ABSTRACT
During the first seven months of 1966, Zhao Ziyang offered no indication of uneasiness. He continued on in his duties as usual. He appeared regularly and encouraged various groups to intensify the campaign to study Mao Zedong’s works. After swimming the Yangzi River to demonstrate his fitness, Mao returned to Beijing and, in early August, convened the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee. While this watershed meeting was taking place, Zhao convened his own conference in Guangzhou on agricultural mechanization in experimental communes. As in the past, Zhao was not going to allow this campaign to interfere with the upcoming fall harvest. On 5 August Mao made his famous call to the Red Guards at Beijing University to “bombard the headquarters.” Red Guards from the capital began to fan out to all major cities to instruct local Red Guard organizations on how to proceed with the movement. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was gaining momentum.
