The Formation of Militia Forces in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution

Following the unleashing of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Tibet became the target of the social campaign to rekindle the revolutionary fervor. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made the mobilization of Tibetan people part of its mass line policy to fulfill its revolutionary agenda, as they did routinely by recruiting Tibetan youth into Communist-affiliated militia forces. This article examines the role of the Tibetan militia during the Cultural Revolution. When the Communists enlarged their military and political influence in Tibet from the early 1950s, they encountered an already-militarized local society. Militia forces proliferated in the late Qing and Republican China as a form of collective self-defense in the midst of widespread social violence. After the Tibetan Rebellion of 1959, the Communist government suppressed and integrated armed individuals and groups. In seeking to integrate the popular forces, the CCP found the means to turn militia in Tibet to their own agenda and bring them under control. Local Communist cadres organized loyal Tibetans into the militia and armed them with confiscated guns. In the first few years of the Cultural Revolution, militia in Tibet, together with the Red Guards, developed and implemented attacks on “class enemies” and “Four Olds.” When the violent struggles across Tibet escalated significantly in 1967, the function of the militia changed to providing security and quelling the armed struggles. The guns equipped by militiamen and militiawomen were viewed as symbols of loyalty to the CCP. Based on archival materials and eye-witness accounts, this article explores the dynamic role of the militia in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. It suggests the ways in which militia could be mobilized to provide services to local Tibetan communities and served as useful extensions of state power.