The Cultural Revolution

1966–1976

Mao Zedong's decade-long campaign to purge the Chinese Communist Party and remake Chinese society

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 to reassert his authority after the failure of the Great Leap Forward and to root out what he called revisionism and the "four olds" of custom, culture, habit and idea. Students formed Red Guard units that denounced teachers and officials, ransacked temples and libraries, and staged mass struggle sessions; senior leaders including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were purged, schools and universities closed, and millions of urban young people were sent to the countryside. Mao used the army to restrain the factional violence he had unleashed, and his designated successor Lin Biao died in an air crash in 1971 while apparently fleeing to the Soviet Union. The campaign ended only with Mao's death in September 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four weeks later; in 1981 the Party's own resolution judged it responsible for the gravest setback suffered by the country since 1949.

How to spot them

▸A campaign against the 'four olds', waged by teenagers in armbands carrying a small red book
▸A big-character poster by the Chairman himself, headed 'Bombard the Headquarters'
▸A quartet of leaders, one of them the Chairman's widow, tried in 1980–81
▸A designated successor written into the party constitution who dies in a plane crash over Mongolia
▸A decade the Party itself later called ten years of turmoil

What happened

The 1965 newspaper attack on a play about a Ming official dismissed by the emperor, taken as the opening shot (1965)

Yao Wenyuan's critique of Wu Han's play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, published in Shanghai in November 1965.

The Party circular of 16 May 1966 setting up a small group under Chen Boda to lead the campaign (1966)

The May 16 Notification, conventionally the formal start; it created the Central Cultural Revolution Group.

Mao's own big-character poster of August 1966, four words telling students to attack the party leadership (1966)

"Bombard the Headquarters" — a signal that Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were the targets.

Rallies of a million students in Tiananmen Square from August 1966, the Chairman wearing their armband (1966)

Eight Red Guard rallies between August and November 1966; Mao reviewed some eleven million young people.

The anthology of quotations compiled by the defence minister, bound in red vinyl and printed in the billions (1964)

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the Little Red Book, compiled under Lin Biao.

The crash of a Trident in Mongolia in September 1971 carrying the Chairman's designated successor (1971)

Lin Biao died at Öndörkhaan, apparently fleeing after the failure of an alleged plot.

The policy that sent some seventeen million urban school-leavers to labour in villages (1968)

The Down to the Countryside Movement — the 'sent-down youth' generation.

The arrest in October 1976 of Jiang Qing and three Shanghai allies, weeks after the Chairman's death (1976)

The fall of the Gang of Four, taken as the end of the campaign; they were tried in 1980–81.

Key ideas

Continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat — Mao's claim that class struggle persists after socialism is established
Destroy the 'four olds': old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas
'To rebel is justified' — the slogan that licensed students against their own institutions

Quick-fire facts

•The campaign is conventionally dated from the May 16 Notification of 1966 to Mao's death on 9 September 1976
•Liu Shaoqi, head of state and once Mao's heir apparent, was purged as 'China's Khrushchev' and died in detention at Kaifeng in 1969
•Deng Xiaoping was purged twice, in 1966 and again in 1976, and returned to power after 1977
•Lin Biao was named in the 1969 party constitution as Mao's successor, and died in a plane crash on 13 September 1971
•The Gang of Four were Jiang Qing (Mao's wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen
•Jiang Qing promoted a handful of approved 'model operas' that dominated the stage for years
•The People's Liberation Army under Lin Biao was used from 1967 to restore order between warring Red Guard factions
•Universities largely stopped admitting students by examination; the national college entrance examination was only restored in 1977
•The Party's 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party judged the Cultural Revolution to have caused the most severe setback and heaviest losses since the founding of the People's Republic

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Sources

Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals — Mao's Last Revolution
Frank Dikötter — The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976