Red Guards Warned To ‘Knuckle Under’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 13

Red Guards Warned To ‘Knuckle Under’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) HONG KONG, August 19. Communist China saluted yesterday’s second anniversary of the militant and violent Red Guards with a declaration that their day is done.

An editorial in the Peking “People’s Daily” patted the millions of Red Guards on the back for “scaring the hell

out of all Imperialism, revisionism and reaction,” but it warned them that they must now knuckle under to adult authority along “the road of unity with workers, peasants and soldiers.” The anniversary editorial coincided with Chinese radio reports of mass public trials of “counter-revolutionary” opponents of Chairman Mao Tse-tung in three provinces. The reports, monitored in Hong Kong, said 100,000 people had attended the public trial of seven traitors in Hang Chow, including one Chinese spy for American intelligence. The trials were described as part of the sweeping action against internal unrest, caused partly by Red Guards factional fighting, that has been ordered by Chairman Mao and his Peking directorate.

Many observers regard the editorial in the “People’s Daily” as a transmision of policy from Chairman Mao, confirming the view that the Chinese leader created something of a Frankenstein monster when he launched the Red Guards movement in August, 1966. Intended then as providing the youthful spark for the cultural revolution, the Red Guards made attacks on “disloyal" elements and on many occasions got out of hand. “The course of the great proletarian cultural revolution for the last two years and more proves that the only future for the Red Guards is in unity with the worker-peasant-soldier masses who are armed with Mao Tsetung’s thoughts," the editorial said. “All Red Guards and revolutionary intellectual youths should take the worker’s class as their teacher.” The radio broadcasts said the mass trials were carried out in the provinces of Chekiang and Fukien, coastal areas near nationalist-held Taiwan, and the neighbouring island of Kiangsi. Details were reported only of the trial at Hang Chow, capital of Chekiang. The radio said seven men, including the unidentified “spy,” received prison terms of between 10 and 20 years for slandering Chairman Mao, sabotage, inciting public disorder and “other 'crimes against the revolution.”