Читать книгу CHINA BOYS: How U.S. Relations With the PRC Began and Grew. A Personal Memoir - Nicholas MD Platt - Страница 30

The first tremor of the political earthquake that almost destroyed the People’s Republic hit Shanghai in late 1965. Publication in the local press of a review fiercely criticizing the revival of an opera, Hai Jui Resigns His Office, set off alarms throughout China and among the Watchers in Hong Kong. Hai Jui was an official revered in history for having the courage to criticize a misguided, overbearing emperor and to retire in protest. The opera was seen as an allegorical attack on Mao. The stinging review, experienced hands in the Mainland Section agreed, was aimed at Mao’s enemies. It was the kind of sensitive signal that sends snakes and roaches scurrying before a seismic event. Something huge was in the offing.

My placid apprenticeship as a China analyst came to an abrupt end as we struggled during the following months to track the torrent of media attacks, first on the leadership of the Beijing Party Committee, and then during the summer of 1966 on the top leaders of the national party apparatus. The Red Guards made their debut then at a series of gigantic, hysterical rallies in Tiananmen Square worshipping Chairman Mao that launched their rampage throughout the country and the society. They first attacked their teachers and parents and all remnants of traditional culture and then, directly, the party apparatus throughout China.

The early vehicles of attack were “Big Character Posters,” handwritten broadsheets, pasted by the thousands to the walls of buildings throughout China’s cities. Historically used by students to voice their protests, these sprang up everywhere, excoriating Beijing Party boss Peng Zhen, President Liu Shaoqi, Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping, and others down the line. Red Guard groups began publishing their own newspapers expanding the attacks. On the ground, mass public criticism sessions ended with target officials paraded through the streets in dunce caps, their arms stretched out wide behind them in a derisive and painful position known as the “jet plane.” Red Guard student groups ravaged historic sites, destroyed valuable old books and paintings, and ratted on their parents and teachers.