https://www.city-journal.org/article/cultural-revolution-on-campus
In 1966, China’s Communist dictator Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, a whole-of-society effort to remold the Chinese people into worthy Communists and to eliminate all dissenting voices. Knowing his order would need loyal foot soldiers, Mao turned to China’s youth, leveraging their enthusiasm for change and disdain for authority to execute his designs.
Mao kicked off the Cultural Revolution at Beijing University, one of China’s most prestigious colleges. Students answered Mao’s call by blanketing their campus with huge character posters and by denouncing university administrators and party leaders and humiliating them in public struggle sessions. The fervor quickly spread to other Beijing universities and high schools, as radicalized students called themselves Mao’s “Red Guards” and vowed to punish anyone, especially those authority figures who had “betrayed” the party and would stall China’s march to a purer Communism.
At the Experimental High School in downtown Beijing, an exclusive all-girls school for the children of senior Communist Party leadership, a group of teenagers formed their own Red Guards unit. They began torturing the school’s vice principal and Party secretary, Bian Zhongyun. Other adults at the school didn’t intervene, probably out of fear for their own safety. The students intermittently beat Bian for weeks until August 5, 1966, when she finally was beaten to death, becoming the Cultural Revolution’s first high-profile casualty.
The local authorities declined to press charges against the girls who had participated in Bian’s torture and death. As news spread that no one was held accountable for Bian’s murder, students at other schools were emboldened to attack teachers, administrators, and anyone classified as a “bad element.” In August 1966 alone, nearly 2,000 people were killed in Beijing.