The Guangxi Massacre (simplified Chinese: 广西大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 廣西大屠殺; pinyin: Guǎngxī dàtúshā) comprised a series of lynchings and massacres in the Chinese province of Guangxi between 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The official record from the 1983 investigation documents 89,810 abnormal deaths and concluded that the total death toll exceeded 100,000 when accounting for undocumented cases and missing persons. Methods of murder included beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, and disembowelling.
In specific areas, including Wuxuan County and Wuming, Nanning, hundreds of incidents of human cannibalism occurred, even though no famine conditions existed. According to initial records available, at least 137 people were eaten, with thousands of people having participated in the cannibalism; subsequent published official archives showed at least 302 people were eaten. Independent researchers have since identified 421 named individuals in total who were eaten, with there having been reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi. Although the cannibalism was sponsored by local offices of the Communist Party and militia, no direct evidence suggests that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership including Mao Zedong endorsed the cannibalism or even knew of it. However, some scholars have pointed out that Wuxuan County, through internal channels, had notified the central leadership about the cannibalism in 1968.
After the Cultural Revolution, people who were involved in the massacre or cannibalism received legal punishments during the Boluan Fanzheng period. In Wuxuan County, where at least 38 people were eaten, fifteen participants were prosecuted, receiving up to 14 years in prison, while ninety-one members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were expelled from the party and thirty-nine non-party officials were either demoted or had a salary cut.
Historical background
In May 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution. Starting from March 1967, two factions gradually formed among troops and civilians in Guangxi. One faction known as the "United Headquarters" (Chinese: "联指", lianzhi) unconditionally supported the leadership of Wei Guoqing, who was the First Secretary of the CPC Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Committee, the Chairman of Guangxi Zhuang Autonoumous Region, and the First Political Commissar of the Guangzhou Military Region and First Political Commissar of the Guangxi Military Region of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), while the other faction known as the "4.22" (Chinese: "四·二二", si.erer) opposed such unconditional support, asking Wei to do self-criticism first. The "United Headquarters" was an example of the conservative faction while the "4.22" was an example of the rebel faction. Intense clashes including "violent struggles" and even massacres soon broke out between the two factions in rural regions of Guangxi.
Even though the rebel faction "4.22" received endorsement from China's Premier Zhou Enlai in August 1967, it was at a disadvantage throughout Guangxi except in the city of Guilin because the local military leaders endorsed the conservative faction, the "United Headquarters". In February 1968, Guangzhou Military Region ordered the troops who supported "4.22" to dislocate from the region, and subsequently in April 1968, Huang Yongsheng, head of the Guangzhou Military Region at the time, declared that the "4.22" faction was a "reactionary organization" and launched massive suppression against the rebel faction (at the same time, a closely related massacre also took place in the nearby province of Guangdong).
The massacre
Stages of killings
According to Yan Lebin (晏乐斌), a member of the Ministry of Public Security who participated in the official investigations of the Guangxi Massacre after the Cultural Revolution, there were three stages of the massacre.
- The first stage of the massacre mostly took place in the rural areas of Guangxi between the fall of 1967 and the spring of 1968. Most of the victims at this stage were members of the Five Black Categories and their families, including many who supported the "4.22" faction (the rebel faction).
- The second stage of the massacre took place in the spring and summer of 1968 when most counties in Guangxi had established their revolutionary committees. Most of the massive killings at this stage were organized by revolutionary committees and local People's Armed Departments, targeting members of the "4.22" faction, their supporters, and politically stigmatized households in rural areas.
- The third stage of the massacre took place in the summer of 1968, during which massive killings had spread from rural regions to cities in Guangxi. In particular, in July and August 1968, a large number of troops from the Guangzhou Military Region together with members of the "United Headquarters" (the conservative faction) attacked major cities such as Nanning and Guilin, which were under control of the "4.22" faction. Tens of thousands of people were killed or executed.
Methods of killings
In the massacre, methods of slaughter included "beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, group slaughters, disemboweling, digging out hearts, livers, genitals, slicing off flesh, blowing up with dynamite, and more". In one case, according to official records, a person had dynamite bound to the back and was blown up into pieces by other people (so called "heavenly maiden scattering flowers", 天女散花)—just for fun. This crime was led by Cen Guorong (岑国荣), who was once the Director of the Trade Union of Guangxi and had served as a representative in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh National Congresses of the Chinese Communist Party.
In another case of 1968, "a geography instructor named Wu Shufang (吴树芳) was beaten to death by students at Wuxuan Middle School. Her body was carried to the flat stones of the Qian River where another teacher was forced at gunpoint to rip out the heart and liver. Back at the school the pupils barbecued and consumed the organs."
