The Cultural Revolution } 273
not been criticized by Red Guard rebels in the Cairo embassy. In Beijing, the
recalled diplomatic personnel from each country were assigned a room in a
single building where they conducted criticism and self-criticism. Individuals
vied in exposing one another’s ideological shortcomings, bourgeois habits,
and backsliding. Once they completed this course, many were dispatched
to cadre schools in the countryside, where most remained for several years
doing farm work.
Red Guard organizations seized power in the MFA for about two weeks in
August 1967. It began with a talk on August 7 by senior Maoist leader Wang
Li to leaders of the foreign affairs system’s “revolutionary core” and Yao
Dengshan. Wang was former deputy head of the CCP’s International Liaison
Department and thus a former subordinate of Kang Sheng. As noted earlier,
Yao had played a militant role in Indonesia in 1967. Wang Li was a member
of the central Maoist leadership group and in that capacity had played a role
in dealing with a mutiny by regional military forces at Wuhan the previous
month. In his talk with MFA Red Guard leaders, Wang criticized the rebels
for being too lenient with conservative groups in the MFA, stated that the
“seizure of power” over the MFA in January was incomplete, and urged the
radicals to take control over ministry administrative and personnel matters.
Wang also stated that both Mao and Zhou had said that he, Wang, should take
charge of foreign affairs. A week after Wang’s talk, Red Guard radicals seized
control of the MFA, including its personnel department. They developed a
reorganization plan which they submitted to Zhou Enlai for approval. Zhou
rejected it. Meanwhile, several posters appeared around Beijing proclaim-
ing: “Firm demand that Yao Dengshan should become foreign minister.” In
fact, Ji Pengfei rather than Yao had been appointed acting foreign minister.
But the posters endorsing Yao were read by foreign journalists, leading to
what some scholars called the “international fiction” that Yao assumed that
status during the Red Guard seizure of the MFA.^18 It was, however, during the
brief period of Red Guard control of the MFA that the British mission was
burned and British diplomats brutalized.
By August, Mao was increasingly concerned by reports of military clashes
in the provinces. In an effort to restore greater stability, Mao authorized the
arrest of Wang Li, calling Wang’s August 7 talk a “poisonous weed.” The
Maoists thus lost several of their most radical members. Zhou, with Mao’s
support, also moved to oust the radical Red Guards from the MFA and
empower conservative Red Guards to restore regular diplomatic activity. Late
in 1967, the MFA was put under a new committee composed of conservative
Red Guard diplomatic personnel, but headed by Mao’s grand-niece, Wang
Hairong, who was one of a very few people who had direct contact with Mao.
Once this new committee was in place, the purge of MFA radicals, includ-
ing Yao Dengshan, began. During the upheaval of 1967, very little time and
energy were devoted by the MFA to the routines of diplomacy. The number