What were struggle sessions?

Struggle sessions (批斗会, pīdòu huì) were public humiliation rituals in which the accused — teachers, intellectuals, party officials, or anyone denounced as 'counter-revolutionary' — were forced to stand before crowds, confess to fabricated crimes, and submit to verbal and physical abuse. Sessions could last hours or days. Many victims were beaten, tortured, forced to wear dunce caps, and paraded through streets. Hundreds of thousands committed suicide rather than endure continued sessions. They were the primary tool of political terror during the Cultural Revolution.

Cultural Revolution Explained: Causes, Timeline, Red Guards, Gang of Four and Mao’s China

Q: What was the Cultural Revolution?

The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a decade-long socio-political campaign launched by Mao Zedong to reassert his dominance over the Chinese Communist Party and eliminate rivals by mobilising youth militias (Red Guards) to purge 'counter-revolutionary' elements. It resulted in the persecution of millions, the destruction of cultural heritage, the collapse of education, and an estimated 500,000 to 2 million deaths (some estimates go much higher). It is considered one of the greatest man-made disasters in Chinese history.

Q: Who were the Red Guards?

The Red Guards were paramilitary units of Chinese students and young workers, typically aged 14–25, mobilised by Mao Zedong starting in 1966. Waving the Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao), they attacked teachers, intellectuals, party officials and anyone deemed insufficiently revolutionary. They destroyed temples, books, artworks and cultural relics in the campaign to eliminate the 'Four Olds.' Eventually becoming uncontrollable and factionally violent, they were disbanded and sent to rural re-education camps in 1968.

Q: What were the Four Olds?

The 'Four Olds' (四旧, Sì Jiù) were the targets of destruction during the Cultural Revolution: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. Red Guards rampaged through China destroying temples, monasteries, churches, mosques, ancestral shrines, classical books, artworks, antiques, and anything associated with traditional Chinese civilisation or foreign influence. The campaign caused irreplaceable destruction of China's cultural heritage — thousands of years of civilisation were targeted in a few years of ideological frenzy.

A complete visual guide to the Cultural Revolution designed for UPSC aspirants and students of world history. It is highly useful for AP World History, IB History, A-Level History, GCSE History, and university-level Asian or modern world history courses in the USA and Europe.

The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): Complete Academic Guide — Mao, Red Guards & China’s Decade of Terror | IASNOVA

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IASNOVA · World History ☭

The Cultural RevolutionMao’s Decade of Terror & China’s Self-Destruction

1966 ── 1976

How Mao Zedong weaponised an entire generation against his own people — destroying China’s culture, education and economy to preserve his absolute power.

Ten years. Millions persecuted. Priceless heritage erased. Schools shuttered for a decade. An entire civilisation turned against itself in the name of revolutionary purity.

Red Guards · 1966–1968 Four Olds Destruction Gang of Four Down to the Countryside Little Red Book

Background & Causes — The World Mao Feared

The Cultural Revolution did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the product of a specific political crisis — Mao Zedong’s loss of power within the Chinese Communist Party — and a deeper ideological conviction that the revolution itself was under threat from within. To understand the Cultural Revolution, one must understand both the man who launched it and the political landscape of China in the early 1960s.

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Mao’s Ideological Vision

Permanent Revolution & the Fear of “Revisionism”

Mao Zedong believed that a socialist revolution was not a one-time event but a continuous process — that unless the revolutionary spirit was constantly renewed, a new ruling class of bureaucrats and “revisionists” would emerge to betray the workers and peasants. He watched the Soviet Union under Khrushchev with horror, believing that “de-Stalinisation” represented a capitalist restoration. He was determined that China would not follow the same path.

Mao’s model was himself — a peasant warrior who had triumphed through will, courage and mass mobilisation against overwhelming odds. He distrusted experts, economists, intellectuals and technocrats who prioritised stability over revolutionary purity. By the early 1960s, the party apparatus was filled with such pragmatists — and they had the data on their side.

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China in 1965 — The Political Landscape

A Party Fractured Between Idealism & Pragmatism

By 1965, China had recovered from the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (1958–62) under the pragmatic leadership of Liu Shaoqi (State Chairman) and Deng Xiaoping (Party General Secretary). Their recovery policies — allowing peasant plots, tolerating private markets, rewarding expertise — worked economically but violated Maoist principles. Mao, officially still Party Chairman, had been effectively sidelined from day-to-day governance.

The Sino-Soviet Split (1960) had isolated China internationally. Taiwan remained under Nationalist control. The Vietnam War was escalating on China’s southern border. Internally, Mao perceived enemies everywhere — in the party, in the universities, in the arts. He was 72 years old, aware that time was running out to secure his revolutionary legacy.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–57) — The Preceding Trauma: Mao’s invitation to “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” encouraged Chinese intellectuals to criticise the party. When genuine, sometimes devastating criticism poured out, Mao abruptly reversed course. The subsequent “Anti-Rightist Campaign” sent an estimated 500,000 intellectuals to labour camps. The lesson was seared into China’s educated class: speaking truth was catastrophically dangerous. This precedent created the culture of fearful conformity that made the Cultural Revolution possible — and deadly.

The Great Leap Forward’s Shadow — The Crisis That Made the Revolution

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The Great Leap Forward (1958–1962)

The Disaster That Created the Cultural Revolution’s Political Conditions

The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to transform China from an agrarian economy into a socialist industrial powerhouse within years rather than decades. Peasants were collectivised into massive communes; steel production was assigned to backyard furnaces; agricultural targets were set at impossible levels. Officials, terrified of reporting failure, submitted wildly inflated production figures.

