The following comment piece praising the Red Guards appeared in both Red Flag and the Peking Review in September 1966:

“The revolutionary people throughout China are now vying with each other in praising the Red Guards.

The revolutionary initiative of the Red guards has shaken the whole world. The Red Guards are something new that has emerged in the tempest of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution…

The Red Guards have been nurtured in their growth by Mao Zedong Thought. The Red Guards say, and say it well, “Chairman Mao is our red commander and we are the young red soldiers of Chairman Mao”.

What our Red Guards love most of all is to read Chairman Mao’s works and follow his teachings, and their love for Mao Zedong Thought is most ardent. They carry with them copies of ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong’. They take as their highest obligation the study, dissemination and defence of Mao Zedong Thought…

Coming out of their schools and into the streets, the tens of millions of Red Guards have formed an irresistible revolutionary torrent. Holding aloft the red banner of the invincible thought of Mao Zedong and displaying the proletarian revolutionary spirit of daring to think, to speak, to act, to break through and rise up in revolution, they are cleaning up the muck left over by the old society and sweeping away the rubbish accumulated over thousands of years of history.

The Red Guards have done many good things and put forward many good suggestions… The Red Guards are the shock force of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.”