Death toll
Beginning 1981, at least three investigation teams were sent to Guangxi by CCP leaders in Beijing, including Hu Yaobang (then the Chairman and Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the CPC) and Xi Zhongxun (then the Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPC). In a span of approximately five years, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was re-organized and over 100,000 local officials were tasked with investigating and resolving the remaining issues from the Cultural Revolution. Between 1986 and 1988, the Guangxi CCP Regional Committee composed the Archives about the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi, which were later published as the Secret Archives about the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi in the United States in 2016 (and its Supplement in 2017).
First investigation group
In April 1981, an investigation group of over 20 people was formed under the arrangement of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party, the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate.
In June 1981, the investigation concluded that the death toll was over 100,000, while some officials and civilians claimed privately that the death toll was 150,000, 200,000 or even 500,000. In addition, Qiao Xiaoguang reported to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that the death toll was 70,400.
Second investigation group
In March 1983, another investigation group of 40 people was formed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The group were led by Li Rui (then the Executive Vice Minister of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee), Zhou Yifeng (周一峰) (then a member of the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CPC and the Executive Vice Governor of Jiangsu Province) and other senior officials from the CCP central leadership.
In January 1984, a second investigation documented a total of 89,810 abnormal deaths, with the investigators also counting nearly 20,000 missing persons whose deaths could not be documented, leading them to the conclusion that the actual death toll exceeded 100,000. In particular, due to the violent struggles between the two opposing factions, 3,700 people died during direct fighting, 7,000 were persecuted to death, while 79,000 were beaten or shot to death in a planned and systematic matter. In Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, eight out of fourteen counties saw a death toll of over 1,000, with Binyang County alone losing 3,777 people.
Academic studies
In 2006, Su Yang (苏阳) of University of California, Irvine, argued that the Guangxi massacre was the most serious massacre during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He stated that among the 65 accessible official county documents of Guangxi, 43 counties report local massacres with 15 of them recording a death toll of over 1,000, while the average death toll was 526 among all the counties which reported massacre. Moreover, Song Yongyi pointed out that there were many differences between published official data and classified official data. For example, the published county annals of Lingshan County shows only eight people died, but in its classified document there were 3,220 victims; for another example, the published document from Binyang County shows 37 victims only, compared to 3,951 victims in its classified document.
In his 2002 book Massacres during the Cultural Revolution, Song argued that most Cultural Revolution massacres were the action of "state apparatuses", or the direct slaughter by the regime towards its citizens. However, in his award-winning 2021 book Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution, Su proposed the "community model" to explain the massacre in Guangxi, challenging the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings.
Sociologist Andrew G. Walder describes the Guangxi events as a "regional civil war". Based on extensive archival investigations, he argues that the exceptionally high death toll was not simply the result of spontaneous collective violence. Instead, it stemmed from an organized campaign in which local militia forces, operating within a broader military command structure, were mobilized to suppress rival factions. Their violence also targeted many civilians associated with politically stigmatized social groups. For Walder, the military command system, closely intertwined with civilian party and government organizations, played a decisive role in guiding and amplifying local violence. He stresses the influence of state and military organizations, comparing the events with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 and arguing that they cannot be explained as chiefly due to local, rural social dynamics.
Mass cannibalism
Official investigation
Human cannibalism occurred in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. It was reported from multiple locations, with cases documented for dozens of counties. In some areas, such as Wuxuan County, a particularly high number of victims were subjected to post-mortem mutilation and consumption. These incidents were typically associated with organized episodes of mass violence rather than conditions of food scarcity. Documents record a variety of forms of cannibalism, including eating people as an after-dinner snack, slicing off the meat in big parties, dividing up the flesh so each person could take a large chunk home, and barbecuing or roasting the liver.
In 2016 and 2017, official archives were published, which contain details about the massacres and cannibalism; the archives show that at least 302 people were eaten, and tens of thousands of other people participated in the cannibalism. Independent researchers have since identified 421 named individuals in total who were eaten across dozens of counties in Guangxi. According to Yan Lebin (晏乐斌), a member of the Ministry of Public Security who was part of the official investigation teams in the 1980s:
In 1968, 38 people in Wuxuan County were eaten, and 113 officials of the county participated in eating human flesh, hearts and livers. Chen Guorong, a peasant from Guigang County who happened to pass by Wuxuan, was caught and killed by local militia because he was fat; his heart and liver were taken out while his flesh was distributed to 20 people. A female militia leader ate 6 human livers in total, and cut the genitals of 5 men and soaked them in alcohol which she would drink later, claiming that these organs were beneficial to her health. The behavior of eating human flesh, hearts and livers occurred in many counties of Guangxi including Wuxuan, Wuming, Shangsi, Guigang, Qinzhou, Guiping, and Lingyun ... After the revolutionary committee was established in Shangsi County, a "killing conference" was held at Pingshan Square (平山广场) on September 1, 1968, during which more than 10 officials and civilians were beaten to death. After the conference, a committee member, Li Hao (黎郝), removed the hearts and livers from the corpses, sauteing them and preparing them as dishes for other representatives who attended the conference.
Academic studies
According to Song Yongyi, a Chinese historian who works at the California State University, Los Angeles: