Red banners, red flags, red carpets. The people in the Great Hall appear to be red beings themselves. If you lift your head, you can see the meeting is commemorating the centenary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. The characters written aloft are so grand yet so false that they invite derision.

For at this very moment, on so-called ‘red’ youth day, six progressive students of Peking University are in detention for no reason.

In the commemoration conference, they are singing, ‘The mission of national rejuvenation will be accomplished in struggle.’ On the banners overhead, the slogans read: ‘Strive to write the magnificent contribution of youth to the realization of the China dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ The young people sitting in their seats are listening intently, noting down in frenzied fashion every word of the General Secretary.

Yet just two days ago, students on Peking University campus were pushed down to the ground, hands held behind their back, dragged into police cars, kicked and beaten.

Just yesterday, the sun of eight or nine in the morning witnessed the disappearance of six students.footnote¹ The last sound from them was their voices telephoning their parents, crying: ‘Bad news, I’ve been arrested.’

They are not law-breaking criminals. All they did was remain loyal to Marxism, seeking to commit their youth to the cause of workers, as the centenary of May Fourth and the international labour day of May First approached.

It is bright and spacious inside the Great Hall, and people there are dressed very respectably, entranced by the repeated words, ‘Youth, time, commitment’. Outside, however, no ‘movement’ is allowed. On pain of otherwise incurring the incriminating pretext of ‘disturbing public order’, all that is permitted is watching sports.