The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party issued the circular formally known as the May 16 Notification, which called for the exposure and purge of "representatives of the bourgeoisie" who had "sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture." The document is conventionally dated as the start of the Cultural Revolution and was drafted under Mao Zedong's direction with the support of the newly formed Cultural Revolution Group. Party leaders who resisted or moderated the campaign, including President Liu Shaoqi and General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, were themselves targeted within months.

Location: Beijing, China

Mao Zedong appeared at Tiananmen Square before a gathering of roughly one million Red Guards and personally donned a Red Guard armband, signaling his endorsement of the student movement. In the weeks that followed, the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign (old customs, culture, habits, and ideas) spread across China, producing widespread destruction of temples, artworks, books, and historical sites, as well as public "struggle sessions" against targeted individuals. The first of eight mass reviews between August and November 1966 accelerated the mobilization of students into rival Red Guard factions.

Location: Beijing, China

Rebel factions in Shanghai, backed by leaders of the Cultural Revolution Group, seized the municipal party and government apparatus in an event known as the January Storm, and the Shanghai People's Commune was proclaimed. The model of power seizure spread to provinces across China through 1967, but competing rebel factions and established authorities clashed violently, producing armed struggles in cities including Wuhan in July 1967. The People's Liberation Army was increasingly deployed to restore order and to staff the "revolutionary committees" that replaced seized governments.

Location: Shanghai, China

The 12th Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee voted to expel President Liu Shaoqi from the Chinese Communist Party and strip him of all posts, branding him "the number one party person in authority taking the capitalist road." Already detained and denied medical care, Liu died in custody on November 12, 1969. The purge of the state president demonstrated the depth of the movement's attack on the party establishment and was later singled out in the party's 1981 resolution as one of the unjust cases of the era.

Location: Beijing, China

Following a directive of December 22, 1968, urban "educated youth" were sent "up to the mountains and down to the villages" to be re-educated by peasants. Over the following decade approximately 17 million young people were relocated from cities to rural areas, disrupting a generation's education and family life. Accounts of the sent-down years, including both officially encouraged narratives and individual memoirs, form a major part of the period's contested memory.

Location: China

Marshal Lin Biao, Mao's designated successor, died when a military aircraft crashed in Mongolia under circumstances that remain debated. The official Chinese account, published years later, alleged that Lin had plotted a coup and was fleeing to the Soviet Union when the plane crashed; other interpretations dispute parts of this narrative. The incident discredited much of the movement's radical leadership and produced an ideological shock, as the former successor was condemned as a traitor.

Location: Undur Khan, Mongolia

United States President Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing for a week-long visit, the first by a sitting US president since 1949, meeting Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. The Shanghai Communique of February 28, 1972, set out the framework for normalizing US-PRC relations and acknowledged the two sides' differing positions on Taiwan. The diplomatic opening occurred in the later phase of the Cultural Revolution and reshaped the Cold War alignment in Asia even as domestic upheaval continued in China.

Location: Beijing, China

Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, died at the age of 82 after years of declining health. He had launched the Cultural Revolution a decade earlier and had retained authority over its direction until his final months. His death removed the movement's principal patron and triggered the immediate power struggle that ended it.

Location: Beijing, China

Less than a month after Mao's death, party and security leaders arrested Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, later known as the Gang of Four. The arrests are conventionally treated as the end of the Cultural Revolution; the four were tried in 1980-1981, and Jiang Qing's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Surviving party leaders, including Hua Guofeng and later Deng Xiaoping, moved to re-establish party authority and rehabilitate officials purged during the movement.

Location: Beijing, China

The Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee adopted the "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China," which declared the Cultural Revolution responsible for "the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic." The resolution assigned principal responsibility to Mao Zedong while defending his record in other periods, and it formally rehabilitated large numbers of victims. Historians continue to debate the movement's origins, its death toll (estimates range from hundreds of thousands to several million), and the reliability of the official account.

Location: Beijing, China