In June 1969, Teng Haiqing, the short-tenured head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR), running afoul of shifting events and the changing disposition of power, made repeated self-criticisms and apologies for the excesses of a recent campaign against the Inner Mongolian People's Party (IMPP) in Inner Mongolia. The IMPP had ceased to exist in the late 1940s, but the witch hunt, which gathered pace in the IMAR during 1967–68, became one of the most sustained episodes of violence during China's Cultural Revolution. According to an official post–Cultural Revolution appraisal, the widespread killing, torture, and maiming of Mongols who were accused of being members or supporters of a supposedly secretly reactivated “new” IMPP during this period resulted in the deaths of more than 16,000 and the injuring of more than 340,000 people.
The history of this episode has been examined in other studies, most notably W....