The result was the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961) — the deadliest famine in human history. Between 15 and 55 million people died (scholarly consensus centres around 30–45 million), primarily from starvation caused by food confiscations, mismanagement and ideological suppression of accurate reporting. China’s grain was exported for foreign exchange while peasants starved in the countryside.

At the Lushan Conference (1959), Defence Minister Peng Dehuai wrote Mao a private letter criticising the Great Leap. Mao’s response was to have Peng publicly denounced, removed and eventually imprisoned — sending a chilling message to every CCP leader: dissent from Mao was political suicide. When Liu Shaoqi told Mao at a party conference that “history will record the role you and I played” in the famine, the rupture was sealed.

15–55MDeaths in Great Leap Forward famine (1959–61)

500KIntellectuals sent to camps in Anti-Rightist Campaign

1962

Year Mao was effectively sidelined by Liu Shaoqi & Deng

1966Year Mao launched his comeback — the Cultural Revolution

Mao’s Calculation: Mao drew a stark conclusion from the Great Leap disaster and its aftermath: the party bureaucracy had turned against him and could not be trusted to preserve socialist revolution. His solution was audacious — he would go around the party entirely, mobilising the masses directly against the party apparatus. The Cultural Revolution was not, at its core, about culture. It was a political coup by a leader determined to destroy his rivals before they could destroy him.

The Launch of the Revolution (1966) — How a Newspaper Article Started a Decade of Terror

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The Spark — November 1965 to May 1966

From a Play’s Critique to a National Cataclysm

The official beginning traces to a November 1965 article by radical critic Yao Wenyuan — later one of the Gang of Four — attacking a historical play, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, written by Beijing Deputy Mayor Wu Han. The play depicted a just Ming Dynasty official dismissed by a corrupt emperor — widely understood as an allegory for Peng Dehuai’s dismissal by Mao. Yao’s attack, coordinated with Mao’s wife Jiang Qing in Shanghai, opened the ideological assault.

On 16 May 1966, Mao issued the “May 16th Circular” — a Central Committee document denouncing “representatives of the bourgeoisie” who had “sneaked into the party.” It called for a revolution to purge them. This date marks the official beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

On 25 May 1966, philosophy lecturer Nie Yuanzi posted a “big character poster” (大字报, dàzìbào) at Peking University denouncing university authorities as counter-revolutionaries. Mao ordered it broadcast nationally — an act of extraordinary significance. It was a signal to students across China: attack your superiors. The regime itself was authorising them to do so.

On 18 August 1966, Mao appeared before one million Red Guards at Tiananmen Square — receiving a red armband, the symbol of the Red Guards, from a student named Song Binbin. He would repeat this mass rally six more times before the year ended, receiving a total of 11–13 million Red Guards. The message was unmistakable: Mao himself was the supreme commander of this revolution. The party had to yield — or be destroyed.

Bombard the headquarters! My big character poster. The revolutionary masses must be aroused to expose the sinister anti-Party, anti-socialist black gang.

— Mao Zedong, “Bombard the Headquarters” (炮打司令部), August 1966 — the signal to attack the party establishment itself

1966–1967

Phase 1: Red Terror

Red Guards unleashed. Schools and universities closed. Four Olds campaign. Struggle sessions. Mass displacement of intellectuals. Chaos rapidly spreads beyond Mao’s control.

1967–1968

Phase 2: Factional War

Red Guard factions turn on each other. Armed clashes between rival revolutionary groups. Hundreds of thousands killed in factional fighting. Army deployed to restore order.

1969–1971

Phase 3: Consolidation

Lin Biao ascendant. Red Guards disbanded and sent to countryside. Revolutionary committees replace party structures. Sino-Soviet border war (1969). Cultural purge continues.

1972–1976

Phase 4: Late Revolution

Lin Biao’s mysterious death (1971). Nixon visits China (1972). Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping attempt moderate recovery. Gang of Four consolidates radical control until Mao’s death.

The Red Guards — Mao’s Children of Revolution

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The Red Guards (红卫兵, Hóng Wèibīng)

China’s student shock troops — teenage enforcers of revolutionary purity

The Red Guards were paramilitary units composed primarily of students aged 14–25, drawn from universities and secondary schools across China. Their creation was remarkable in world history: a head of state deliberately mobilising the youngest, most ideologically malleable segment of the population as a weapon against his own government. They received their authority directly from Mao, bypassing all other party structures.

Armed with the Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, 毛主席语录) — a collection of Mao’s aphorisms compiled by Lin Biao and distributed in editions exceeding one billion copies — Red Guards formed spontaneous militia units throughout China. They adopted military-style organisation, wore olive-green uniforms with red armbands, and classified themselves according to the purity of their class background.

Their activities were both terrifying and chaotic. They raided homes for “bourgeois” objects — books, artworks, musical instruments, jewellery. They invaded schools and universities, publicly humiliating and physically attacking teachers. They dragged elderly scholars into courtyards, forced them to kneel, and subjected them to hours of denunciation. They renamed streets, cities and even people — “Liberation Road,” “Red Guard Elementary School,” abandoning traditional names as counter-revolutionary.

