ABSTRACT

On November 23, posters twenty pages long against Liu Shao-ch'i, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, Po I-po, and Wang Kuang-mei (Mme Liu Shao-ch'i) appeared in the streets of Peking. Liu's first self-criticism was published briefly on December 26. Throughout the months that followed, the attacks on the president of the Republic and the general secretary of the Central Committee proliferated under many different forms—tracts, selected texts, and insulting caricatures. Disorder and confusion were growing in the provinces. Chiang Ch'ing herself told the supporters of the Cultural Revolution to guard against anarchism and ultra-democracy and spoke roughly to some of the youngest and most irresponsible among them: "You will become the little monkeys of the proletariat". The order to the army to intervene in the Cultural Revolution was included in the instructions of January 23 and 28, 1967, of the Party's Military Affairs Committee. It was preceded by a reorganization of the army's Cultural Revolution Group on January 11.