ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a gamut of interpretations and analyses on the purposes, causes, activities and eventual fate of the Red Guards. Explanations for the rise of the Red Guard movement include generational politics, the Marxist theory of alienation, manipulation of the young in the power struggle by leaders and a massive reaction against the past and influences from the West. It examines the related personal experiences in the Red Guard movement and the participant's perception about his role in the Cultural Revolution and about Chinese society. In the West the Red Guard movement represented a dramatic aspect of the Cultural Revolution. A popular image was one of the rampaging and unruly students bent on overturning the establishment, as personified by the Chinese Communist Party. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, these students were adulated by the Maoists as "Little Generals" who wanted to gain revolutionary experience to prepare themselves as successors to the revolution.