Travel was free for Red Guards, who moved by train across China conducting “revolutionary exchanges.” Millions of young people — many of whom had never left their home provinces — criss-crossed the country, spreading revolutionary fervour and violence. The railway system was overwhelmed. Beijing’s population swelled by millions during peak rally periods.

By 1967–68, Red Guard factions had turned violently against each other — rival groups with competing interpretations of Maoist orthodoxy fought pitched battles with firearms, artillery and homemade weapons. The city of Wuhan saw open warfare between rival factions. Mao, alarmed that the forces he had unleashed were becoming uncontrollable, turned to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to restore order — and then sent the Red Guards to the countryside in 1968, dispersing them before they could become a fully independent threat.

The Little Red Book

Mao’s Sacred Scripture

Compiled by Lin Biao, the Quotations from Chairman Mao was printed in over one billion copies — the second most printed book in history after the Bible. Every Chinese citizen was expected to own and study it. Red Guards waved it at rallies, quoted it during struggle sessions, and recited it before eating meals. Failing to carry it was itself a crime. It transformed Mao into a quasi-religious figure whose words carried divine authority.

Big Character Posters

The Social Media of Terror

Dàzìbào (大字报) — hand-written wall posters — were the primary medium of the Cultural Revolution. Anyone could post a denunciation of anyone else. Schools, workplaces and public walls were covered in accusations. A single poster could destroy a life — the accused would be arrested, subjected to struggle sessions, lose their job and housing. The posters created an atmosphere of permanent, paranoid surveillance in which no relationship was safe and trust was impossible.

Class Background System

Revolutionary Purity Rankings

Chinese citizens were classified by family “class background” — a heritable designation based on what their ancestors did before 1949. “Red” backgrounds (poor peasants, workers, revolutionary soldiers) were privileged; “black” backgrounds (landlords, “rightists,” intellectuals) were persecuted regardless of the individual’s own views or actions. This system — entirely beyond personal control — determined education access, employment, marriage prospects and physical safety during the Cultural Revolution.

The Destruction of the Four Olds — Erasure of Chinese Civilisation

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破四旧 — Pò Sì Jiù — “Smash the Four Olds”

Old Customs · Old Culture · Old Habits · Old Ideas

Launched formally in August 1966, the campaign to destroy the “Four Olds” was the Cultural Revolution’s assault on Chinese civilisation itself. Red Guards were authorised — encouraged — to destroy anything associated with pre-revolutionary China: temples, monasteries, churches, mosques, shrines, classical literature, artworks, antiques, musical instruments, jewellery, and traditional customs.

The scale of destruction was staggering. In Tibet, over 6,000 monasteries were destroyed; sacred texts burned; monks and nuns forced to marry, work in factories, or subjected to public humiliation. The Confucian temple complex at Qufu — one of China’s most sacred sites — was attacked and thousands of artefacts destroyed. Gravestones were smashed because ancestor veneration was “feudal.” Even the names of streets, shops and people were changed — thousands of “Liberation Road”s and “Red Guard Boulevards” appeared overnight.

Private homes were raided systematically. Red Guards confiscated books, artworks, family heirlooms, foreign records, chess sets — anything deemed insufficiently proletarian. Owners who resisted were beaten. Many destroyed their own treasured possessions before Red Guards arrived, to avoid worse punishment. Libraries were purged; only approved Marxist-Leninist and Maoist texts survived. Beijing’s bookshops briefly stocked nothing but the Little Red Book.

Western music was banned. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dickens — all “bourgeois poison.” Chinese classical opera was suppressed; only the eight “model revolutionary operas” approved by Jiang Qing were permitted. Universities and schools were closed — beginning a six-year interruption of formal education from 1966 to 1972 for universities, with effects lasting even longer. An entire generation received no formal schooling during their formative years.

The Attack on Confucius: Confucianism — the ethical and social philosophy that had formed the foundation of Chinese civilisation for 2,500 years — was a particular target. Mao despised Confucian hierarchy, deference to authority and reverence for tradition. Red Guards attacked Confucian temples, burned the Analects, and smashed memorial tablets. In the “Criticise Lin, Criticise Confucius” campaign of 1973–74, even the ancient sage became a political weapon — invoked by the Gang of Four to attack Zhou Enlai (coded as “Confucius”) and rehabilitate Lin Biao (coded as the anti-Confucian Legalists). China’s deepest cultural roots were instrumentalised for factional politics.

Target	What Was Destroyed	Scale of Damage
Buddhist & Taoist Temples	Monasteries, shrines, sacred texts, religious art, monk communities	6,000+ Tibetan monasteries destroyed; thousands more nationwide
Confucian Heritage	Temples, ancestral halls, classical texts, memorial tablets, exam academies	Qufu temple complex severely damaged; Analects banned
Education System	Universities closed (1966–72), textbooks burned, curricula abolished	16+ million students lost 2–10 years of education; “Lost Generation”
Classical Arts	Traditional opera, calligraphy, painting, classical music, literature	Only 8 “model operas” permitted; art forms suppressed for decade
Christian & Islamic Sites	Churches, mosques, seminaries, foreign-linked religious institutions	All religious practice officially halted; clergy imprisoned or killed
Private Cultural Property	Books, artworks, antiques, musical instruments, family records	Millions of homes raided; countless irreplaceable items destroyed
Historical Names	Street names, city names, shop names, personal names changed	Thousands of locations renamed; traditional place-name heritage disrupted

Struggle Sessions & Political Terror — The Mechanics of Mass Persecution

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批斗会 — Pīdòu Huì — “Struggle Sessions”

Public humiliation as state policy — the primary instrument of political terror

A struggle session was a public ritual of denunciation and humiliation. The accused — a teacher, professor, party official, factory manager, artist, or anyone denounced by a neighbour or colleague — was brought before a mass meeting of their work unit, community or school. They were forced to stand in the “airplane position” (arms stretched behind the back, head forced down) while accusers read denunciations and the crowd hurled abuse and sometimes objects.

