of his generals. Mao was not happy about the power they seemed to have amassed in the inner circles of the Party. He wanted that power back into his hands. Liu had also been one of the first and most vocal critics of the doomed Great Leap Forward policy, and that alone was enough to make him suspect as a subversive element. Since Mao didn’t trust any of his generals at this point to deal with Liu Shaoqi, he had to use the one person he trusted implicitly, his wife, Jiang Qin. As Comrade Jiang Qin said: “I am a dog of Mao and I will bite the ones he wants me to.”
School Daze
Jiang Qin was ready to bite. None of those impressionable young Red Guards of high- ranking backgrounds really knew what was going on. For them the Cultural Revolution seemed like a “Gap Year”. In the name of the revolution, they were leaving Beijing to do good works. The fanatic ones went to Vietnam to spread the “revolutionary” seeds and many were killed there. But many of them were just travelling. So it was for Xi Jinping and his mates. While millions of rural Chinese were desperately trying to get to Beijing in order to have a glimpse of Mao, these youngsters were leaving Beijing for anywhere they thought could be more attractive.
For a short time travel on the Chinese railway system was free-of-charge to encourage the people making revolution to also make a pilgrimage to Beijing to see Mao. Revolution can be portrayed as a holy matter, even in an atheist society. Many took advantage of this free travel scheme, whether on holy pilgrimages or not, and the Chinese trains were never so fully packed, coming to resemble the stereotypical Indian railways. Travel chaos could not be avoided!
Many years later Xi Jinping revealed that he went to Guilin, a top tourist city in southern China. For a thirteen year-old boy it was a brave adventure and also a luxurious one. Not many poor Chinese dared to even imagine such a trip for their young children, especially on their own. Yet here was a boy from an elite family in Beijing, barely a teenager, taking such a jaunt. He was going against the tide in more ways that just the direction of his travels.
While they were travelling, the situation in Beijing had changed dramatically. Jiang Qin was fully aware her new position gave her the chance to say what Mao couldn’t; if it was proved wrong, she would take the blame for him. For this “hatchet woman” job she was nominated as a member of the Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution. The group was small, but very powerful. Their power extended over the Central Government and Party and it was directly under Mao’s reign. This position Mao gave to his wife was extraordinary. It made up for all the years of her enforced silence. It satisfied her own strong need to be powerful, respected and influential as a woman in her own right. She reported everything to Mao; she was to be his eyes and ears. Most importantly Jiang Qin barked and bit like an attacking mad dog, and this she did in her own name as Mao’s Rottweiler. Maybe she enjoyed her position too much for if she was on a leash held by Mao, it certainly was a very long leash.
To overthrow the current President Liu Shaoqi and his ilk, Mao invented a new term: “the power holder on the capitalist road”. Until now the Chinese had never heard such a term. But as a poet, Mao was a gifted wordsmith and knew how to turn a phrase to his advantage. He made it clear enough with this catch-phrase that he was not interested in people without any real power. Rich landowners or shop owners had been made powerless for a long time now. After the Communists moved from the countryside into the cities, these old foes were not worthy of mention. Mao had no need to declare war against them. He had something bigger in mind. He was now targeting the people with real power in society: intellectuals, Party officials, and top military officers.
The problem for Mao of course was this would be an attack on his own veterans, many of whom had been loyal to the Communist revolutionary cause for as long as he had been. As such, they had their own loyal followers and bases of power within the Party and society. But Mao had Jiang Qin and those naïve Red Guards so he took the biggest political gamble of his life on them to mount an assault that literally came out of left field.
Xi Jinping was one of the young boys who directly experienced the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution first hand. On the campus of the Central Party Academy where his mother worked and the whole family had been forced to live in her single accommodation, he was caught having said something seriously unfashionable and was accused of not supporting the Red Guards, and by implication, Mao himself.
It was a time of inquisition. Anyone could find himself facing some kind of allegations if they were just not careful enough. What Xi Jinping said exactly, we don’t know. But he was arrested by the local Red Guards and displayed on the stage at the school for public criticism at the age of thirteen alongside other prominent adults.
It was all about public humiliation. People from all walks of life experienced the same things: standing on a stage where they could be seen from all directions. The location could be in a public square or stadium, it could be in a theater or on the bed of a pickup truck, the accused had to face the people gathering around and listening to what their supposed crime was. It could be political or personal accusation, it could be adultery, could be being born into a rich family, even drawing a nude figure could be reason enough to be brought to the public gathering, where the offense would be a charge of spreading pornography and weakening the morality of the entire country.
When Xi Jinping was displayed on the stage as a bad boy, his mother had to watch from the crowd. If she didn’t want to bring more trouble to her family, she had just to follow the tide and ride it out. During his time in custody, Xi Jinping ran away once because he was starving. He went home and just wanted some food. But his mother had to report it to the Red Guards and turn him in. She had to. She was aware that her husband was already a well-know public figure of previous high stature, and she had other children to look after as well; any more troubles would potentially destroy the family, and in terms of Chinese family values, it is all about family preservation. Xi Jinping left and was soon re-arrested. Later on he was forced to do some labor on Beijing’s sewage pipeline construction as part of his punishment.
The worst thing about this story may be the aftermath. Once arrested the incident would be recorded in Xi Jinping’s personal files. In every city, Chinese citizens had a personal file which would follow them their entire life. Bad records would have huge impacts on employment, education, joining the Party, housing, marriage, and without a clean record, one couldn’t be accepted hardly anywhere. As this story was put in Xi Jinping’s files, this episode would haunt him for quite some time.
With the emerging of Jiang Qin, a new breed of Red Guards came into being, this time they were from the ordinary families of China. She knew how to relate to these young people who were not the elitist sons and daughters of the existing power structure that had excluded her for some many years. These teenagers were as removed from the inner circle as she had been, so of course they were loyal supporters of Jiang Qin, and she assumed the role as their patron with relish.
Very soon the general attack started. President Liu Shaoqi was openly criticized in the media as a ‘capitalist roadster’. This first confused the privileged class, but now suddenly they realized that they were the enemy Mao was after. The clash between the two different sets of Red Guards was unavoidable.
Jiang Qin definitely didn’t stand on the side of the privileged. She attacked anyone with privilege, including their children, and gave all her support to the new breed of Red Guards she had fostered. No matter that she was Mao’s wife; the privileged disrespected her and dared to shout in public, “Deep Fry Jiang Qin!”
Jiang Qin was not a soft target, and she developed Mao’s ideas further by saying: “Civilized attack and violent defense.”
Her language split the Red Guards further and opened a Chinese Pandora’s Box. Violence soon broke out like wildfire. Both factions treated each other like sworn enemies. The youth did not just verbally attack each other; they were literally trying to kill each other. The streets went wild. The Red Guards of high-ranking officials seemed even more
