Rival Comrades: The Revolutionary Origins of Factional Strife in Guangxi Province, 1950-1966

• In Event: 235. Two-Part Panel: Aesthetics and Political Cultures in the PRC, 1949-1966. Part Two: Enacting the New Culture: Scripts and Practices Leading to the Cultural Revolution

Abstract

Drawing on local county annals as well as an unusually detailed set of internal investigation reports, this paper examines the relationship between the origins of the two leading cadre groups and the severity of violence in Guangxi province during the Cultural Revolution. This paper argues that the extensive factional violence in Guangxi has its origins in the communist party’s revolutionary experiences and political culture. Before 1949, cadres developed their careers in two distinct trajectories: one engaged in the underground movement or in local guerrilla forces, and the other advanced in the field armies across the country. This revolutionary legacy has a profound impact on the post-1949 power establishments. In Guangxi province, elite cadres were divided into two political groups: the native guerrilla cadres who deeply entrenched themselves in the local society, and “cadres sent to south” by the central authority who tended to radically pursue the state policies. From the land reform movement in the early 1950s to the Four Cleanups campaign in mid-1960s, confrontations between the two groups gradually escalated over the implementation of state policies in every key political event. When the rebel movement swept the province in early 1967, the local guerrilla cadres took the initiative in mobilizing the masses to defend themselves while the southbound leaders allied themselves with powerful patrons at the higher levels. Immediately afterwards, the two groups coalesced into rival factions that violently fought with one another, leading to a bloody massacre in Guangxi in the later stage of the Cultural Revolution.

Author

• Fei Yan, Tsinghua University