The accused was compelled to confess to invented crimes — harbouring bourgeois thought, sabotaging production, being a Nationalist spy, insulting Chairman Mao. The more elaborate and self-flagellating the confession, the better. Those who refused to confess, or whose confessions were deemed insufficient, faced prolonged sessions lasting hours or days, physical beatings, denial of food, and sleep deprivation.

The psychological effects were devastating and intended. Struggle sessions stripped victims of dignity, social relationships and self-respect. Colleagues and friends who remained silent during sessions — or who actively joined the denunciations — became complicit in the terror. Marriages were destroyed when spouses denounced each other to demonstrate revolutionary loyalty. Children denounced parents. The social fabric of trust was systematically dissolved.

Suicide became epidemic. Historians estimate that 100,000 to 500,000 people committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution — many choosing death during or after struggle sessions rather than endure further humiliation or implicate family members under torture. Among the most famous was Lao She, one of China’s greatest writers, who drowned himself in a Beijing lake on August 24, 1966, after a brutal struggle session. Historian Jian Bozan and sociologist Fei Xiaotong were among thousands of scholars destroyed by the process.

The “May 7th Cadre Schools”: Established following Mao’s “May 7th Directive” (1966), these were rural re-education camps to which party cadres, intellectuals, teachers and government officials were sent for “reform through labour.” Hundreds of thousands of China’s most educated and professionally skilled people — doctors, scientists, engineers, writers, professors — spent years shovelling pig manure, growing crops and attending Mao study sessions. The resulting brain drain from China’s professional and scientific institutions set back the country’s development by decades.

I confess that I am a counterrevolutionary revisionist, an enemy of the people. I am unworthy of the trust of the great Chairman Mao and the revolutionary masses…

— Typical forced confession extracted during a struggle session — repeated by millions of victims who had committed no crime

The Down to the Countryside Movement — China’s Lost Generation

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上山下乡运动 — Shàngshān Xiàxiāng Yùndòng

“Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages” · 1968–1980

By late 1968, the Red Guards had become a problem Mao could no longer ignore. Factions were fighting open warfare in Chinese cities. Industrial production was collapsing. The chaos was threatening Mao’s own hold on power. His solution was elegant and brutal: he would send the Red Guards to the countryside — ostensibly to “learn from the peasants,” actually to break them up as an organised political force.

On December 22, 1968, People’s Daily published Mao’s directive: “It is very necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants.” Within months, the movement became compulsory. An estimated 16 to 17 million young people — the children of China’s urban intellectual and working classes — were relocated to remote rural areas, often in the extreme north (Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Heilongjiang), the far northwest (Xinjiang, Gansu) and the deep south (Yunnan).

The conditions were harsh and often shocking for urban youth encountering rural poverty for the first time. Many were assigned to state farms where they performed brutal physical labour with little food and no educational activity. Young women faced particular dangers — sexual exploitation by rural officials who controlled access to the exit permits that could send them home. Many young people spent years or even a decade in the countryside, watching their educational and professional opportunities evaporate.

The movement created what Chinese sociologists call the “Lost Generation” (失落的一代, shīluò de yīdài) — an entire cohort, born roughly 1945–1960, whose formative years were consumed by revolutionary politics and whose education was either interrupted or entirely absent. When universities reopened in the 1970s and early 1980s, many “sent-down youth” in their late twenties and thirties competed desperately for places — the gap in their lives impossible to fully bridge.

16–17MUrban youth forcibly relocated to rural areas

10 yrsMaximum time some youth spent in countryside

6 yrsUniversities effectively closed (1966–1972)

1980Year the movement was officially discontinued

The Gang of Four — Radicalism’s Inner Court

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江青 — Jiang Qing (1914–1991)

Mao’s wife · The “White-Boned Demon”

A former Shanghai actress who married Mao in 1938, Jiang Qing had been kept largely out of politics until the Cultural Revolution. Her moment came in 1966 when she was appointed head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group — effectively the supreme authority over China’s cultural life. She enforced the ban on all art forms except the eight “model revolutionary operas” she personally approved. She pursued personal vendettas against colleagues who had snubbed her in her acting years. Brilliant, ruthless and paranoid, she was the Cultural Revolution’s most feared figure during its final phase. After Mao’s death, she reportedly said: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog — whatever he asked me to bite, I bit.” Sentenced to death in 1981, commuted to life; committed suicide in 1991.

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The Other Three

Zhang Chunqiao · Yao Wenyuan · Wang Hongwen

Zhang Chunqiao (1917–2005) was the Gang’s ideological theorist — a Shanghai party secretary and dogmatic Maoist who drafted key Cultural Revolution documents. Sentenced to death in 1981, commuted to life. Yao Wenyuan (1931–2005) was the Gang’s propagandist, whose 1965 article attacking a historical play triggered the entire Revolution. He controlled China’s media during the Cultural Revolution, exercising total censorship. Wang Hongwen (1935–1992) was the Gang’s youngest member — a factory worker-turned-revolutionary who rose meteorically in Shanghai’s radical politics. Groomed as Mao’s successor by Jiang Qing, he was arrested in 1976 and died in custody.

