1. Kao Hsiang's father is Kao Li-fu, a leading cadre (14-level) in the foreign trade field. Kao Li-fu had joined the revolution before Liberation and was well-educated. Because of his high position he had frequent contact with provincial-level cadres, often participating in meetings at that level. Kao Hsiang's ties to the provincial Party Committee were further cemented in that his girl-friend was the daughter of Yin Lin-p'ing. Yin was a member of the provincial Party Committee and was strongly supported by the Third Headquarters until Chou En-lai personally opposed him as a localist. One former member of Chung Shan University's August 31st Regiment, the key organization in the Red Headquarters, explained to me that the leader of the Red Headquarters, Wu Ch'uanpin, never felt comfortable sharing secret material with Kao Hsiang. The confidential material would always find its way to certain members of the provincial Party Committee. It also should be remembered that one of the charges against Kao Hsiang over the “letter from Peking” incident of June 1966 was “assembling (chao-chi) party members to write ‘an open letter to students and party members of the college’.”. Furthermore, Hua-kung hung-ch'i contained more students of cadre background than their Chung-ta hung-ch'i counterparts. This was one, but only one, of the reasons why Hua-kung hung-ch'i had almost no support among the middle school radicals. Only one of the leaders of Chung-ta hung-ch'i was of cadre background, the others being of worker-peasant origin. This relative “purity of background,” plus the lack of strong local ties (four of Chung-ta's top six leaders were from outside Canton) may aid in explaining their rather close relations with the CCRG. On Hua-kung hung-ch'i's ties to the provincial committee see Sheng-chih hung-ch'i (Red Flag of offices directly under the provincial authorities), January 1968. On the “Letter from Peking” incident see Hung-ch'i pao (Red Flag News), 24 June 1967.

2. On the case of Hsiang Ming see Chung-pao chou-k'an (Hong Kong), No. 127, 6 03 1970Google Scholar; and Feng, Hai, An Account of the Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area (Hong Kong: Yu Lien Yen Chiu, 1971), p. 121Google Scholar; On the case of the August 1st Combat Corps see Pa-i chan-pao (August 1st Combat News), 14 October 1967 and Hai Feng, pp. 61–63, 103–108, and 184–92.

3. Pa-i-pa chan-pao (August 18th Combat News), 22 January 1968, p. 1.

4. Sheng-chih hung-ch'i, January 1968.

5. For the contents of the I-che, Li poster see Issues and Studies, 01 1976Google Scholar; For official criticism of the poster see Issues and Studies, February 1976. The name Li I-che actually represents three individuals. It includes Li Cheng-t'ien (formerly a student at the Canton Fine Arts Institute), Wang Hsi-che (formerly the leader of Canton number 17 middle school Ching-kang-shan) and Ch'en I-yang (formerly of the half-work half-study regiment). All three were important members of the Red Headquarters during the Cultural Revolution. Li Cheng-t'ien was the vice-director of the propaganda department of the Red Headquarters and took what was considered an “ultra-leftist” position, later setting up an organization called Red Headquarters Outcry (Hung-ssu na-han).

6. When word got out, early in the Cultural Revolution, that this group of high-level cadre children (there were eleven of them) was going to put up a poster saying “bombard the provincial committee,” Chao Tzu-yang invited their leader to come to his office to try and persuade him to delay his action. At that time the Party Centre had an investigation group coming to Canton, and Chao was worried about the effect this poster would have on their visit. Nevertheless, the students were unmoved and went ahead and put up their poster. Later, Lin Li-ming came to the school and spoke to the whole student body, apologizing for the attemps of the provincial committee to suppress the opinions of these 11 students. The influence of these early “radical” Red Guards can be seen by reading Bennett, Gordon and Montaperto, Ronald, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai, pp. 84–88Google Scholar; Dai recounts an incident in which some uninvited Red Guards in military uniforms invaded an important meeting and almost literally chased away Canton's top Party leaders, Although Dai never discovered who these interlopers were, the effect on him was electric. These bold “radicals” were the “Hua-fu eleven.”

7. These three organizations were the Canton Regiment, the Half-Work Half-Study Regiment (Kung-tu ping-tuan) and the Red Battle Regiment (Hung-chant'uan). They set up an organization called the Three Red Regiments (Hung-san-t'uan).

8. Here of course I am over-generalizing. Qualifications would have to be made for, inter alia, (1) the schools which because of location would have a very high percentage of children of workers, as in the industrial district of southern Canton (Ho-nan); (2) those students of cadre and worker background who had their backgrounds reclassified by the middle school Red Guards who came down from Peking to “exchange experiences” in the early part of the Cultural Revolution. In the case of children of workers, if a student's grandfather was not a worker the student was subject to being declared a “seven black element.” This phenomenon was much more common in Canton's eastern district where most cadre residences are and where many of the best schools are located. Most of those reclassified joined the rebels or became non-participants (hsiao-yao p'ai).

9. The Peking situation may well have been similar in this regard. One interviewee, a fourth-year student at Peking People's University (Jen-min ta-hsueh) and a staunch early defender of Kuo Ying-ch'iu and the school Party committee, described his surprise when, on going to the school's attached middle school, he saw the fierceness with which the blood-line theory was being carried out there. His own background was hawker (hsiao-fan), not one of the “five red categories,” but he experienced few difficulties because of it.

10. Groups such as the sent-down youth, contract workers, demobilized soldiers of bad background left over from the Korean War and so forth were sometimes supported by individuals or by individual organizations affiliated to a headquarters. Thus the Red Headquarters rebels of Number 29 Middle School in Western Canton, themselves of generally poor class backgrounds, fought constantly with other groups in the Red Headquarters, such as the Canton Regiment, over the policy towards sent-down youth. There was also the case of the “enlightened soldier” (hsiao-ping), a well-known figure in the Canton Cultural Revolution movement. He staged a one-man crusade in support of lost causes, including the cause of sent-down youth. His frequent hunger strikes created much attention and proved an embarrassment to the radicals. Eventually he was kidnapped by an organization affiliated with the Red Headquarters during one of his strikes. The Flag faction generally tried to avoid giving support to disaffected groups whose aims they felt were primarily of an economic nature. On the case of Hsiao-ping, see Chung-pao chou-k'an, 7 and 14 02 1969Google Scholar and Hai Feng, p. 331. Perhaps the clearest example of the Red Headquarters attempting to distinguish political from economic persecution was the case of the “600 work-study students.” These students had been expelled from their schools and ordered sent to the countryside in 1964–65, primarily because of “impure” family backgrounds; during the Cultural Revolution they were treated by the authorities as sent-down youth. The Red Headquarters, however, was at pains to make a clear distinction between ordinary sent-down youth seeking to return to Canton and these 600 politically persecuted former students, supporting the latter but opposing the former. See 831 (December 1967), especially p. 3. Also see Chung-pao chou-k'an 4 July 1969.