“As a teenager radicalised by China’s Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing denounced his mother to the authorities. Two months later a firing squad shot her dead. Now after more than 40 years of mounting guilt, Zhang has ruffled the silence that cloaks China’s decade of turmoil with a public confession. ‘Red Guard’ youths abused their elders — officials, intellectuals, neighbours, relatives — dragging them into ‘struggle sessions’, ransacking their homes and driving some to suicide. Only a handful of public confessions have appeared, mostly in recent years as the Revolution’s once-heady teenagers enter their 60s.”
