The Guangxi Massacre: Cannibalism in the Chaos of the Cultural Revolution

Published on 8 July 2025 at 11:30

📖 Historical Context

Between 1967 and 1968, during China’s Cultural Revolution, Guangxi Province became the scene of horrific violence. As factions within the Communist Party fractured into the conservative “United Headquarters” and rebel “4.22” factions, intense ideological—and often personal—violence erupted across rural areas  .

Estimates suggest anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 people were killed—some studies even cite a death toll reaching 500,000 (). But the darkest horror lurks in the details that followed the initial massacres.

🩸Cannibalism Fueled by Ideology

In towns like Wuxuan and Wuming, hundreds of people were not just brutally killed—they were eaten. Official documents list at least 302 identified victims, though independent researchers compiled a list of 421 named individuals consumed. The acts were ideologically driven, not borne of starvation. Victims were labeled “class enemies”—landlords, intellectuals, counter-revolutionaries. Cannibalism was sometimes publicly sanctioned by factional leaders and even local Party officials. 

🔪 How the Cannibalism Escalated

Wuxuan County saw the earliest and most intense violence:

  1. Phase 1: Secretly removed organs from corpses.
  2. Phase 2: Flesh consumption became more mainstream.
  3. Phase 3: Mass participation—those uninvolved in the killing began eating the flesh, often organs like livers and hearts.

Zheng Yi’s Scarlet Memorial, chronicling his interviews with perpetrators and officials, gives chilling testimony: one man described cutting out a victim’s heart and liver, cooling it, and distributing it to villagers.

Even school students participated. One geography teacher was beaten to death, her heart forcefully removed and barbecued with students consuming it.

🏛 Cover-up and Accountability

Once Premier Zhou Enlai learned of the atrocities, military forces were dispatched to halt them in July 1968.

From 1981–1988, the CCP conducted investigations, compiling an 18-volume archive documenting massacres and cannibalism throughout Guangxi.

But justice was delayed and limited:

  • 34 offenders were later tried, receiving prison sentences of 2–14 years.
  • Some senior officials faced demotions or had their Party memberships revoked—but reverers of radical ideals often remained untouched.

📚 Legacy & Modern Reckoning

While Zheng Yi’s investigative work broke the silence via Scarlet Memorial in 1993, it wasn’t until recently that some acknowledgment reached the public.

In 1996, The Washington Post noted that these events had been reported “through internal Party channels”  .

Still, in November 2024, controversy hit again when Wei Guoqing—the former Guangxi regional leader at the time—was given a full-honors burial. He’s widely remembered as complicit in authorizing factional violence, including cannibalism.

🧠 Why This Matters

This massacre exposes how ideological zeal, dehumanization, and political chaos can override fundamental human taboos. It wasn’t survival—it was traumatically calculated violence wrapped in revolutionary fervor. 

In Wuxuan and beyond, even children participated, teachers were butchered, livers roasted—it wasn’t hidden or random. It was symbolic, ritualistic, affirming power over “class enemies” through cannibalism.

 

🎙️ Further Listening & Reading

🖊️ My Thoughts

Writing this makes me ache with disbelief—and sorrow. The horrifying scale, the systematic nature, the ease with which neighbors turned into executioners… it’s chilling. What happened in Guangxi is more than a breakdown of morality—it’s a catastrophic collapse of humanity under ideological pressure.

  • Ritualized horror: This wasn’t desperation during famine. It was violence masquerading as revolutionary purification, publicly endorsed and celebrated by those wielding power.
  • Children as perpetrators: The involvement of young students, participating in cannibalism, speaks to the erasure of moral boundaries when ideology becomes absolute.
  • Silence and partial accountability: Even decades later, many perpetrators walked free or were minimally punished. Some architects of the carnage were honored in 2024. It makes me question: how do we reckon with collective trauma when official memory erases it?

 

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