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Cultural Revolution (China, 1966–1976)

A decade-long political and social upheaval in the People's Republic of China initiated by Mao Zedong, marked by mass campaigns, purges, disruption of education and culture, and long-term institutional effects.

Author: Leandro Alegsa Creation date: November 13, 2022 Last updated: May 7, 2026

simple.wikipedia.org · Public domain

The Cultural Revolution, formally called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a mass political movement in the People's Republic of China that lasted roughly from 1966 until 1976. Launched by Mao Zedong, the campaign aimed to preserve and advance revolutionary ideology by removing perceived capitalist, bourgeois and traditional elements within the party and society. Its Chinese name is often written in pinyin as Wúchǎn Jiējí Wénhuà Dà Gémìng, and it is commonly shortened to 文化大革命 or 文革. The movement reshaped politics, education, culture and everyday life across the country.

Background and causes

The Cultural Revolution emerged from a mix of political, ideological and personal factors. After the economic and social turmoil of the Great Leap Forward, Mao sought to reassert his authority and push the Communist Party toward more radical socialist goals. A campaign called the Socialist Education Movement preceded the Cultural Revolution and reflected tensions within the party. Competition arose between Mao’s allies and more pragmatic leaders such as Deng Xiaoping. To mobilize support, Mao promoted his thought widely, including the circulation of the Quotations from Chairman Mao, a text used to legitimize the movement.

Major characteristics

Mass mobilization: Young people were organized into Red Guard groups that traveled to factories, campuses and countryside to promote revolutionary ideas and attack perceived enemies.
Political purges: Party leaders, intellectuals and others labeled as revisionist or bourgeois faced public criticism, dismissal, imprisonment, or worse; prominent figures such as Liu Shaoqi were removed from power.
Attack on the "Four Olds": Traditions, culture, customs and ideas were targeted for elimination, leading to the destruction of cultural artifacts, temples and historical sites.
Disruption of education and economy: Schools and universities were closed or reorganized; many students were sent to work in communes and the countryside, altering generations’ schooling and careers.

Chronology and key events

Officially beginning in 1966, the campaign quickly spread from universities to factories and rural areas. Power struggles within the Communist Party of China intensified; some party organs and local authorities lost control as mass movements asserted authority. Military leaders, including figures like Lin Biao, played shifting roles, and violent factional clashes created widespread disorder and, in many places, what observers described as anarchy. Central control waxed and waned: by the late 1960s some normalization occurred when the army reasserted order, and the Ninth Party Congress of 1969 consolidated a Maoist political line, though turmoil continued in different forms until the mid-1970s.

Consequences and legacy

The Cultural Revolution left deep and mixed legacies. It severely disrupted education and scientific work, damaged cultural heritage, and subjected millions to persecution and hardship; estimates of victims vary and remain debated by scholars. Economically and administratively it created setbacks and inefficiencies. Politically, the movement weakened some party institutions while elevating others; after Mao’s death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four the country moved toward rehabilitation of many victims and eventual policy shifts under leaders who succeeded Mao. The period influenced later reforms and remains a crucial reference point in Chinese politics and collective memory.

Notable facts and distinctions

The campaign relied heavily on symbolic tools and texts, including the Little Red Book and public struggle sessions, to enforce conformity and denounce opponents.
High-profile victims of purges included former leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and later the sidelining of administrators associated with Deng Xiaoping.
The leadership and titles of state institutions were affected; references to positions such as the President of China figure in discussions of the era because of how state authority was contested and reorganized.
Rural policies and commune life (communes) were integral to the broader social experiments that intersected with the Cultural Revolution’s goals.

For further reading on aspects such as cultural changes, political maneuvering and local variations, consult specialized studies and primary sources; contemporary scholarship continues to reassess the scope and impact of the movement. General introductions and translated documents can clarify the complex interplay of ideology, leadership, and mass action that defined the Cultural Revolution and its aftereffects on modern China’s development and memory.

See also: discussions of the Great Leap Forward as background, the role of figures close to Mao like Mao Zedong and Lin Biao, and the varying fate of party rivals such as Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. Further context on cultural themes is available under culture-focused studies.

Words of Chairman Mao Zedong in different Chinese languages

Slogans on the outer wall of Fudan University in the spring of 1976: "Blood and life in defense of the Central Committee, blood and life in defense of Mao".

Development

Initially, the Cultural Revolution was welcomed by large segments of the population as a movement to redress grievances in the state and society. Mao, however, instead of the renewal within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) desired by politicians such as Liu Shaoqi, set in motion a mass movement to destroy the old CCP. Most of the old cadres were removed from their posts. Only 28% of Politburo members, 34% of CC members, and 29% of provincial secretaries managed to hold on to their positions by the end of 1966.

The Cultural Revolution consisted of a series of mass campaigns that alternated and sometimes contradicted each other. Originally, the Cultural Revolution was supposed to last only half a year, then it was prolonged for ten years, until Mao's death. If Mao was still able to inspire substantial parts of the population for the Cultural Revolution at the beginning, the mass movements ordered in the last years became listlessly held compulsory rituals.

The Cultural Revolution is often divided into three phases: the Red Guard period (May 1966 to 1968), the Lin Biao period (1968 to August 1971), and the Zhou Enlai period (August 1971 to October 1976).

Unlike the Great Leap Forward campaign, the economy and agriculture were largely exempted from the Cultural Revolution. It had been learned that production had to continue as undisturbed as possible. The campaigns focused on politics, culture, public opinion, schools and universities, but there the Cultural Revolution initially raged with sometimes boundless cruelty. Several professors were beaten to death. The universities stopped their work at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and normal university operations, with entrance and final examinations and qualified certificates, were not reintroduced until 1978. Numerous cultural monuments were destroyed by revolutionaries.

