Figure 1 Number of killings in Daoxian from August 28 to September 25, 1967
As the killing wind made its way through Daoxian in gradually increasing waves, it soon crossed the county’s borders, sparking killings in surrounding counties and cities and threatening the entire province and even other parts of the country. People were killed not only throughout Lingling Prefecture, but also in the neighboring Guangxi and Guangdong Provinces.
On August 25, Unit 6950 of the 47th Army of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), stationed in the Mailing region on the border of Hunan and Guangxi, received an urgent cable from the 47th Army headquarters in Huangtuling, just outside the provincial capital, Changsha, requesting confirmation of reports of indiscriminate killing in Daoxian.
The 6950 Unit was an artillery unit, smaller than a regiment, with only 10 companies of troops. The unit was stationed at Mailing because there had been several instances of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) government dropping reactionary leaflets in that region, and the Central Military Commission stationed the unit there for “anti-airborne defense.” In accordance with Chairman Mao’s highest directive to “be prepared against war and natural disasters,” the unit had reclaimed thousands of mu of undeveloped land to grow peanuts in this hilly and sparsely inhabited region. A large sign posted at the entrance to the unit’s encampment proclaimed: “Carrying out air defense as well as production.” Because there had not yet been any sign of the KMT airdropping enemy agents, the unit’s chief task at this time was growing peanuts, and the troops hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on locally.
On August 26, the unit received an urgent follow-up cable: “According to reports, indiscriminate killing is in fact occurring in Daoxian. It is hoped that your unit will rapidly investigate and halt this phenomenon.”
After receiving this cable, the unit’s leaders immediately called a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee meeting to discuss the matter, and given the urgency and uncertainty of the situation, they decided to send deputy chief of staff Liu Zhaofeng with three political and ideological cadres to investigate the situation and then formulate an action plan.
Early the next day, Liu and the others sped off in a dark-green Army jeep. Arriving in Daoxian less than three hours later, Liu and the others proceeded straight to the county People’s Armed Forces Department (PAFD) headquarters. The PAFD leaders vaguely confirmed that killings had occurred in the villages, but they provided no details regarding the reasons, how many had been killed, or whether the killings were still ongoing.
After leaving the militia headquarters, the four soldiers set out to make further inquiries. They found the streets all but deserted, with little to see apart from gaudy posters and banners proclaiming the life-and-death class struggle between the Red Alliance and Revolutionary Alliance. Two posters juxtaposed on a bulletin board gave a sense of the explosive atmosphere pervading the county. One was a Revolutionary Alliance poster, which accused the Red Alliance of “openly misappropriating Chairman Mao’s lofty prestige, forging CCP Central Committee documents, and using various meetings to deceive the masses … manufacturing a white terror in the villages that is killing people like flies!” The Red Alliance poster, on the other hand, asserted that “the Revolutionary Alliance has relied on the guns it unlawfully snatched from the county PAFD as reactionary capital and has run rampant, committing all kinds of outrages, and in Daojiang Town it has engaged in widespread beating, smashing, looting, grabbing, and killing, suppressing our Red rebel faction and the poor and lower-middle peasants generally and creating a white terror throughout the county.”
Daojiang was shrouded in an atmosphere of terror, and every door was barred. With great difficulty, the four soldiers managed to persuade one resident to talk to them, and they learned that the killings had begun long ago and had reached bloodbath proportions, with deaths numbering in the thousands, that the killings were continuing, and that floating corpses filled the Xiaoshui River like crullers in a vat of oil. …
The four soldiers hurried to the riverside, and, climbing onto the steel cable bridge behind the No. 2 High School, they immediately saw corpses drifting with the current. Liu Zhaofeng raised his wrist and began timing the flow of corpses, calculating an average of two per minute over the space of half an hour. Liu adduced that at this rate there would be 120 corpses per hour or 2,880 per day, which meant the local person they’d talked to hadn’t been exaggerating in the slightest.
Just as they were about to leave, a group of people who looked like peasants ran over to them sobbing. Most of these ragged, unkempt people were black-element offspring who had escaped from Daoxian’s villages and were packed into the bus stop shack across from the No. 2 High School, or they were hiding in the upper floor of a hostel next to the county guest house. One had escaped after being shot with a blunderbuss. They’d rushed over after hearing that the PLA was sending people to inquire into the Daoxian killings, and the first thing they said was, “PLA comrades, we beg you to arrest us and lock us up in prison!”
