Untitled [Jeremy Brown on Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution]

Zheng Mengxu. Huang Tianhui. Wang Jianxun. Ask a group of experts on China’s Cultural Revolution the significance of these names, and you’re likely to draw blank stares. Yang Su’s book aims to change that. Local officials and militia members including Zheng, Huang, and Wang were responsible for organizing and carrying out massacres of “class enemies” during 1967 and 1968. In parts of rural China, tens of thousands of people, including many children, were rounded up and executed simply because they or a family member had a bad class label. Some were shot; others were beheaded, pushed off cliffs, or hacked with farm tools. By documenting the killings and naming the names of Mao’s “willing executioners” (p. 4), Su’s book will reshape scholarly understandings of China during the Cultural Revolution. It also has much to offer to scholars of comparative genocide.