Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, including the May 16 Notice, the Red Guards, the persecution of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, the rise of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, the Down to the Countryside Movement, and the long political and human consequences

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain why Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution and assess its conduct and consequences. Strong answers integrate Mao's motivations (revisionism, restoration of revolutionary momentum, personal vindication), the institutional architecture (the May 16 Notice, the Central Cultural Revolution Group, the Red Guards), the elite victims (Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Peng Dehuai, He Long), the Lin Biao incident, the rise of the Gang of Four, and the human cost.

The answer

Origins, 1962 to 1965

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.

Mao's anxieties were threefold. First, the Soviet experience: after Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev had denounced him in 1956 and pursued "revisionist" peaceful coexistence. Mao feared a Chinese Khrushchev waiting in the leadership. Second, the bureaucratisation of the Party: Mao called this "the bourgeoisie within the Party" (Dang nei zichanjieji). Third, his own historical reputation: a successful Cultural Revolution would refound his standing.

The Socialist Education Movement (1963 to 1966), the "Four Cleans" campaign in rural cadres, was Mao's first attempt to recover the initiative. Liu Shaoqi's wife Wang Guangmei led work teams that Mao felt deflected the campaign.

Triggering, 1965 to 1966

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.

The May 16 Notice (Wuyiliu tongzhi), drafted by Chen Boda and approved on 16 May 1966, established the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) under Chen Boda, with Jiang Qing as deputy and Kang Sheng, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan as members. The Notice attacked the previous "Five Person Group" under Peng Zhen (Beijing mayor) and called for the smashing of "those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture".

The Red Guards, summer 1966

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.

Mao's letter "Bombard the Headquarters" (Pao da silingbu) of 5 August 1966 named Liu Shaoqi as the target. The Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth CC (1 to 12 August 1966) adopted the Sixteen Points (Shiliu tiao) codifying the campaign and demoted Liu from second to eighth in the Politburo, with Lin Biao now second.

On 18 August 1966 Mao reviewed about 1 million Red Guards in Tiananmen, the first of eight rallies through November 1966. About 12 million Red Guards in total were reviewed. The Big Link-up (da chuanlian) allowed Red Guards to travel free, paralysing the railways.

The Destroy the Four Olds campaign, August to September 1966

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.

Persecution of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping

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.

Deng Xiaoping, "the No. 2 capitalist roader", was purged in 1966 and sent to work at a tractor plant in Jiangxi. He was recalled by Zhou Enlai in 1973, restored as Vice Premier, and purged again in April 1976 after Zhou's death.

Lin Biao at the Ninth Congress, 1969

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.

The Lin Biao incident, September 1971

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.

The "September 13 Incident" (Jiu yi san shijian) discredited the Cultural Revolution. The official designation of Lin as "ultra-left" was awkward given his prior canonisation.

The Gang of Four, 1972 to 1976

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.

The Down to the Countryside Movement, 1968 to 1980

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.

The end: 1976

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). Mao died on 9 September 1976. On 6 October 1976 the Gang of Four were arrested by Marshal Ye Jianying, Wang Dongxing, and the new Chairman Hua Guofeng.

Casualties

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.

Timeline

Historiography

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

Frank Dikoetter (The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 2016) drew on provincial archives and gave the revisionist view with at least 2 million deaths.

Andrew Walder (Fractured Rebellion, 2009; Agents of Disorder, 2019) is the principal sociologist of the Cultural Revolution, with quantitative county-by-county analysis.

Yang Su (Collective Killings in Rural China, 2011) documented mass killings in Guangxi and Guangdong, finding 400,000 to 1.5 million local deaths.

Maurice Meisner (Mao's China and After) treated the Cultural Revolution as the catastrophic working-out of Mao's utopian voluntarism.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (2005) treat the Cultural Revolution as Mao's personal vendetta against rivals.

Common exam traps

Reducing the Cultural Revolution to the Red Guard phase. 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).

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

Treating the Cultural Revolution as a youth movement. The Red Guards were the instrument; Mao and the CCRG were the directors.

In one sentence

Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 was launched by the May 16 Notice and conducted through the Central Cultural Revolution Group's Red Guards, the eight Tiananmen rallies of August to November 1966 mobilising about 12 million youths, the persecution of Liu Shaoqi (dead 12 November 1969) and Deng Xiaoping, the elevation and fall of Lin Biao in the September 13 incident of 1971, the rise of the Gang of Four against Zhou Enlai and Deng, and the Down to the Countryside displacement of about 17 million urban youths, at a cost of an estimated $1.5$ to $3$ million deaths and a generation's lost education, ending only with Mao's death in September 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in October.