Liu Zhaofeng told them to stop the wild talk and to slow down and tell him what they wanted to say. One young man, who looked well educated, said, “Under the direction of the party’s capitalist roader faction in power, Daoxian’s villages have engaged in a catastrophic massacre. They’re ostensibly killing black elements, but in fact they don’t draw any distinctions and are indiscriminately killing black-element offspring and people whose views diverge from theirs. They haven’t even spared suckling infants, and entire families have been slaughtered… . We’re the ones who have managed to escape. Although we have bad family backgrounds, we’re willing to obey Chairman Mao and follow the party, to reform our thinking and make a fresh start in life. We beg you, PLA comrades, give us a way out. …”
The others chimed in, “We’re willing to go to prison, we’re willing to reform. …”
After listening to the tearful pleas of the black-element offspring, the four soldiers felt their hearts sink like lead. They sensed that these people were telling the truth, but the CCP’s fundamental line required dealing with all matters according to the guiding principle of class struggle. This meant they had to be wary of anything said by these people and must carry out further inquiries through all available channels.
One after another, upstanding people in Daoxian told the soldiers stories of appalling violence and bloodshed. The Revolutionary Alliance also seized the opportunity to send over reports and evidence they’d collected on the incitement and implementation of killings in the villages by the “Red Fogies.” What they saw and heard gave the four soldiers a profound sense of the seriousness and urgency of the problem. That night, in the county labor union office where they were staying, the four men stayed up almost the entire night writing up their report.
Taking into consideration the killing activities and the partisan fighting between the Red and the Revolutionary Alliances, the next morning Liu Zhaofeng and the others went to see the heads of both factions and called an “urgent countywide telephone conference.” Deputy chief of staff Liu Zhaofeng represented the 6950 Unit in emphasizing over the telephone, “Anyone who engages in arbitrary killing without authorization from the political and legal departments is in breach of the law. This must stop immediately!” However, his words met with resistance from some people in the Red Alliance.
That afternoon, the four soldiers wired the results of their inquiries to the Mailing regimental headquarters and requested that the regiment send people to Daoxian to end the killings—the sooner the better! When the regimental leader received the urgent telegram from Liu Zhaofeng and the others, he immediately reported it to army headquarters and also called a meeting of the regiment’s CCP committee to discuss an action plan.
The inquiries undertaken by Liu Zhaofeng and the others gave the 6950 Unit’s leaders an understanding of the scale and seriousness of Daoxian’s killing wind. However, the troops were right in the middle of harvesting several thousand mu of peanuts, and under the extreme material shortages of that time, they couldn’t abandon this task. In order to ensure due attention both to the peanuts and the killings, the regimental leaders arrived at a plan: two battalions would remain in Mailing harvesting the peanuts, and one battalion would be sent to Daoxian to halt the killings. This plan was approved by army headquarters, which also ordered them to take over the county PAFD’s role in local “Support-the-Left” work. After receiving these orders, the regiment selected two companies from the first battalion and several dozen of the stronger political and ideological cadres from the second and third battalions to strengthen the leadership, and ordered them on an urgent mission to Daoxian to stop the killings.
Early in the morning of August 29, the first group of 6950 Unit officers and men boarded trucks bound north for Daoxian. The trip from Mailing was about 100 kilometers—not an excessive distance, but the roads were poor, and the soldiers were bumped and tossed around for more than three hours before reaching their destination. When the trucks stopped at Xiaojiangkou on the outskirts of the county seat, the officers and men climbed out and slapped the dust from their clothes, lined up in proper military columns, and marched into town behind the red flag.
One resident described the scene this way: “When the PLA entered the city, it was around ten o’clock in the morning. Upon hearing the news, everyone was overjoyed and ran about spreading the word, spontaneously pouring into the streets to welcome the troops. Someone said, ‘The 47th Army has arrived in Daoxian, the 21 black categories can stop worrying!’ In fact, even those of us who weren’t in the black categories could stop worrying. If the killing had continued, heaven only knew how far it would have gone! When I heard the news and reached the street, both sides were packed with people, some so agitated that they broke down into tears. Because we hadn’t heard the news in advance, no preparations had been made. There were no banners or posters for flags, and no one knew what slogans to shout, so all people could do on seeing the PLA arrive was clap their hands—clap with all their might.”
Yet, once the 6950 Unit arrived in Daoxian, the first problem they had to address was a major battle between the Red and the Revolutionary Alliances on August 30.
According to what the Task Force was able to ascertain, it appears that the Red Alliance provoked this battle. Destroying the “fortified village” of the No. 2 High School where the Revolutionary Alliance was headquartered had been the guiding principle set when the Red Alliance Frontline Command Post was established, and the Red Alliance had carried out a great deal of preparation to this end. Of course, the Revolutionary Alliance had also been busy reorganizing their leadership ranks and had been promoting those with experience as demobilized servicemen and core militiamen to the frontline leadership, while also organizing an “armed working detachment” (modeled on the anti-Japanese guerrillas of an earlier time) made up largely of former soldiers and militiamen. It was under these conditions that Revolutionary Alliance leader Liu Xiangxi was elected the person with overall responsibility for the alliance, yet at that time, no one imagined that his rise to prominence would spell such disaster for the Red Alliance. Both sides had mounted intense publicity in preparation for the battle that was sure to happen sooner or later. The arrival of the 6950 Unit triggered the battle on August 30. After the Red Alliance, which enjoyed a decisive advantage in terms of armed force, heard that the 6950 Unit would be taking over the county PAFD’s “Support-the-Left” operations, it decided to take the No. 2 High School in one fell swoop and make the Red takeover of the entire county a fait accompli that would force the 6950 Unit to take its side.
