The Cultural Revolution (Chinese: 文化大革命) was a sociopolitical campaign that Mao Zedong launched in 1966 and that lasted, in the Chinese Communist Party's official dating, until October 1976, shortly after Mao's death and the arrest of the radical leadership known as the Gang of Four. Its stated aim was to preserve socialism by removing "bourgeois" and traditional elements from Chinese society, but it was largely a struggle for power within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The movement produced a decade of political persecution, factional violence, economic disruption and damage to cultural heritage. The party now describes it as a grave error.
Background
The Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), Mao's campaign to industrialize rapidly and collectivize agriculture, ended in a famine that killed tens of millions and weakened his standing. Pragmatic leaders including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping directed economic recovery, and Mao came to believe that they were moving China toward a "capitalist road." He also regarded the Soviet Union's post-Stalin path as "revisionist" and feared that a similar drift was taking place in the party. Mao's distrust was reinforced by concerns that the revolutionary spirit was fading among officials and young people.
The campaign opened in late 1965 with an attack on a historical play, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, which was read as a coded criticism of Mao's dismissal of a loyal official. A Central Committee circular dated 16 May 1966, drafted under Mao's direction, denounced "bourgeois representatives" inside the party and is generally treated as the formal beginning of the movement. Mao chose not to work through the regular party apparatus and instead relied on mass mobilization, supported by his allies in a small Cultural Revolution Group in Beijing and by the military leadership under Lin Biao.
Course of the movement
Mobilization and the Red Guards (1966–1967)
Schools and universities were closed in mid-1966, and students were encouraged to attack teachers, administrators and officials. Groups of students organized themselves as Red Guards, and in August 1966 Mao reviewed huge rallies of young people in Beijing, wearing a Red Guard armband himself. Students were urged to destroy the "Four Olds" (old customs, culture, habits and ideas) and to target anyone labeled as a class enemy. Many Red Guards carried the Little Red Book of Mao's quotations, and a cult of Mao's personality developed rapidly.
Violence escalated quickly. Teachers, intellectuals and officials were publicly humiliated in struggle sessions, and many were beaten, imprisoned or driven to suicide. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were removed from their posts and denounced, and Liu was later held in custody until his death in 1969. Family background also mattered: a "bloodline" theory privileged children of workers, peasants and soldiers, while those from landlord or "bad class" families faced discrimination.
By late 1966 Red Guard factions had split into rival groups, each claiming to be the true representative of Mao's thought. In early 1967 rebels seized power in several cities, most notably in Shanghai, and Mao encouraged these "seizures of power," which further undermined provincial and municipal administrations.
Army intervention and revolutionary committees (1967–1969)
As urban conflict became a threat to order and production, Mao ordered the People's Liberation Army to support the "left" and to restore control. Military units increasingly took over local administration, and from 1967 to 1968 "revolutionary committees" were established in provinces and cities. These bodies combined surviving cadres, army officers and mass representatives, and they gradually displaced the Red Guard organizations. The Red Guards were dispersed or suppressed, with some factions fighting bloody battles against the army and others being purged.
The Ninth Congress of the CCP in April 1969 confirmed the Cultural Revolution's achievements and named Lin Biao as Mao's designated successor. In late 1968 Mao ordered urban students to go to the countryside for re-education, and millions of young people were sent to rural areas under the so-called Down to the Countryside Movement, an experience that shaped a generation.
The Lin Biao affair and the final years (1970–1976)
Lin Biao's position collapsed in 1971. According to official accounts, he planned a coup against Mao, and after the plot failed he died in an air crash in Mongolia in September 1971. The official account of the affair has been questioned by some historians. Following Lin's fall, the government began a campaign against him and against Confucius, which was used to attack Zhou Enlai and other pragmatists. Schools and universities gradually reopened from 1970, often with admission based on recommendations rather than examinations, and education remained disrupted for much of the decade.
Zhou Enlai, the premier, died in January 1976, and the public mourning that followed turned into demonstrations in Beijing in April 1976, which were suppressed. Deng Xiaoping was blamed and removed from his posts again. Mao died on 9 September 1976, and the radical faction around his wife Jiang Qing and others (Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen) was arrested in early October 1976.
