In the chaotic days of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, millions of youthful Red Guards were unleashed by Mao Tse-tung to scrub China clean of prerevolutionary ideas. Instead, the Red Guards nearly wrecked the country, and had to be suppressed by the army. Now Mao is turning to youth again. Apparently the Chairman feels that its energyif carefully controlled by party cadrescan spur the dragging campaign to rid China of revisionist "poison" spread by Lin Piao, Mao's former heir apparent.
The new shock troops will be drawn from the Communist Youth League, which was virtually destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but is...