Perhaps because their defeat in this battle constituted such a major loss of face, few well-informed people on the Red Alliance side were willing to talk to us about it, and we were obliged to rely on the Revolutionary Alliance as the main source for this brief synopsis of the battle. Li Chenggou, commander of the Revolutionary Alliance’s “verbal attack and armed defense” headquarters, provided us with the following account:
Two days before the battle, on the evening of August 28, we received word that the Red Alliance was holding more than 200 innocent people in several residential areas … and was preparing to kill them. They included members of the county people’s political consultative conference who are now prominent people in Daoxian. … Liu Xiangxi ordered me to send people to order their release, and told me that the Red Alliance wanted to provoke a large-scale battle, so he wanted me to send a military scouting party to reinforce defense work in Daojiang Town. So I told Xiong XX to take a group to the Temple of the Town God, and the people held there were rescued on the spot. We never guessed that one of the minor ringleaders of the Red Alliance, militia commander Nie Guangbao, would secretly arrest nine of them first thing the next morning, kill them next to the southern gate of Daojiang Town, and dump their bodies into the Xiaoshui River.1 The families of the victims included four underage children. Nie Guangbao and the others pushed them into a big vat and put a huge rock on top of it, intending to suffocate them to death. Some good people rescued the children, but by then, one child had already died.
That night [the 29th], our scouting party clashed with an advance force that the Red Alliance had sent to Daojiang. Many of our men were wounded and ten were captured, and only two made it back to the No. 2 High School. By then we had gotten word that the Red Alliance was planning a bloodbath at the school, and was coming with thousands of ropes to bind us up. Some of the Revolutionary Alliance leaders panicked and asked Liu Xiangxi what we should do. These leaders were all teachers who were very able with pen and paper but terrified of dealing with this kind of situation. Liu Xiangxi told them not to panic but to prepare for battle. I remember Liu Xiangxi said at the time that retreat would be a dead end road, and the only hope of survival lay in fighting our way out.
Early in the morning on August 30, The Red Alliance fired three cannon shots at the No. 2 High School from the direction of the porcelain factory. The first shot hit the canteen, another landed on the sports field and the third landed on the riverbank behind the school. None caused any casualties.2 The militia that the Red Alliance had assembled at Yingjiang and elsewhere then advanced on the county town with three point companies made up of demobilized servicemen, including some who had fired real guns and ammunition against the Yanks on the Korean War frontlines. These fighters were armed with light and heavy machine guns and rifles and pulled a heavy-duty cart loaded with explosives and crates of hand grenades. Inside the No. 2 High School, the Revolutionary Alliance had fewer than 300 people and a little more than 100 guns, putting them at an absolute disadvantage. Red Alliance head Zhang Mingchi telephoned Liu Xiangxi and gave the Revolutionary Alliance the ultimatum of laying down their weapons and surrendering in return for guarantees of their personal safety. Liu Xiangxi responded, “Excellent! The guns are all polished up and waiting for you.”
Just then, the 6950 Unit’s deputy chief of staff, Liu Zhaofeng, arrived at the school with several cadres, and raising his Little Red Book, he called out, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Liu Xiangxi issued an order for Liu Zhaofeng and the others to be allowed in, and once inside, Liu advised the Revolutionary Alliance to put down their weapons and allow the PLA to take over defense of the No. 2 High School. Liu Xiangxi agreed to do so if the Red Alliance withdrew to Yingjiang, so Liu Zhaofeng went out to negotiate with the Red Alliance.
While Liu Zhaofeng was out working on the Red Alliance, the sound of intensive gunfire erupted like firecrackers being set off. While Liu Zhaofeng and his men were advising both sides to lay down their weapons and stop their fighting, the leaders of both sides were saying one thing while doing something completely different. The Red Alliance’s three point companies had already stealthily approached the No. 2 High School and were awaiting the order to start their general offensive. Unbeknownst to them, however, the Revolutionary Alliance’s fighters were not all holed up inside the school; an intrepid detachment led by Li Chenggou had been sent out with the Revolutionary Alliance’s best weapons, including two machine guns and seven or eight semi-automatic rifles and plenty of ammunition, and navigating up the city’s network of waterways in a matt-covered houseboat, they had crept up behind the Red Alliance’s point companies, cutting off the advance force from the large detachment of troops at its rear.
