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| Piccap: | Propaganda poster depicting Little Red Guards |
The Little Red Guards [1] was a large student organization in primary schools during the Cultural Revolution in mainland China. It replaced the Young Pioneers and participated in political activities.
In 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. In middle schools and universities, the Red Guards spread rapidly as a new student organization.
On February 4, 1967, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued the "Notice on the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Primary Schools (Draft)",[2] proposing that primary schools are "an important front" in the Cultural Revolution, and confirmed that "primary school students can organize Little Red Guards" to replace the traditional Young Pioneers of China. On December 22, the Central Committee and the Central Cultural Revolution Committee approved an article on the establishment of the Little Red Guards organization at Xiangchang Road Primary School in Beijing. Soon after that, little red guards appeared all over the country and the Young Pioneers organization was officially replaced, and Xiangchang Road Primary School became the birthplace of Little Red Guards and a model for other sub-organizations.[3]
Little red guards from all over the country participated in activities such as "suspending classes to make revolution", criticizing teachers, and learning from Lei Feng. They often walked to school in lines, holding placards with Chairman Mao's quotations and singing revolutionary songs all the way. Due to their age limit, the impact of the Little Red Guards on society was far less than that of the Red Guards.
The little red guard students in each grade of Xiangchang Road Primary School were organized into a (military) company, which was further divided into platoons (classes) and squads (groups in a class), and the entire school formed a Little Red Guard corps. The management group of the corps was composed of twelve representatives of the little red guards, who carried out activities under the leadership of the school's revolutionary committee.[3]
The logos of the Little Red Guards were not uniform at first. The more common one was a diamond-shaped arm-badge with the three characters of "红小兵 " (Little Red Guard) warn on the left upper arm. In some places, it was a red armband similar to the Red Guards logo, with "红小兵 " (Little Red Guard) written in yellow on it. Beginning in 1970, with the restoration of education order in primary and secondary schools across the country, the symbol of the Little Red Guards gradually changed back to the red scarf; school organizations no longer used the militarized titles of "company, platoon, and squad" but restored to "brigade, squadron and squad".
The Little Red Guards Magazine (红小兵报) was first launched in Shanghai on July 20, 1967 as a children’s weekly. Soon after that, more than a dozen of similar magazines appeared from other places, all called “Little Red Guard” or something similar. Written for primary school students, these magazines typically included rhymes, songs, news and current affairs, short stories with illustrations, comic strips, and drawings by children. When the Young Pioneers was restored in 1978, these “little red guard” magazines either ceased to exist or changed to other names.[4] [5] [6]
On October 27, 1978, the "Resolution on Restoring the Name of the Chinese Young Pioneers" and the "Decision on the Song and the Constitution of the Chinese Young Pioneers" were passed at the first plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the 10th National Congress of the Communist Youth League of China, and the Little Red Guards organization was restored to the Young Pioneers of China.[7]