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“The relationship between the rebel faction and the military and civilian bureaucratic cliques followed roughly the same pattern throughout the country, with the masses rebelling against the bureaucratic clique, followed by the bureaucratic clique's suppression of the rebels, and Mao alternatively playing the two sides off each other until he died and the rebel faction was vanquished forever. Mainstream public opinion has blamed all the evils of the Cultural Evolution on the rebel faction, but the vast majority of victims died while the rebel faction was suppressed under the new order of military and administrative bureaucratic control. The revel faction was indeed savage and cruel when it had the upper hand, but these periods covered only two years of the Cultural Evolution, and those who suppressed the rebels during the other eight years were even more savage, while the rebels were more brutally purged after the Cultural Revolution. The number of rebel faction victims and the degree of their persecution vastly outweighed those of the power-holders and royalist faction, but they became the scapegoats of the cultural revolution.” — Yang Jisheng