[5][6][7] On August 18, 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong met with Song Binbin, a leader of the Red Guards, atop Tiananmen.

[8][9] This event instigated a wave of violence and mass killings in the city by the Red Guards, who also started a campaign to destroy the "Four Olds".

[1][10][21][22][23] It has also been compared with Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht,[24][25][26][27][28][29] as well as with the Nanjing Massacre conducted by the Japanese military during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

[27][28][29][30][31] With the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, the Soviet Union ridiculed and criticized Mao's Cultural Revolution fiercely,[32][33] and some publications in USSR and Eastern Bloc also compared Mao meeting Red Guards on Tiananmen to Adolf Hitler giving speeches to his supporters.

On August 18, 1966, Mao Zedong met with Song Binbin, a leader of the Red Guards, atop Tiananmen of Beijing.

[1][9] In particular, on August 25, 1966, thousands of Red Guards started a week-long massacre in Langan Market (榄杆市) of the Chongwen District.

[4][10] On August 22, 1966, Mao approved a document from the Ministry of Public Security, ordering "do not use police force—no exception—to intervene or suppress the movement of revolutionary students".

Let the imperialists make a scandal about us.On August 26, Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Ministry of Public Security, also ordered to protect the Red Guards and not arrest them, claiming that it was not incorrect for the Red Guards to beat "bad people" and it was fine if the "bad people" were killed.

[18][20] On September 5, People's Daily published an article (用文斗, 不用武斗) calling for an end to the violent combat and massacres.

[40] Nevertheless, millions of Red Guards continued to arrive in Beijing to see Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square on several occasions, including September 15, October 1 and so on.