When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, many outside observers found the phenomenon of the Red Guards, who persecuted and tortured their class enemies, inexplicable. But a quarter century earlier the Rectification Movement had provided a clear blueprint. It marked the moment when Mao’s China came into being. It was not immediately obvious because the outside world was hardly focused on what was happening in the blockaded northwest region where the Communists were based. Yet the signs of the state that would become the People’s Republic of China less than a decade later were there. What
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