Cultural Revolution

Chinese mass movement from 1966 to 1969 begun by Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, directed against the upper middle class – bureaucrats, artists, and academics – who were killed, imprisoned, humiliated, or ‘resettled’. Intended to ‘purify’ Chinese communism, it was also an attempt by Mao to renew his political and ideological pre-eminence inside China. Half a million people are estimated to have been killed.

The ‘revolution’ was characterized by the violent activities of the semi-military Red Guards, most of them students. Many established and learned people were humbled and eventually sent to work on the land, and from 1966 to 1970 universities were closed. Although the revolution was brought to an end in 1969, the resulting bureaucratic and economic chaos had many long-term effects. The ultra-leftist Gang of Four, led by Mao's wife Jiang Qing and defence minister Lin Biao, played prominent roles in the Cultural Revolution. The chief political victims were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who were depicted as ‘bourgeois reactionaries’. After Mao's death, the Cultural Revolution was criticized officially and the verdicts on hundreds of thousands of people who were wrongly arrested and persecuted were reversed. See also China, Cultural Revolution.