published some publications in Canton showing our solidarity with the French comrades. Yes, in the sense you pose it the upheaval in China was not completely over. The end was uneven. After all China is not a small country and it is not easy to issue a centralized decree to end a mass movement. In July 1968 the army marched into the schools and factories and disbanded the Red Guards. In Kwangsi they had to lay siege outside the factories for many days before the workers surrendered. After disbanding the Red Guards they set up the Tripartite Committees, but these were just rubber stamps. The situation from now on became extremely difficult.
What happened to you? When did you leave Canton?
From November 1968 to August 1971, I was sent to work on a farm. For two years I worked in Hopei and for one year in Canton. We were all extremely dissatisfied and Mao was constantly attacked in private. We felt we had been betrayed and sentenced to a grim future. But now we discussed a lot. We tried to elaborate new theories and concepts to try and analyse what had gone wrong. I joined a group of extreme-leftists in Hopei whose group was known as 'Proletarian Union of Hunan'. They had written a number of documents criticizing Mao and the bureaucracy. It was a spontaneous development. Neither they nor I had read any writings by Trotsky, but our ideas about the bureaucracy were very similar to his. We held many discussions, but by 1971 we began to get extremely demoralized, since many of us realized the enormity of the tasks which confronted us.
Is that why you decided to leave China?
Not exactly. A number of us were forced to flee for political reasons. In the first place, our groups were discovered and many comrades began to be arrested. We were all threatened. But secondly, because I wanted to read and write, which became impossible in China as the fog of Party orthodoxy descended once again and engulfed the entire country with that special kind of ignorance which is peculiar to bureaucratized states like China. Also many of my comrades, in a state of complete despair, committed suicide in prison rather than reveal the names of others. That is why a number of us decided to leave Canton. We therefore swam across to Hong Kong.
How did you discover Trotskyism?
Essentially through the Seventies Bi-Weekly. It was a real revelation. There was a debate being conducted in the paper between anarchism and Trotskyism. Some comrades came under the influence of anarchism, which is hardly surprising, given their experiences in China. I read articles by old Chinese Trotskyist comrades, like comrade Wang, who explained to us, for the first time, the real history of the Chinese Communist Party and the origins of Chinese Marxism. In addition we read articles by Ernest Mandel, yourself and other comrades. That is how we discovered the Fourth International.