Violence and casualties
The Cultural Revolution was marked by widespread violence, including mass killings, executions without trial, forced suicides and torture. Some of the worst atrocities occurred in provinces such as Guangxi, Guangdong, Inner Mongolia and Hunan, where local factions and the security apparatus carried out campaigns against alleged "counter-revolutionaries" and members of "Five Black Categories." In Guangxi, investigations later documented cases of cannibalism alongside mass killings. In Beijing, the so-called "Red August" of 1966 saw a wave of violent attacks on people accused of being bourgeois.
Estimates of the death toll vary widely, and the number is an area of active scholarly debate. Historian Andrew Walder's analysis of local sources arrived at a conservative estimate of 1.1 to 1.6 million deaths. Walder also reported that internal investigations by the CCP had produced figures of about 1.2 million (1982) and 1.7 million (1987), though these reports were not publicly released. Other commonly cited ranges extend from several hundred thousand to around 2 million, and some compilations reach higher totals. The variations arise from different definitions: some estimates count only direct killings, while others include suicides, deaths from persecution, and excess deaths caused by famine or disrupted health care. The number of people persecuted, rather than killed, is far larger, and many were injured, imprisoned or deprived of their livelihoods.
Economic, social and cultural effects
The movement severely disrupted China's economy. Industrial production declined in 1967 and 1968, and transport and supply networks suffered from factional fighting. The closure of schools and universities deprived an entire cohort of formal education, and the entrance examinations were discontinued for more than a decade. Political criteria replaced technical expertise in many professions, and the purge of officials weakened administrative capacity.
Campaigns against the "Four Olds" led to widespread destruction of historic buildings, temples, religious sites, books, artworks and archives. Sites associated with Confucius, including his cemetery in Qufu, were damaged, and cultural relics across the country were lost. Families were pressured to hand over property, and many urban households were forced to share their homes with others. Intellectual life was almost completely suppressed, with Western culture, classical literature and much traditional learning condemned.
Official evaluation and the end of the movement
The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, under Deng Xiaoping, rejected the Cultural Revolution and marked the start of the reform and opening-up policy. In June 1981 the Sixth Plenary Session adopted the "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China." The resolution called the decade from May 1966 to October 1976 the most severe setback suffered by the party, the state and the people since 1949, and it held Mao chiefly responsible for the error, while attributing much of the movement's manipulation to counter-revolutionary groups led by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. The trial of the Gang of Four took place in 1980 and 1981, and its members received long sentences or suspended death sentences.
The 2021 resolution adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee, the third major historical resolution in the party's history, reaffirmed the 1981 verdict and described the Cultural Revolution as "a catastrophe" and "10 years of turmoil," again holding Mao responsible. The official narrative therefore treats the movement as a serious mistake while preserving Mao's overall status as the founder of the People's Republic. Official textbooks and media largely use the term "ten years of turmoil" (十年动乱).
Historiography and debates
Historians disagree about the causes and character of the Cultural Revolution. One interpretation stresses Mao's personal political purposes, including his desire to remove rivals, reassert control over the party and revive revolutionary zeal. Another emphasizes ideological conviction, arguing that Mao sincerely believed in the threat of revisionism and in the need for continuous class struggle. A further line of research examines the social dynamics of the movement, including the roles of local factions, class background, generational conflict and the opportunities for personal revenge that the campaign created.
Historians also debate how much the movement was driven from above and how much it reflected spontaneous action from below. Many Red Guards acted out of idealism and peer pressure, but they were also encouraged, directed and later suppressed by the leadership. Access to archives remains limited, and official death-toll figures have not been published, which complicates research. Historians therefore rely on local gazetteers, county records, memoirs, interviews and reports produced during the post-1976 rehabilitation campaigns.
Legacy
The Cultural Revolution left deep marks on Chinese politics and society. It discredited mass campaigns and the cult of personality as methods of governance and contributed to the reform leadership's emphasis on institutional rules, collective leadership and economic development. The experiences of sent-down youth and survivors inspired a large body of memoirs and literature, including "scar literature" (伤痕文学) in the late 1970s. The period remains politically sensitive in China, where discussion is controlled, and in the Chinese-speaking world it is remembered as a traumatic chapter of the twentieth century.
References
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