orders during the summer (including the Wuhan incident), the aftermath of these resulted in even more violence amongst the Red Guards, even targeting local level PLA formations, raising fears of a repeat of the Wuhan events and other similar ones. The PLA violently put down the national Red Guard movement in the year that followed, with the suppression often brutal. A radical alliance of Red Guard groups in Hunan province, called the Shengwulian, was involved in clashes with local PLA units, for example, and in the first half of 1968 was forcibly suppressed. At the same time the PLA carried out mass executions of Red Guards in Guangxi province that were unprecedented in the Cultural Revolution. The final remnants of the movement were defeated in Beijing in the summer of 1968. Reportedly, in an audience of the Red Guard leaders with Mao, the Chairman informed them gently of the end of the movement with a tear in his eye. The repression of the students by the PLA was not as gentle. After the summer of 1968 some more-radical students continued to travel across China and play an unofficial part in the Cultural Revolution, but by then the movement's official and substantial role was over. Rustication From 1962 to 1979, 16 to 18 million youths were sent to the countryside to undergo re-education.Bramall, Chris. Industrialization of Rural China, p. 148. Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2007. . Sending city students to the countryside was also used to defuse the student fanaticism set in motion by the Red Guards. On 22 December 1968, Chairman Mao directed the People's Daily to publish a piece entitled "We too have two hands, let us not laze about in the city", which quoted Mao as saying "The intellectual youth must go to the country, and be educated from living in rural poverty." In 1969 many youths were rusticated. Monuments Due to the sensitive nature of this part of Chinese history, most Red Guard cemeteries were demolished prior to 2007. The Red Guard Cemetery in People's Park (人民公园) in Shapingba District, Chongqing commemorates a group of the Red Guard called the 815. In December 2009 that cemetery was made the first Cultural Revolution relic to be formally recognized for its cultural heritage site. Historiography The Red Guards and the wider Cultural Revolution are a sensitive and heavily censored chapter in the historiography of China. Official government mentions of