 Zhou gave his backing to the establishment of radical Red Guard organizations in October 1966 and joined Chen Boda and Jiang Qing against what they considered "leftist" and "rightist" Red Guard factions.This opened the way for attacks on Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Tao Zhu in December 1966 and January 1967.By September 1968, Zhou candidly described his strategy for political survival to Japanese LDP parliamentarians visiting Beijing