Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution

Official materials (xianzhi) lack information on who committed collective killings during China's Cultural Revolution.
Unpublished documents, exiled dissidents' reports (Zhang Cheng, Zheng Yi), and interviews provide insights.
Survivors, victims' families, and retired cadres identified local cadres and militia members as those immediately responsible.
Killings followed mass rallies, targeting Four-Type families (landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements).
Example: Sanjiang Commune, Quanzhou County, Guangxi Province: 76 Four-Type family members killed after being pushed off a cliff. Organizer: Huang Tianhui, commune's militia commander.

Huang Tianhui planned the killings in Sanjiang Commune at meetings on October 2, 1967.
Attendees included mass organization activists and militia leaders.
Huang Tianhui cited killings in Daoxian County, Hunnan, as justification, claiming Four Types conspired to stage armed insurgencies.
He advocated for preemptive action to wipe out entire families to eliminate the "root of evil."
Public security chief suggested a policy justification and strategic limits on victims.
Commune accountant cautioned about mixed families (poor/middle peasants by marriage/adoption).
Huang Tianhui claimed knowledge of policy from a district-level meeting but provided no details.
Agreement to spare adopted children and female family members married into Four-Type families.
The meeting concluded with Huang Tianhui leading militia members to raid and escort landlord/rich-peasant families to Huangguachong Mountain.
Victims' pleas to save children, even with poor-peasant spouses, were ignored.
Jiang Yingying, a landlord’s daughter and village teacher, questioned the policy and was killed.

The chapter focuses on perpetrators: organizers, killers, and enablers.
It examines their backgrounds, psychological profiles, motivations, and whether they acted on orders or their own initiative.
Organizers and killers were state officials or militia members ideologically committed to Maoism but not under specific orders to kill.
Organizers were local officials demonstrating power after a new government was formed, radicalized by Mao's campaigns.
They aimed to prove adherence to campaign principles to superiors, fearing displacement by new entrants to the state payroll.
Killers sought to improve community standing, some with psychological disturbances.
Killers and organizers had organizational affiliations and identified with the state, acting proactively and embracing collective killings.
They assumed "newly constituted identities" in action events beyond "contained politics".
Collective killings represented a special form of collective action, not routine bureaucratic operations.
Although state affiliation was significant for staging these events, incentives and identities were shaped by routine institutional life and state indoctrination of class-struggle attitudes.

The chapter discusses the "ordinary men" thesis: are ordinary people capable of unspeakable crimes under certain circumstances?
Browning's thesis: Reserve Police Battalion 101 members were ordinary middle-aged men who killed Jews due to obedience and peer pressure, not hatred.
This echoes research by social psychologists, like the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.
Goldhagen and Mann argued Nazi killers were driven by deeply held hatred and "eliminationist anti-Semitism" ideology, often party members or elite soldiers.
Both sides agree killers weren't criminals or psychopaths but central members of society acting on their own initiative.
Valentino proposed a strategic model: top leaders decide on mass killing (