[1][7] In specific areas, including Wuxuan County and Wuming, Nanning, hundreds of incidents of human cannibalism occurred—even though no famine conditions existed.

[10][11] Independent researchers have since identified 421 named individuals in total who were eaten, with there having been reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi.

[10] After the Cultural Revolution, people who were involved in the massacre or cannibalism received legal punishments during the Boluan Fanzheng period.

[1][7] In one case, according to official records, a person had dynamite bound to the back and was blown up into pieces by other people (天女散花)—just for fun.

[1] This crime was led by Cen Guorong (岑国荣), who was once the Director of the Trade Union of Guangxi and had served as a representative in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh National Congresses of the Chinese Communist Party.

[1] In another case of 1968, "a geography instructor named Wu Shufang (吴树芳) was beaten to death by students at Wuxuan Middle School.

Her body was carried to the flat stones of the Qian River where another teacher was forced at gunpoint to rip out the heart and liver.

[1][15][16][17][18] The investigation teams were led by Li Rui, Zhou Yifeng (周一峰) and other senior officials from the CCP central leadership.

[1][18] In a span of approximately five years, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was re-organized and over 100,000 local officials were tasked with investigating and resolving the remaining issues from the Cultural Revolution.

According to Zheng Yi, a notable Chinese writer who conducted detailed research on the topic in the late 1980s and later smuggled some copies of official documents to the United States, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and thousands of people participated in the cannibalism.

[1][3][4][6][5][9] Documents also record a variety of forms of cannibalism, including eating people as an after-dinner snack, slicing off the meat in big parties, dividing up the flesh so each person could take a large chunk home, barbecuing or roasting the liver, and so on.

Chen Guorong, a peasant from Guigang County who happened to pass by Wuxuan, was caught and killed by local militia because he was fat; his heart and liver were taken out while his flesh was distributed to 20 people.

A female militia leader ate 6 human livers in total, and cut the genitals of 5 men and soaked them in alcohol which she would drink later, claiming that these organs were beneficial to her health.

The behavior of eating human flesh, hearts and livers occurred in many counties of Guangxi including Wuxuan, Wuming, Shangsi, Guigang, Qinzhou, Guiping, and Lingyun ... After the revolutionary committee was established in Shangsi County, a "killing conference" was held at Pingshan Square (平山广场) on September 1, 1968, during which more than 10 officials and civilians were beaten to death.

According to Song Yongyi, a Chinese historian who works at the California State University, Los Angeles:[3][6][9][24]Independent researchers in Guangxi counted a total of 421 people who were eaten.

Leaders feasted on the heart and liver, mixed with pork, while ordinary villagers were allowed only to peck at the victims' arms and thighs.

"[7][28] At the same time, a high-ranking member of an early 1980s official investigation told AFP that "[a]ll the cannibalism was due to class struggle being whipped up and was used to express a kind of hatred.

An off-duty local clerk spoke airily of the killings and the cannibalism—obligingly writing down his name and address when asked—and added with a touch of pride, "In Wuxuan ... we ate more people than anywhere else in China"....[4]In 2001, sinologist Perry Link of Princeton University likewise stated that he considered the descriptions credible: "I believe Zheng's story [of cannibalism].

"[12] Key Ray Chong, a professor of history at Texas Tech University,[35] compared the massacre with other events of mass murder and genocide, writing in 1997 in his review of Zheng Yi's Scarlet Memorial: "During the Cultural Revolution, quite a few Chinese officials knew of this horror, the equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s and the killing fields of Pol Pot in the 1970s.