The Trial of the Gang of Four (1980–81): The November 1980 trial of the Gang of Four and six associates was China’s most dramatic courtroom event since the founding of the PRC. Broadcast nationally on television, it featured the only public glimpse of the Cultural Revolution’s architects being held accountable. Jiang Qing was defiant throughout — shouting that she was Mao’s loyal soldier, demanding to know why Mao himself was not on trial. Her outbursts were edited from broadcasts. The trial was carefully scripted by the CCP to place blame on the Gang and Lin Biao while insulating the party itself — and Mao’s legacy — from deeper scrutiny. Mao was officially assessed as “70% correct, 30% wrong.”

Lin Biao & the Political Labyrinth — The Revolution Devours Its Own

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Lin Biao (1907–1971) — The Heir Who Fled

Defence Minister · Mao’s Designated Successor · Died in mysterious plane crash

Lin Biao was one of the PLA’s most brilliant military commanders — a hero of both the Civil War and the Korean War. During the Cultural Revolution, he was Mao’s closest ally: it was Lin who compiled and distributed the Little Red Book, Lin who orchestrated the cult of Mao’s personality within the army, and Lin who was formally designated Mao’s successor in the 1969 Party Constitution.

Yet by 1970–71, the relationship had soured. Lin sought to have the position of State Chairman (head of state) restored — a role Mao had abolished — allegedly so Lin could assume it. Mao, who had grown suspicious of Lin’s growing independent power base in the PLA, rebuffed him. The conflict escalated.

On the night of September 12–13, 1971, an air force Trident aircraft took off from a military airfield near Beijing and crashed in the Mongolian desert near Öndörkhaan, killing all nine aboard. Chinese authorities eventually announced that Lin Biao had attempted a coup against Mao, fled to the Soviet Union, and died in the crash. The full truth has never been established — theories range from a genuine coup attempt to Mao having Lin eliminated. The Lin Biao Incident was a severe blow to the Cultural Revolution’s credibility: Mao’s own chosen heir had been a traitor? The disillusionment among party cadres was profound.

The Sino-Soviet Split’s Role: Relations between China and the Soviet Union collapsed spectacularly in 1960 after Khrushchev withdrew Soviet advisors and denounced the Great Leap Forward. By 1969, the two powers fought a border war along the Ussuri River — with nuclear weapons implicitly threatened. Mao’s fear of Soviet “social imperialism” was as intense as his fear of American “imperialism” — and it drove the Cultural Revolution’s xenophobia. Paradoxically, it also drove the opening to the United States — Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to Beijing, facilitated by Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger, represented a pragmatic alignment against the Soviet threat that Mao himself endorsed despite its apparent ideological contradiction.

Victims & Human Cost — The Full Weight of the Catastrophe

Those Who Were Destroyed — A Partial Accounting of the Cultural Revolution’s Human Toll

Intellectuals · Artists · Scientists · Officials · Religious Leaders · Ethnic Minorities

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Educators & Academics

Universities closed nationwide. An estimated 142,000 cadres and teachers in education were persecuted. Thousands killed or driven to suicide. The entire professoriate of China’s leading institutions was decimated.

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Artists & Writers

Playwright Lao She drowned himself. Filmmaker Zheng Junli beaten to death. Novelist Ba Jin spent years in “cow sheds.” Virtually the entire creative class of China was persecuted, imprisoned or killed.

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Medical Professionals

Doctors and scientists labelled “bourgeois experts.” Hospitals staffed by “barefoot doctors” with minimal training. Modern medicine nearly collapsed. Untold deaths from preventable illness as healthcare infrastructure was destroyed.

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Religious Communities

All religious practice banned. Buddhist monks and nuns tortured, killed, or forced to defrock. Tibetan clergy suffered mass persecution. Islamic communities in Xinjiang attacked. Christian clergy imprisoned. All religious sites destroyed or repurposed.

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Party Officials

Liu Shaoqi — State Chairman, second-highest-ranking official in China — was denied medical treatment and died of diabetes in detention in 1969. Deng Xiaoping was purged twice. Peng Dehuai died from medical neglect in 1974. Thousands of officials at every level were purged.

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Ethnic Minorities

Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs and other minorities faced cultural genocide — their languages, religions and traditions designated “Four Olds.” Inner Mongolia saw particular violence: an estimated 16,000–100,000 ethnic Mongolians were killed in the “Inner Mongolian People’s Party” purge of 1968–69.

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Ordinary Families

Anyone with a “black” class background — descended from landlords, merchants, or “rightists” — faced systematic discrimination. Children were denied education; families were evicted; private property was confiscated. The stain of “bad class” followed families for generations.

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Scientists & Engineers

China’s nuclear programme survived only because Zhou Enlai personally protected key scientists. Other scientific fields were devastated. An entire generation of Chinese scientific development was lost — contributing to the technology gap that China spent decades trying to close after 1978.

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The “Stinking Ninth Category”

Intellectuals were classified as the lowest of nine “class enemies” — below even landlords and counter-revolutionaries. This formal designation of China’s educated class as the most despised social group had devastating effects on a society that had always revered scholarship. The term was used to justify every form of persecution against them.

