Top Bar

Guangdong Massacre

The Guangdong Cultural Revolution Massacre was a series of massacres that took place in Guangdong Province during the Cultural Revolution. There were 80 counties in Guangdong during the Cultural Revolution, and according to the 57 county annals which became available during the Boluan Fanzheng period, massacres occurred in 28 of the counties with six counties recording a death toll of over 1,000. The massacre in Yangjiang was the most serious, with over 2,600 deaths in Yangchun County alone. In addition, massacres also occurred in some cities of Guangdong; including the capital city Guangzhou, in August 1967.

Most of the Cultural Revolution massacres in Guangdong took place from July to October, 1968, and were led and organized by the provincial and local revolutionary committees. The Guangdong massacre was among the most serious collective killings in China at the time, and was related to the Guangxi Massacre. There were two major types of massacres in Guangdong: one type targeted members of the Five Black Categories as well as their relatives, and the other type was related to political persecutions. Moreover, in eastern Hainan, which was an administrative region of Guangdong Province at the time, massacres also occurred in places

After the Cultural Revolution, some of the victims in the massacres were rehabilitated by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as well as the Guangdong Provincial Committee of CCP during the Boluan Fanzheng period. In January 1980, the Guangdong Revolutionary Committee was removed and the People's Government of Guangdong was re-established.