Factions

This chapter begins by discussing how Feng County's leaders established a Cultural Revolution committee. The first party secretary, Gao Ying, was the head, and the vice-heads were Shao Wen and one other party standing committee member. The county leadership was able to maintain top-down control of the campaign for almost half a year. Not until the end of December 1966, several months after such events in China's large cities, did Red Guard and rebel groups begin to target Feng County's party leadership. The rebellion of students and others was very slow to develop, but the first stirrings were in the county seat, at Feng County Middle School. Feng County's rebel movement was so small, and so late in developing, that there were no factional divisions of the kind that emerged in China's large cities early in the autumn of 1966. The chapter then looks at the formation of the first broad alliance of local rebels, one that would play a key role in the county's factional conflicts over the next decade. The alliance became one of the county's two large factions, henceforth known by its abbreviated name, Paolian.