Quick questions on Mao's Cultural Revolution 1966 to 1976: HSC Modern History Personality

After the Great Leap collapse Mao retreated to the "second line", with Liu Shaoqi as State Chairman (from 1959) and Deng Xiaoping as CCP General Secretary running daily government. Mao watched as Liu and Deng wound back the communes and rehabilitated cadres.

On 10 November 1965 Yao Wenyuan, a Shanghai cultural functionary working with Jiang Qing, published "On the New Historical Play 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'" (Ping xinbian lishi ju Hai Rui ba guan) in Shanghai's Wenhui Bao. The piece denounced the playwright and Beijing vice-mayor Wu Han's 1961 play about the Ming honest official Hai Rui as an allegory defending the dismissed Peng Dehuai. The article was the opening shot.

On 25 May 1966 the first Big Character Poster (dazibao) at Peking University, by philosophy lecturer Nie Yuanzi, attacked the university leadership. Mao endorsed it on 1 June. Tsinghua University High School Red Guards (Hongweibing) issued their first manifesto in late May.

Red Guards attacked the "Four Olds" (Si jiu): old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits. Cultural sites were destroyed (the Confucius temple at Qufu was vandalised in November 1966), Buddhist temples shut, intellectuals beaten in struggle sessions. The writer Lao She drowned himself in Beijing's Taiping Lake on 24 August 1966. Marshal He Long, Tao Zhu, and Peng Dehuai were detained.

Liu Shaoqi was denounced from October 1966 as "the No. 1 capitalist-roader in power within the Party". A 12 November 1968 Twelfth Plenum (a rump body) expelled him from the Party with the title "renegade, traitor, scab". He was held in solitary confinement at Kaifeng and died on 12 November 1969 of medical neglect from diabetes and pneumonia, his identity initially concealed.

The Ninth CCP Congress (1 to 24 April 1969) elected Lin Biao Vice Chairman with the Constitution naming him "Chairman Mao's close comrade-in-arms and successor". Lin had compiled Quotations from Chairman Mao (the Little Red Book) in 1964 and promoted the Mao cult. The Ninth Congress excluded most of the previous CC; over 70 percent of full and alternate CC members were new.

Tensions between Mao and Lin Biao mounted from the 1970 Lushan Plenum (where Lin attempted to restore the State Chairmanship that Mao had abolished after Liu's purge). The official narrative is that Lin and his son Lin Liguo plotted Mao's assassination in a document later released as the "571 Project Outline" (a pun on wu qi yi, "armed uprising"). The plot was betrayed by Lin's daughter Lin Doudou. Lin Biao, his wife Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo died on 13 September 1971 when their Trident jet crashed at Ondorhaan, Mongolia, allegedly attempting to flee to the Soviet Union.

In Lin's absence Mao tilted to the Gang of Four (Si ren bang): Jiang Qing (Mao's wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen (the young Shanghai factory worker promoted to Vice Chairman in 1973). Premier Zhou Enlai (terminally ill from 1972) and the restored Deng Xiaoping led the moderate faction. The Criticise Lin, Criticise Confucius campaign (1973 to 1974) was understood as an attack on Zhou.

Mao's directive of 22 December 1968 stated "It is necessary for educated young people to go to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants". Between 1968 and 1980 about 17 million urban youths (Zhi qing) were sent to rural areas. The movement decongested cities of unemployable Red Guards and produced a generation of ruined educations.

Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976. Public mourning at the Tiananmen Incident of 5 April 1976 produced clashes with Gang of Four cadres. Deng Xiaoping was again purged. The Tangshan earthquake of 28 July 1976 killed at least 240,000 (some estimates 600,000).

Death-toll estimates vary. A 1980s internal CCP investigation gave "more than 1 million" excess deaths; Andrew Walder and Su Yang (2003) used county gazetteers to give about 1.1 to 1.6 million; Daniel Chirot (1996) gave about 2 million; the maximalist figures of around 3 million include long-tail deaths from imprisonment and labour reform. Tens of millions were persecuted. Education was suspended for several years; the gaokao university entrance examination was abolished from 1966 and restored only in December 1977.

Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals (Mao's Last Revolution, 2006) gave the canonical English-language synthesis.

The 1966 to 1969 mass phase was followed by the 1969 to 1971 Lin Biao phase and the 1972 to 1976 Gang of Four phase. The decade form is in the official "Decade of Disaster" (shi nian haojie).

Liu Shaoqi's death, Lin Biao's crash, and the Gang of Four's coup are central.

The Red Guards were the instrument; Mao and the CCRG were the directors.