0.5–2MEstimated deaths directly caused by political violence

36–40MEstimated total persecuted (CCP’s own official estimate)

100K+Estimated suicides during the Cultural Revolution

1B+Little Red Books printed — the most distributed book in history

End of the Revolution & Aftermath — From Terror to the “Reform and Opening Up”

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The Death of Mao & the Arrest of the Gang of Four (1976)

The End of an Era — and the Beginning of China’s Modern Transformation

Zhou Enlai — the consummate survivor who had protected key institutions and figures throughout the Cultural Revolution — died of cancer on January 8, 1976. His death triggered an extraordinary outpouring of public grief that the Gang of Four tried to suppress, causing the April 5th Tiananmen Incident (1976): hundreds of thousands gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn Zhou and, implicitly, protest the Gang. Security forces cleared the square; Deng Xiaoping — who had been rehabilitated and then re-purged — was blamed and removed again.

Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Within weeks, on October 6, 1976, Premier Hua Guofeng — Mao’s chosen successor — orchestrated the arrest of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. The Gang of Four were seized at a politburo meeting; Jiang Qing was reportedly still wearing her curlers. Their arrest was met with relief and public celebration across China.

The Cultural Revolution was officially declared ended. Deng Xiaoping — purged twice, sent to work in a factory, forced to publicly self-criticise — was rehabilitated again in 1977 and by 1978 had outmanoeuvred Hua Guofeng to become China’s paramount leader. His “Reform and Opening Up” policy (改革开放, Gǎigé Kāifàng) launched China on the path to becoming the world’s second-largest economy. The man who had suffered most from the Cultural Revolution became the architect of the China that emerged from its ruins.

The Long Shadow — What the Cultural Revolution Left Behind

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Educational Collapse

A full decade of higher education disrupted. Universities closed 1966–72. The “Lost Generation” permanently disadvantaged. China’s professional and scientific talent pipeline destroyed for over a decade.

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Irreplaceable Cultural Loss

Thousands of years of cultural heritage — temples, texts, artworks, traditions — destroyed or damaged beyond repair. China’s relationship with its own classical civilisation permanently complicated.

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Economic Devastation

Industrial production disrupted. Agricultural collectivisation maintained despite failure. China’s economy stagnated while the rest of Asia developed. The cost in lost growth is incalculable.

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Psychological Trauma

Tens of millions suffered PTSD-equivalent trauma — never publicly acknowledged. Social trust destroyed. Families divided by denunciations and political violence. China’s collective psyche scarred for generations.

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Suppressed Memory

The CCP has never conducted a full reckoning with the Cultural Revolution. Archives remain restricted. Public discussion is sensitive. Young Chinese often know little about it. The wound festers beneath official silence.

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The Political Legacy

Fear of chaos (乱, luàn) — the memory of Cultural Revolution disorder — justifies CCP authoritarianism to this day. Stability is invoked against any political liberalisation. The Cultural Revolution paradoxically secured CCP rule by demonstrating what its absence might produce.

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Selective Accountability

Only the Gang of Four and Lin Biao clique were officially blamed. No broader reckoning. Deng Xiaoping — who participated in many early revolutionary campaigns — was never held accountable. The CCP cannot fully condemn the Cultural Revolution without condemning itself.

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Mao’s Ambiguous Status

Mao Zedong’s portrait still hangs over Tiananmen Gate. His mausoleum draws millions. The “70/30” verdict — 70% right, 30% wrong — reflects the CCP’s impossible position: condemning Mao entirely would delegitimise the party he founded.

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Scientific Setback

China’s scientific development fell a generation behind. The gap with developed nations widened catastrophically in the 1970s. Deng’s urgent prioritisation of science and technology after 1978 was a direct response to this recognised deficit.

Key Figures

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Mao Zedong (1893–1976)

Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

The founder of the PRC and architect of the Cultural Revolution. A revolutionary genius who became a paranoid autocrat. His decision to launch the Cultural Revolution was motivated primarily by political self-preservation — the desire to destroy rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping who had sidelined him after the Great Leap Forward catastrophe. Mao’s legacy is irreducibly complex: liberator and terrorist, visionary and mass murderer. The CCP has never resolved this contradiction.

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Jiang Qing (1914–1991)

Mao’s wife · Leader of the Gang of Four

Mao’s third wife, former actress, and the Cultural Revolution’s most feared enforcer. She used her position as head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group to pursue personal vendettas and impose ideological terror on China’s arts. Sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment) after the Gang of Four trial. Committed suicide in 1991 after release on medical parole. Her story is inseparable from the Cultural Revolution’s worst excesses.

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Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969)

State Chairman of the PRC — Principal Victim

The most senior victim of the Cultural Revolution. Second-highest-ranking leader in China, he had replaced Mao’s ruinous Great Leap policies with pragmatic recovery measures. Mao branded him “China’s Khrushchev” — the ultimate revisionist traitor. Liu was publicly humiliated, expelled from the party, denied medical treatment for worsening diabetes, and died alone on a concrete floor in Kaifeng in November 1969. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1980. His case remains a symbol of the revolution’s criminality.