Li Chenggou recalls, “Liu Xiangxi told us to quietly climb to the upper floor of the Postal and Telecommunications office building and set up our machine guns, allow the Red Alliance advance force to enter first and then block their retreat and annihilate them. He said that occupying this command point would bring us halfway to victory. He told us to ignore the Red Alliance’s main detachment and to concentrate our firepower on the advance force and knock them out, and then we would win. When I reached the top of the Postal and Telecommunications building, I saw that the advance force was just where we could box them into Lijia Lane, and that one cartridge clip of bullets could kill a lot of men. Keeping in mind that they were our class brothers, I told the other men not to shoot to kill, but to fire into the air. As soon as we started firing, the trapped point companies were thrown into complete confusion, and the main detachment in the rear threw down their spears, sabers, and blunderbusses and turned tail and ran. Some were in such a hurry that their shoes fell off …”
After about an hour of intense fighting, the 6950 Unit imposed a ceasefire and called for negotiations. The Revolutionary Alliance suffered ten casualties, including three fatalities, while the Red Alliance had two fatalities among a large number of casualties that including county PAFD section chief Yu Hexiang with an abdominal wound. More than 300 others were taken prisoner. The Revolutionary Alliance’s “(Draft) Summary of Events of the Proletarian Great Cultural Revolution in Daoxian,” published on November 11, 1967, records: “At 9:15, we were compelled to strike back in self-defense and captured 660 Red Alliance personnel, releasing 360 on the spot and taking the rest back to the No. 2 High School as prisoners to undergo education. Within four days these were all released. In this battle we seized two light machine guns and more than 80 other guns of various types, a cartload of explosives, daggers (striking knives), and a cartload of other materials.” The Red Alliance claimed this was exaggerated.
A political instructor with the 6950 Unit, Guo Xuegao, died in the line of duty after being struck in the chest by a stray bullet while attempting to halt the fighting. At noon that day, the Red Alliance called together more than 400 people for a memorial ceremony mourning the dead on their side as martyrs. In a speech at the ceremony, Qingtang District PAFD commander Zheng Youzhi said, “If the black elements dare stage an overthrow, we’ll destroy them root and branch! Let’s see them try!” Then He Xia gave a speech in which he paraphrased Mao: “Daoxian belongs to the people of Daoxian, not to the reactionary faction;3 the people of Daoxian will assuredly achieve the final victory.” Fearing that the Revolutionary Alliance would follow up their victory with hot pursuit, the Red Alliance Frontline Command Post then hastily withdrew from Yingjiang to Qingtang.
The entry of the 6950 Unit marked what the Task Force regarded as stage 4 of Daoxian’s killing wind, following the first three stages marked by the August 8 gun-snatching incident, the August 21 Yingjiang reporting meeting, and the August 26 Yingjian Political and Legal Work Conference. One of the top cadres in Daoxian at that time summarized this historical interlude thus:
After the 6950 Unit entered Daoxian, they didn’t betray expectations but immediately issued an order and posted the prohibition against killing issued by the provincial revolutionary committee preparatory group and the 47th Army in all the towns and villages. They also mobilized the broadcast apparatus in a grand propaganda campaign. At the same time, they arranged for the two factional mass organizations to sit down face to face for consultation and negotiation and to take a clear stand against violence and killing, and they sent troops deep into the towns and villages, where the killing was worst, for a face-to-face effort that resulted in the situation rapidly stabilizing. Although the occasional unlawful element still went against the wind and committed offenses, the overall situation throughout the county was quickly stabilized and the “killing wind” gradually subsided. After that they helped the masses resume production and resolve factional violence. They set about establishing a new revolutionary regime—the county revolutionary committee—so the leadership ranks that had been paralyzed for years could gradually recover and resume exercising their functions and powers. Step by step, the situation took a turn for the better. This was the historic achievement of the 6950 Unit, and it was a blessing to the people of Daoxian.
Once the 6950 Unit reached Daoxian, it immediately put its hand to three matters: the first was to end the fighting between the Red and the Revolutionary Alliances, the second was to halt the killings in the countryside, and the third was to investigate the truth behind the indiscriminate killing.
After the CCP Central Committee handed down its “September 5 Order,” the 6950 Unit called a meeting during which the unit’s comrades repeatedly stated, “Both the Red Alliance and the Revolutionary Alliance are mass organizations. The two factions should be united.”
After the meeting, the unit issued a notice for a telephone conference and sent propaganda trucks with propaganda teams to “publicize the party’s policies and strictly prohibit killing.” At the same time, a military patrol party patrolled the streets of Daojiang to restore stability and peace of mind among the residents.
