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A Brief Overview of China’s Cultural Revolution

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Chinese cultural revolution era poster showing Chairman Mao above an adoring crowd of red guards soldiers and workers
World History Archive/Alamy

The Cultural Revolution (in full, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) took place from 1966 to 1976 in China. The benign-sounding moniker belies the destruction it unleashed upon the country’s population. It was launched under the direction of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Mao Zedong, who wished to renew the spirit of the communist revolution and root out those he considered to be “bourgeois” infiltrators—alluding, in part, to some of his CCP colleagues who were advocating a path for economic recovery that differed from Mao’s vision.

Though formally launched at the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee in August 1966, the Cultural Revolution actually had been declared months earlier, on May 16, and had been under way since then, with an initial focus on educational institutions. In the beginning, Mao pursued his goals through the Red Guards, groups of the country’s urban youths that were created through mass mobilization efforts. They were directed to root out those among the country’s population who weren’t “sufficiently revolutionary” and those suspected of being “bourgeois.” The Red Guards had little oversight, and their actions led to anarchy and terror, as “suspect” individuals—traditionalists, educators, and intellectuals, for example—were persecuted and killed. The Red Guards were soon reined in by officials, although the brutality of the revolution continued. The revolution also saw high-ranking CCP officials falling in and out of favor, such as Deng Xiaoping and Lin Biao.

The revolution ended in the fall of 1976, after the death of Mao in September and the downfall of the so-called Gang of Four (a group of radical pro-Mao CCP members) the following month, although it was officially declared over in August 1977 by the 11th Party Congress. The revolution left many people dead (estimates range from 500,000 to 2,000,000), displaced millions of people, and completely disrupted the country’s economy. Although Mao had intended for his revolution to strengthen communism, it had, ironically, the opposite effect, instead leading to China’s embrace of capitalism.