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Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997)

General Secretary → Purged Twice → Paramount Leader

The most remarkable survivor of the Cultural Revolution — purged twice, sent to work in a tractor factory in Jiangxi, forced to watch his son be thrown from a window by Red Guards (leaving him paraplegic). Rehabilitated in 1973, re-purged in 1976, rehabilitated again in 1977. By 1978 he had outmanoeuvred everyone to become China’s paramount leader. His “Reform and Opening Up” policies lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. The man the Cultural Revolution tried hardest to destroy ultimately became its final judge.

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Zhou Enlai (1898–1976)

Premier of the PRC · The Great Survivor

Premier throughout the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Enlai walked a razor’s edge — publicly supporting Mao while quietly protecting key scientists, officials and cultural figures from destruction. Historians debate whether he was a heroic moderating force or a cowardly enabler who could have done more. His death in January 1976 sparked the unofficial protest movement at Tiananmen that foreshadowed the end of the Gang of Four’s power. He died mourned by the Chinese people in a way Mao never was.

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Lin Biao (1907–1971)

Defence Minister · Mao’s Chosen Heir

The brilliant PLA commander who built the Mao personality cult through the Little Red Book and the deification of Mao within the army — then allegedly turned against Mao and died fleeing in a plane crash over Mongolia. His fall was perhaps the Cultural Revolution’s most surreal episode: the man who had elevated Mao to godhood was posthumously declared a counter-revolutionary traitor. Every portrait of Lin was removed overnight from millions of homes across China. The incident shook the regime’s credibility profoundly.

Complete Timeline (1956–1981)

1956–1957

Hundred Flowers Campaign & Anti-Rightist Campaign. Mao invites criticism, then punishes critics. 500,000 intellectuals sent to labour camps. Culture of silence descends on China’s educated class.

1958–1962

Great Leap Forward & Great Famine. Catastrophic collectivisation and industrial campaign causes famine killing 15–55 million. Mao effectively sidelined by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

1959

Lushan Conference. Defence Minister Peng Dehuai criticises the Great Leap in a private letter. Mao has him publicly denounced and removed. A chilling precedent: even private criticism of Mao is fatal.

1960

Sino-Soviet Split. Soviet advisors withdrawn from China after ideological rupture with Khrushchev. China isolated internationally. Mao’s suspicion of all foreign influence intensifies.

November 1965

Yao Wenyuan’s article attacks the historical play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office — the opening shot of the Cultural Revolution’s ideological campaign, coordinated by Mao and Jiang Qing from Shanghai.

16 May 1966

May 16th Circular issued. Central Committee document declares the Cultural Revolution has begun. “Capitalist roaders” in the party are to be purged. The revolution is officially launched.

25 May 1966

Nie Yuanzi’s “big character poster” at Peking University denounces university authorities. Mao orders it broadcast nationally — a signal to students everywhere to rebel against authority.

1 June 1966

Schools and universities close nationwide. Classes suspended indefinitely for “revolution.” What was meant to be a short interruption lasts years for secondary schools, over six years for universities.

18 August 1966

First Tiananmen mass rally. One million Red Guards assemble. Mao receives a Red Guard armband from student Song Binbin. Six more rallies follow, receiving 11–13 million Red Guards total. Revolution goes national.

August–December 1966

Red Guards unleashed. Four Olds campaign begins. Nationwide raids on homes, temples, schools and cultural sites. Struggle sessions spread across China. First wave of suicides among intellectuals.

1967

Revolutionary committees replace party structures. Factional violence between Red Guard groups intensifies. Armed clashes in Wuhan, Guangzhou and across China. The PLA deployed to restore order — and itself becomes factionalised.

October 1968

Liu Shaoqi expelled from the party as a “traitor, renegade and scab.” His health collapses in detention; he dies a year later. The Cultural Revolution’s most prominent victim is destroyed.

December 1968

Down to the Countryside Movement begins. Mao orders urban youth to rural areas. 16–17 million sent down over subsequent years. Red Guards dispersed; “Lost Generation” created.

April 1969

9th Party Congress. Lin Biao formally designated Mao’s successor and written into the Party Constitution. Cultural Revolution proclaimed largely victorious. But power struggles within the leadership intensify.

March 1969

Sino-Soviet border conflict. PLA and Soviet forces clash on the Ussuri River. China fears Soviet invasion. This threat accelerates China’s opening to the United States as a strategic counterweight.

13 September 1971

The Lin Biao Incident. Lin Biao’s plane crashes in Mongolia. China announces he was fleeing to the Soviet Union after a failed coup. The designated heir of the revolution is declared a traitor. Mass disillusionment follows.

February 1972

Nixon visits China. Historic diplomatic opening, facilitated by Zhou Enlai. The most anti-Western revolution in history pragmatically embraces the United States as a counterbalance against the Soviet Union.

1973–1974

“Criticise Lin, Criticise Confucius” campaign. Gang of Four uses it to attack Zhou Enlai and moderate policies. Deng Xiaoping rehabilitated, then used by Zhou to attempt economic stabilisation.

8 January 1976

Zhou Enlai dies of cancer. Public mourning explodes into political protest — the April 5th Tiananmen Incident. Security forces disperse mourners; Deng Xiaoping is blamed and re-purged.

9 September 1976

Mao Zedong dies. China enters a brief political vacuum. The succession question — Hua Guofeng vs. the Gang of Four vs. Deng Xiaoping’s allies — is resolved within weeks by arrest.

6 October 1976

Gang of Four arrested. Premier Hua Guofeng orchestrates the arrest of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen at a politburo meeting. The Cultural Revolution is over.