The two sides had become irreconcilable, however. In plain language, the Red Alliance regarded the Revolutionary Alliance as the “chief representative of black elements, ox demons, and snake spirits,” and the Revolutionary Alliance designated the Red Alliance as the ringleaders of “counterrevolutionary butchers and oppressors of the revolutionary people,” and neither could be happy until the other was utterly destroyed. On top of that, the killings had become as uncontrollable as a prairie blaze, and stamping out the flames was no easy matter.
By this time (the first half of September), the 6950 Unit’s second and third battalions left behind in Mailing had harvested their peanuts and compressed them into nearly 150,000 kilos of peanut oil, which had been delivered to the Guangzhou Military Region. Just as they finished this task, they received orders from headquarters to set off for Daoxian and its adjoining counties to stop the killing wind.
Because this was still a particularly chaotic stage of the Cultural Revolution, in order to prevent mishaps the regimental headquarters ordered the troops to bury all excess guns and ammunition underground and also to hide the cannons, and to leave a small number of soldiers behind to protect these arms while the others accompanied the regimental headquarters to Daoxian. Four 122-millimeter howitzers, which due to their size could not easily be concealed, were brought along to Daoxian. With the regimental headquarters stationed there, Daojiang became the hub for dispatching personnel throughout the county and to nearby counties and towns where killings were occurring.
Given the chaotic situation, the major interference caused by factional fighting, and rumors that one organization or another was preparing to snatch the PLA’s weapons, the regimental leaders came up with a master stroke: they ordered the troops to haul the four howitzers to a barren hill at Xiaojiangkou on the southern end of Daojiang and then invited the revolutionary masses of the entire county to observe the PLA testing the howitzers. On the morning of the test firing, people crowded the hillside at Xiaojiangkou as flames issued from the howitzers, followed by a roaring sound and thick smoke billowing up from the barren southern face of Zijin Mountain at Daguping. Each howitzer fired two shots, raising eight columns of smoke. The observers cheered, and those familiar with the topography guessed the range of the howitzers at about 10 kilometers. A rumor quickly circulated in Daojiang Town: “Whichever faction starts fighting again, the PLA will use its cannons to bombard their headquarters.”
On September 9, the 6950 Unit called an urgent meeting in the assembly hall of the county CCP committee office. The theme of the meeting was resolutely ending armed struggle; preventing indiscriminate arrest and killing; executing the Central Committee’s September 5 “Order Prohibiting the Snatching of People’s Liberation Army Weapons, Equipment, and Other Military Supplies”; and joining forces to maintain social order in Daoxian. Attending the meeting were Revolutionary Alliance representatives Liu Xiangxi, Pan Xingjiang, Zhou Donglin, Lu Chengchu, and Song Zhouneng and Red Alliance representatives Zheng Youzhi, Zhong Changyou, He Xia, Liao Mingzhong, and Liu Houshan, with Liu Zhaofeng, deputy chief of staff of the 6950 Unit, presiding.
They first studied the Central Committee’s “September 5th Order,” after which Liu Zhaofeng read out a written statement of agreement discussed in advance with the Revolutionary Alliance. It contained seven clauses:
(1)Both sides would work together to immediately end indiscriminate killing in the villages; killers would be investigated and punished.
(2)The people’s militias were to be disbanded, and the militiamen were to return to their communes and production brigades to seize revolution and push production. All weapons were to be handed over to the commune PAFDs within seven days and would be locked away for safekeeping under the supervision of representatives of the 6950 Unit. Further manufacture of lethal weapons would be severely punished.
(3)All checkpoints were to be dismantled, and unimpeded transportation by land and water was to be maintained.
(4)All of the Revolutionary Alliance’s guns and ammunition were to be locked up in the No. 2 High School under the supervision of PLA representatives, and no one could break the seal without an order from the 6950 Unit’s senior officers.
(5)Transportation, post, telecommunications, and electrical generation were to be promptly restored.
(6)The two sides would work together to allow official organs to resume normal operations, to allow shops to resume business, and to allow students to return to their schools to make revolution.
(7)The routine operations of speaking out, airing views, and creating big-character posters should carry on, and further effort should be made to expose and criticize capitalist roaders and bring the “Proletarian Great Cultural Revolution” to completion.
After Liu Zhaofeng read out these seven items, the Red Alliance representatives objected, stating that handing over the militia’s weapons to the commune and under the supervision of the troops without making the Revolutionary Alliance hand over theirs was in defiance of the “September 5th Order,” and that Red Alliance personnel in the villages would not feel safe returning to the county seat. Liu Zhaofeng said he would add an eighth item guaranteeing the personal safety of Red Alliance personnel returning to Daojiang from the countryside.
