Red August (simplified Chinese: 红八月; traditional Chinese: 紅八月; pinyin: Hóng Bāyuè) is a term used to indicate a period of political violence and massacres in Beijing beginning in August 1966, during the Cultural Revolution. According to official statistics published in 1980 after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards in Beijing killed a total of 1,772 people during Red August, while 33,695 homes were ransacked and 85,196 families were forcibly displaced. However, according to official statistics published in November 1985, the number of deaths in Beijing during Red August was 10,275.
On August 18, 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong met with Song Binbin, a leader of the Red Guards, atop Tiananmen. This event instigated a wave of violence and mass killings in the city by the Red Guards, who also started a campaign to destroy the "Four Olds". The killings by the Red Guards also impacted several rural districts in Beijing, such as in the Daxing Massacre, in which 325 people were killed from August 27 to September 1 in the Daxing District of Beijing. Meanwhile, a number of people, including notable writers Lao She, Zhou Zuoren and Chen Mengjia, committed suicide or attempted suicide after being persecuted. During the massacres, Mao Zedong publicly opposed any governmental intervention against the student movement, and Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Ministry of Public Security, instructed police and public security organizations to protect the Red Guards instead of arresting them. However, the situation had begun to spiral out of control by the end of August 1966, forcing the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese government to take multiple interventions which gradually brought the massacres to an end.
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