1977–1978

Deng Xiaoping’s rise. Rehabilitated in 1977, by late 1978 Deng has outmanoeuvred Hua Guofeng. The Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee (December 1978) launches “Reform and Opening Up.”

1980–1981

Trial of the Gang of Four. Nationally televised. Jiang Qing sentenced to death (commuted to life). Others receive 16–20 year sentences. CCP officially condemns Cultural Revolution as “catastrophic.”

June 1981

CCP “Resolution on Certain Historical Questions.” Officially assesses Mao as “70% right, 30% wrong.” Cultural Revolution declared “a grave blunder.” The party’s definitive verdict — designed to limit accountability while preserving Mao’s legacy. No further reckoning follows.

Frequently Asked Questions

QWhat was the Cultural Revolution? +

ANSWERThe Cultural Revolution (文化大革命, 1966–1976) was a decade-long socio-political campaign launched by Mao Zedong to reassert his dominance over the Chinese Communist Party and eliminate political rivals by mobilising millions of young people — the Red Guards — to purge “counter-revolutionary” elements. In practice it resulted in the systematic persecution of intellectuals, party officials and ordinary citizens; the closure of universities; the destruction of cultural heritage; and an estimated 500,000 to 2 million deaths from political violence. Tens of millions more were persecuted, imprisoned, or internally exiled.

QWhy did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution? +

ANSWERMao launched the Cultural Revolution primarily to regain political power after the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (1958–62) had caused a famine killing millions and led moderate leaders Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to sideline his influence. By mobilising radical youth — the Red Guards — Mao bypassed the party establishment that had constrained him. He framed it ideologically as a struggle against “capitalist roaders” and “revisionist” elements threatening socialist purity — invoking his fear that China would follow the Soviet path of “revisionism” under Khrushchev. At its core, the Cultural Revolution was a political purge disguised as ideological renewal.

QWho were the Red Guards and what did they do? +

ANSWERThe Red Guards were paramilitary units of students and young workers, typically aged 14–25, mobilised by Mao starting in 1966. Waving the Little Red Book and wearing red armbands, they attacked teachers, intellectuals, party officials and anyone deemed insufficiently revolutionary. They destroyed temples, books, artworks and cultural relics in the campaign to eliminate the “Four Olds.” They conducted “struggle sessions” — public humiliation rituals in which victims were forced to confess to invented crimes. By 1967–68 they had turned violently on each other in factional warfare, and were eventually disbanded and sent to rural re-education in 1968.

QWhat were the Four Olds? +

ANSWERThe “Four Olds” (四旧, Sì Jiù) were: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. They represented everything associated with pre-revolutionary China and foreign “bourgeois” influence. Red Guards rampaged through China destroying temples, monasteries, churches, classical books, artworks, antiques, and anything associated with traditional Chinese civilisation. Thousands of irreplaceable cultural artefacts — the product of millennia of Chinese civilisation — were destroyed in a few years. The campaign was one of the most devastating acts of deliberate cultural destruction in human history.

QHow many people died in the Cultural Revolution? +

ANSWERPrecise figures are impossible — the CCP has never released a full accounting and archives remain restricted. Scholarly estimates for deaths directly caused by the Cultural Revolution range from 500,000 to 2 million killed in political violence and persecution. The CCP’s own 1981 resolution acknowledged that “36 to 40 million” people were persecuted in some form. Hundreds of thousands more committed suicide. Indirect deaths from healthcare collapse, famine conditions in some regions, and the suppression of the medical profession add further to the toll. Many scholars consider even high estimates to be understated.

QWhat was the Gang of Four? +

ANSWERThe Gang of Four were the four most powerful leaders of the radical faction during the Cultural Revolution: Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. They controlled Chinese culture, propaganda and radical politics during the revolution’s later years. Arrested in October 1976 — just weeks after Mao’s death — they were tried in 1980–81 in a nationally broadcast trial. Jiang Qing was sentenced to death (later commuted to life; she committed suicide in 1991). Their arrest and trial represented the official end of the Cultural Revolution era and the CCP’s attempt to blame specific individuals rather than the party or Mao’s ideology.

QWhat was the Down to the Countryside Movement? +

ANSWERThe Down to the Countryside Movement (上山下乡运动) was the forced relocation of urban youth — particularly Red Guards who had become uncontrollable — to rural villages beginning in 1968. Mao declared that “educated youth” needed to be “re-educated by the peasants.” An estimated 16–17 million young people were sent to remote regions. Many spent years or even a decade in the countryside, losing educational and career opportunities. This “Lost Generation” suffered lasting economic and social harm. The movement officially ended in 1980 under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms.

QWhy is the Cultural Revolution still sensitive in China today? +

ANSWERThe Cultural Revolution remains politically sensitive for several interconnected reasons. First, a full reckoning would implicate the CCP itself — the party that launched the revolution cannot fully condemn it without undermining its own legitimacy. Second, Mao Zedong’s portrait still hangs over Tiananmen Gate; condemning the Cultural Revolution comprehensively risks condemning the founder of the PRC. Third, the CCP fears that acknowledging such a catastrophic failure of party governance could fuel demands for political reform. Xi Jinping, who himself suffered during the Cultural Revolution (his father was purged), has shown little interest in revisiting this history — and in some respects his concentration of personal power and suppression of dissent echo, in attenuated form, some of its patterns.