Kuai Dafu

Kuai Dafu ( Chinese: 蒯大富, born 13 September 1945) is a Chinese former Red Guard who played a key role as a student leader in the earliest stages of the Cultural Revolution.

Biography

Cultural Revolution

Active from 1966 onwards, Kuai led the ''Jinggangshan'' ("Headquarters") faction of the Red Guards at Tsinghua University, where he pursued a degree in chemical engineering. This group wanted to maintain the independence of the Red Guards from the central government. Kuai, alongside and other student leaders, virulently resisted the "work teams" which Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping had sent to the campuses to restore order and suppress or co-opt the student movement. Liu's wife Wang Guangmei participated in the work teams and personally clashed with Kuai in July 1966. However, Mao subsequently voiced support to Kuai and "made him a vanguard of the Cultural Revolution famous throughout the country."

On April 10, 1967, the ''Jinggangshan'' – now supported by the central authorities and the People's Liberation Army – organised an on-campus struggle session where more than 300 alleged " revisionists" (including Wang Guangmei) were publicly humiliated. On July 27, 1968, a work team arriving at Tsinghua University was fought off with shots and stones on orders of Kuai, killing five members and injuring many more. The next day, Kuai and other student leaders including Nie Yuanzi were harshly reprimanded for their behaviour by Mao Zedong in the Great Hall of the People. When Kuai complained that a "black hand" was trying to suppress the student movement, Mao mockingly replied that he himself was this "black hand".

According to Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, the clash between Kuai and Wang Guangmei "was eventually to become part of Red Guard lore and to be immortalized in novels and on the stage, even in the West".

Imprisonment and later life

In 1970, after falling out of grace with Jiang Qing, Kuai was imprisoned alongside Han Aijing. He was tried and convicted to a seventeen-year prison sentence in 1983. Kuai and Han went on to share a prison cell with activist Wei Jingsheng.

Similarly to other student leaders from the Cultural Revolution, Kuai was pressured by the post-Mao governments of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to remain discrete about their past as Red Guards and "not to say anything that is ‘sensitive’". He reportedly pursued a business career in Shenzhen.

See also

* History of Tsinghua University
* Red August

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuai, Dafu
1945 births
Living people
People of the Cultural Revolution
Red Guards