After the eighth point was added, the leaders of both sides signed what came to be known as the “September 9th Agreement.”
The 6950 Unit then carried out a parade in the streets with representatives of the Red and the Revolutionary Alliances to celebrate the signing, and the four-vehicle convoy wound through the streets and was applauded by the masses all the way. When they stopped to rest at noon, the county PAFD’s political commissar, Liu Shibin, went to see the Red Alliance representatives at the county CCP committee office and criticized Zheng Youzhi, saying, “The Revolutionary Alliance’s representatives all were from the masses, but four of our five representatives were PAFD commanders. Wasn’t this really a negotiation between the PAFD and the Revolutionary Alliance? What do you want Liu Zhaofeng and the others to think of us?”
After the September 9th Agreement was signed, the people’s militia formed by the Red Alliance was declared disbanded, and the district and commune PAFD commanders and 500-odd core militiamen assembled in Shouyan all returned to their districts, communes, production brigades, and production teams.
The killings in the villages were rapidly declining, but the killing wind hadn’t completely died out, and in a few places, such as Xianglinpu District, killings actually escalated as people “seized a last opportunity to kill another batch.”
The head of the 6950 Unit’s regimental headquarters organization section, Wu Ronghua (now political commissar of a military-run farm in Shaanxi), recalled:
After we arrived in Daoxian, we quickly formed several Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams and worked nonstop to publicize the party’s policies and national laws and decrees and to end the indiscriminate killing. We faced enormous resistance, especially in the countryside, where we regularly encountered all kinds of people carrying sabers, spears, blunderbusses, and other weapons who surrounded, threatened, and jeered at us. They cursed us as “Liu Shaoqi’s army” and as “working for the black elements,” and they threatened to “fight us to the bitter end.” Once when we were carrying out propaganda in Gongba, we were besieged for more than four hours. On another occasion near the county forestry bureau, our propaganda team was carrying out propaganda to the masses when we saw a group of people carrying blunderbusses and broadswords with two bound middle-aged men, and when we went over and stopped them, we were subjected to attacks and invective. After we repeatedly disseminated Mao Zedong Thought and did our utmost to obstruct them, they were finally compelled to release the two men.
Deputy battalion commander Liu Fu’an (now retired from the Fujian provincial grain apparatus) recalled:
One afternoon, we received word from the ground that people were going to be killed in Qingtang District. Political commissar Sun Runqing sent me with comrades from the second company to rush over to prevent it. By the time we arrived it was already nightfall, and the people had been killed, the corpses placed alongside a well. Several people holding melon knives and blunderbusses blocked our way, but after our repeated propaganda work, they finally let us enter the village. Without having eaten dinner and with no place to stay, we went to a small shop, but the man there quickly packed away all his edible items and wouldn’t sell any to us. We took out money and asked why he wouldn’t let us buy anything. He said, “It’s not that I don’t want to, but I don’t dare. The brigade said that anyone who gives you anything will have their home ransacked and lose their head.” In spite of that, we worked against all odds and rescued many victims from under the knife and prevented repeated killing campaigns. …
Deputy chief of staff Liu Zhaofeng (now a cadre at a military academy in Beijing) recalled:
The work was extremely difficult back then; the situation was very complicated, and killings took place every day. There was a man surnamed He whose father had been a puppet village chief, and at that time he was hiding in the county town. His production brigade sent three people to Daojiang to apprehend him, and when he screamed for help, someone ran over and reported it to us. I led several soldiers to run over and stop them, and I asked the three why they wanted to kill him. They said he was a counterrevolutionary. I asked what proof they had. They hemmed and hawed and couldn’t come up with anything. After going on for a while they said his father had been a puppet village chief, and he himself had been a slacker and then had gone off to become a vagrant. I threatened them by saying, “If I think you’re counterrevolutionaries, can I kill you?” The three of them were so scared that they knelt on the ground weeping and said, “We’re not counterrevolutionaries, we’re poor and lower-middle peasants; we have elderly parents at home, and if you kill us, who will support them?” I said, “Do you think you’re the only ones with elderly parents? The truth is that the way you’re killing people is intolerable and it’s a serious criminal act.” They said, “It’s not our fault, the brigade sent us.” I said, “The brigade is also at fault for sending you.” At that time, however, we didn’t have the authority to punish people, so we could only educate and release them.
During our reporting, we heard many stories of the 6950 Unit preventing killings, but it was all hearsay and in principle we couldn’t include them. We did gain access to one relatively firsthand account in the form of a mimeographed report, yellowed with age, written on October 17, 1967, by a female educated youth sent down to Shouyan District’s Datanghu Farm. The account describes the horrific beatings inflicted on the writer and several other educated youth on September 9:
After they’d beaten us for a while, they took us to Shouyan’s Huangtuling Hill. The murderers used a fowling gun to shoot Zeng Botao and then they stabbed him with a saber, and blood spurted all over. That nice young man who had answered Chairman Mao’s call to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside fell into a pool of blood and died tragically under the executioner’s knife. Next the executioners killed Yi Xucheng with a fowling gun. In the face of these atrocities, we could only wait to die. At this moment the executioners used even more ruthless fascist methods, telling one of the educated youth, Zhou Jiran, to kill the other educated youths with his own hand. The murderers threatened him, saying, “If you don’t kill them, we’ll kill you!” How could he bear to kill his own brothers and sisters! Fortunately, just at that moment, someone came to the killing ground and called the executioners to the commune for an urgent meeting; the people’s army had heard the news and rushed over, and they had issued an order prohibiting random killing. We were freed from the grasp of the King of Hell and escaped death by sheer good luck. …
Figure 1 shows that after the 6950 Unit arrived in Daoxian on August 29, the killings immediately went into sharp decline and gradually stopped. In a sense, the arrival of the 6950 Unit in Daoxian was the main event that ended the Daoxian massacre.
Figure 1 Number of killings in Daoxian from August 28 to September 25, 1967
Even so, there are those who criticize the 6950 Unit for not doing enough to stop the killings in Daoxian and the surrounding areas. Especially after being besieged and jeered when they went to the countryside to dissuade people from killing, they didn’t dare keep going there, and there were more measures they could have taken but didn’t. I discussed this point with cadres from the 6950 Unit. They said they were appalled at the inhuman slaughter occurring before their very eyes, but “class struggle and violent revolution” was the CCP’s fundamental line, and they simply didn’t know how to deal with “poor and lower-middle peasants killing class enemies.”
A local cadre who paid a heavy price for opposing the killings told us:
Why was it that before the 47th Army arrived, Daoxian’s killing wind grew in intensity, but after they came it quickly subsided? Could it be that everyone in the 47th Army had superhuman powers while we county cadres were completely useless? Is it possible that before the army arrived, the masses had such a weak grasp of law and discipline, and that it rapidly strengthened after the army arrived, or that before the army arrived, everyone’s thinking had been confused by the Gang of Four, but it was all straightened out after the army arrived? Is it possible that before the army arrived, the public-security and judicial organs were paralyzed, but they revived as soon as the army appeared, or that before the army arrived, class struggle was severe, but after the army arrived all was stability and unity? In fact, the reason was very simple: the source of the Daoxian killings was not from below, but from above. As soon as the 47th Army arrived, that bunch in the county, districts, and communes became afraid and withdrew their hands, and once they withdrew their hands the killing wind naturally subsided.
While biased, these words provide much food for thought. I have in hand two urgent telegrams dated September 15 and September 22 that the 47th Army and the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group sent to the Central Military Commission and Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, which describe the 6950 Unit’s efforts in Daoxian but acknowledge that “attempts to halt the random killing phenomenon have fallen short.” The September 22 telegram states “On the basis of the above circumstances, we are taking further measures to halt the killings.”
On September 27, 1967, the PLA’s 47th Army and the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group issued a joint urgent notice regarding the Daoxian killings:
… Recently, some parts of Daoxian, Jianghua, Jiangyong, Ningyuan, Lanshan, Lingling, and other counties have experienced ongoing counterrevolutionary incidents of continuous killings and sabotage of communications and transportation. In order to … ensure the people’s safety … in light of the aforementioned incidents, the following notice is issued:
(1)It is necessary to resolutely execute the CCP Central Committee and State Council’s “Certain Stipulations regarding Strengthening Public-Security Work in the Proletarian Great Cultural Revolution” [dated January 13, 1967] … and resolutely prevent the occurrence of killings or sabotage of communication and transportation.
(2)The so-called Supreme People’s Courts of the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants … are illegal and must be resolutely banned. The minority of ringleaders and chief instigators of the killings must be investigated with severity and dealt with in accordance with law.
(3)All weapons in the hands of conservative organizations must be promptly and immediately recalled and turned over to the troops of the local People’s Liberation Army 47th Army. … Following confiscation of the weapons in the hands of conservative organizations, take control of the weapons of the revolutionary rebel organizations and have them placed under seal.
(4)All the masses and cadres who have been compelled to leave their work units should be guaranteed that upon returning to their units they will take part in struggle-criticism-transformation, and under no pretext may they be subjected to attack from all sides, violent struggle, or death. Checkpoints set up on thoroughfares must be immediately dismantled, and roadblocks and searches are strictly prohibited so as to ensure the safety of travelers and unimpeded post, telecommunications, and transportation.
The day that the notice was issued, every county in southern Hunan reprinted and posted it. The 6950 Unit’s Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams set off for Daoxian and surrounding counties and went into the districts, communes, and even production brigades to notify people of the content of the notice and stop further killing.
On the sunny morning of September 25, a roaring sound filled the sky as a Soviet-made aircraft flying in a northeasterly direction pierced a bank of clouds and suddenly reduced altitude as it circled over Daoxian. Wondering if an enemy aircraft was preparing to land, peasants working in the fields laid aside their tools and raised their faces to squint with wary and apprehensive eyes at the aircraft gleaming in the sunlight. The red star and numeral on the fuselage clearly identified it as a Chinese aircraft, but why had it come here, and why was it flying so low? Suddenly the tail of the aircraft expelled something white that slowly drifted through the air like snowflakes.
“Airplane, airplane!” a group of children shouted joyfully as they chased after the plane with their hands outstretching to capture the fluttering leaflets.
After obtaining approval from the Central Military Commission and Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group and 47th Army Support-the-Left troops, in cooperation with the 6950 Unit, had dispatched the aircraft to distribute leaflets prohibiting further killings: “Those who kill will be punished under national law.” The aircraft dropped another batch of leaflets the next day.
Tens of thousands of leaflets blanketed Daoxian and the towns, villages, and fields of peripheral counties. Some hit the ground still tied in bundles. There were so many leaflets that people didn’t even bother to pick them up. Many were rolled into the crude, trumpet-shaped cigarettes the peasants liked to smoke. Not a single one can be found now; the Daoxian People’s Government at one point offered a reward of 5,000 yuan (equivalent to 10 months’ wages for a college graduate) to anyone who could hand over a leaflet, but without result.
After the October 1 National Day celebration, the “revolutionary rebel faction” organizations of Daoxian and 10 surrounding counties and towns formed a “Southern Hunan Petition Delegation to Changsha” to deliver a report on the killings to the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group.4 On October 8, 47th Army commander Li Yuan and other top leaders of the provincial preparatory group received the members of the petition delegation and issued an important directive:
The killing incident in the southern Hunan region was extremely serious and was instigated by black elements and a smattering of capitalist roaders within the party … who used the pretext of killing black elements to sabotage the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Proletarian Great Cultural Revolution. Although specific circumstances differed in each county, the general nature was identical: it was a reactionary incident.
Upon gaining an understanding of the Daoxian killings, the provincial preparatory group and 47th Army … held more than a dozen meetings, sent several cables, made many telephone calls, and dropped leaflets from airplanes, yet the killings continue. We are aware of the circumstance you have reported to us; troops stationed in Daoxian, Jiangyong, Lingling, and Dong’an have reported very much the same thing. In the previous stage, we followed Premier Zhou [Enlai]’s directive to resolve it from the inside outward, first concentrating our strength to resolve the problem in Changsha, Xiangtan, Liuyang, and such places. As a result, fewer troops were sent to Lingling Prefecture, and manpower was inadequate.
On the basis of the current circumstances, the provincial preparatory committee and 47th Army took resolute measures to end the killings. … Dictatorial measures must absolutely be taken against the party capitalist roaders and evil ringleaders and black elements who instigated the killings, and, following authorization, several have been arrested and dealt with according to law. When you go back, you must assist the troops in carrying out their work, but be careful not to engage in revenge massacres. Toward the hoodwinked poor and lower-middle peasants, chiefly disseminate Mao Zedong Thought and clearly explain policies, patiently carry out political and ideological work, and teach them to genuinely follow Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line. Another measure is to bring in the leaders of all district militias for centralized study sessions. Since the party’s Central Committee has stated its position on the Hunan issue, some have transformed their thinking, but others have not been completely transformed, and for this reason it is necessary to organize effective study sessions for them.
With the signing of the order on October 9, 1967, the shocking Cultural Revolution massacre in Daoxian and surrounding counties completely subsided. The verdict was by no means cut and dried, however, and as the Cultural Revolution progressed, the official version of this incident remained in flux.
In October, Daoxian became tranquil. Because of the protective screen formed by the mountains on all sides, autumn comes late to Daoxian, and the green of summer hadn’t yet retreated before the multicolored splendor of autumn. Even so, the breeze had become gentler and the waters calmer, and it seemed that the killing was over. Then suddenly, on October 17, there was the sound of gunfire in Qiaotou Commune’s Shangba production brigade as militia commander Tang Guiting used a fowling gun to kill middle peasant He Yuxiang at the Ma’anqiao pavilion. As if at heaven’s will, first blood was drawn “below the dam” (Xiaba) and last blood was drawn “above the dam” (Shangba): after the smoke cleared on this stretch of flatland at the Hunan-Guangxi border, the giant hand of history finally placed a blood-colored full stop at the end of this Cultural Revolution atrocity.