1966–1976 CE · Asia · Rights
China’s Cultural Revolution: mobilisation, persecution and power
Mao’s Cultural Revolution mobilised students and other groups against supposed enemies, destabilised institutions and subjected people to persecution.
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A political campaign after the famine
Economic retrenchment and leadership struggles followed the Great Leap Forward. In 1966 Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, encouraging attacks on those accused of abandoning revolutionary principles. It became a struggle over political authority as well as a campaign against ideas and practices labelled bourgeois.
Read the programme against events
The 1966 Sixteen Points set out the campaign’s official objectives and its language of class struggle. That document reveals what the leadership authorised and encouraged; it is not a neutral account of what participants experienced. Red Guard mobilisation, attacks on opponents and serious disorder were followed by military intervention in 1967.
A decade with changing phases
The conventional 1966–1976 span extends to Mao’s death. It should not suggest that institutions, violence and participation remained identical throughout the decade. Separating the opening mobilisation from later political struggles helps readers distinguish official revolutionary promises from the coercion and disruption of lived experience.