Artist: N/A
Year: 29 September 1967
Publisher: Fifteenth of August Editorial Department
Size (mm): 536x392
Condition: very good, yellowed newsprint, cover, folded centre as issued, creasing to centre fold
Cover sheet of the first issue of the tabloid newspaper bayiwu zhanbi. The date included in the publication's masthead refers to the Japanese surrender in World War Two on the fifteenth of August, 1945. Zhanbi is a kind of calligraphy and art characterised by a trembling line; the term was likely used here because the first character also means battle or war and would fit with the courageous image the publication was hoping to convey.
The headline in red on the right-hand front page reads: jingen Mao Zhuxi de weida zhanlve bushu fenyongqianjin! (Follow closely as Chairman Mao's mighty strategic plan forges ahead courageously!)
Headline at bottom of right-hand front page reads: wuchan jieji geming pai da lianhe wansui! (Long live the great unity of the Socialist Revolution faction!)
The two cartoons on the verso of the sheet are ridiculing Tao Zhu, who in 1966 ranked fourth in the central party leadership of China. Eventually falling out of favour with the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, to which he acted as advisor, Tao was attacked in a speech by Jiang Qing in January 1967, with Mao following suit a few days later. Dismissed from his position, Tao was labelled as a 'counter-revolutionary two-face' and 'traitor', among other terms, and became the highest ranking party leader to be officially denounced at the time. Physically and mentally abused in various 'struggle sessions', he became ill and died in November 1969. His name was cleared in 1978.