Among the leading politicians, too, there was this division of labor between the Cultural Revolution and production. Under Mao's guidance, politicians like Jiang Qing and Lin Biao were responsible for the Cultural Revolution; politicians like Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping were responsible for the economy, which Mao knew little about and left to others.

Concept and term

By the 1960s, in Mao's view, China, like the USSR before it, was on the road to revisionism. In the USSR, in Mao's view, a new bureaucratic class had taken power, aloof from the mass of the population. Mao pointed out that class struggles must be the guiding principle of politics and that the class struggle must be carried out "daily, monthly and annually." In China, however, Mao saw a solidification in the achieved state with a bureaucrat class that cemented its position, aloof from the masses of the people.

Therefore, Mao called for a new socialist revolution in the field of political, social as well as cultural superstructure - the Cultural Revolution. The reason for the proclamation of the Cultural Revolution was not only the overthrow of some politicians of the "pragmatic line" such as Liu Shaoqi or Deng Xiaoping. Their ousting was already done at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in May 1966, when a large majority in the new Politburo turned against them. They were able to continue in economic and day-to-day politics, but they had lost the backing of the Politburo. Mao had a larger social goal in mind. The whole of society and the party were to be proletarianly renewed, and a further step towards ideal socialism was to be accomplished.

Unlike the politicians around Liu Shaoqi, Mao was concerned that the necessary renewals would be brought about not within and by the Communist Party, but by the masses. He believed that by relying on the onslaught of the popular masses, a change in the overall social situation could be brought about and thus a true socialist society could be created. Hence Mao's expression: "With chaos on earth one achieves great order in the country".

Mao hoped to become the father and leader of the world socialist revolution through the Cultural Revolution and therefore regarded the Cultural Revolution as a decisive event in human history. In 1967 he wrote in the magazine Rote Fahne:

"The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a revolution that has seized the souls of the people. It strikes at the fundamental position of the people, determines their world outlook, determines the path they have already taken or will take, and grips the entire revolutionary history of China. This is the greatest upheaval of society unprecedented in human history. It will raise a whole generation of staunch Communists."

Combined with the daily personality cult around Mao, Mao's proclamation to the Chinese youth to open a new chapter in the history of mankind towards an ideal world with the Cultural Revolution gave the movement enthusiasm, fanaticism as well as brutality, hatred and destructiveness against the alleged enemies.

An essential feature of the Cultural Revolution was its indeterminacy. The aim was to expose "capitalist rulers" and "revisionists" who were taking the "wrong road," but nowhere was it specified what these terms meant. At the same time, the sentences passed were absolute. In the case of a person accused of being on the wrong path, everything was wrong; in the case of persons who were "on the right path," everything was right. From this also often followed senseless brutality against old, deserving comrades and fighters in the Civil War who had allegedly "left the right path." Even between the drivers of the Cultural Revolution, violent conflicts were not uncommon.

Cultural life and higher education came to an almost complete standstill. Universities did not hold normal educational sessions from 1966 to 1978. Avoiding the emergence of a new educational class and propagating the class struggle appeared more important than imparting knowledge.

The exclusion of the economy from the Cultural Revolution made it possible for Deng Xiaoping, who had been attacked as a particularly nasty "revisionist" during the Cultural Revolution, to be politically active in a leading position for five years out of the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1968 as general secretary of the party and from 1973 to 1976 as deputy and later successor to Zhou Enlai. On the other hand, the grip in the field of culture was extensive. Jiang Qing, for example, arbitrarily selected works in which proletarian heroes and their exploits were presented as exemplary. The performance of traditional operas was banned.

Shortly before his death Mao received once more his successor HuaGuofeng and his most important comrades-in-arms for the Cultural Revolution, the later Gang of Four Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan, and gave the following verdict on his life's work:

"In China there is an old saying: Only when the coffin is closed can a judgement be made about it. It's about time for me too, now you can make an assessment after all. In my life, I can look back on two achievements. I fought Chiang Kai-shek for decades and drove him out to some islands. After an eight-year war, I sent the Japanese home. Finally, I advanced to Peking, all the way to the Forbidden City. [...] As you know, the other achievement is the Cultural Revolution. Few support it, many are against it."

Four weeks after Mao's death, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan were arrested as a gang of four, and a year after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping was reinstated to his former posts. The Cultural Revolution, for which Mao had fought for ten years, was over.

Questions and Answers

Q: What was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?

A: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a time of large cultural change in China, started by Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China. It happened from 1966 to 1976.

Q: What preceded the start of the Cultural Revolution?

A: The start of the Cultural Revolution followed the failure of the Great Leap Forward.

Q: What did Mao do to remove capitalists from the Communist Party?

A: To get rid of the capitalists, he started the Socialist Education Movement which started in 1962 and ended in 1965.

Q: Who supported Mao during this period?

A: Mao was supported by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, and Chen Boda during this period.

Q: What book did Mao create to gain support from young people?

A: To gain support from young people in China, Mao created Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (also known as the Little Red Book), a collection of his sayings.

Q: Who were members of The Red Guard?

A: The Red Guard was a group of young people in China that went around teaching Mao's sayings and also beat people who disagreed with him and destroyed homes and museums.

Q: Who were forced to leave during this revolution?

A: During this revolution several important people in China were forced to leave including Liu Shaoqi, President of China, and Deng Xiaoping, secretary-general of the Communist Party of China.