1949–1976, The Mao Era        Revolution        Korean War        Zhen Fan        Three-anti/five-anti campaigns        Hundred Flowers Campaign        Anti-Rightist Movement        Great Leap Forward            Great Chinese Famine        Cultural Revolution            Lin Biao            Gang of Four            Tiananmen Incident    1976–1989, Era of Reconstruction        Economic reform        Sino-Vietnamese War        Tiananmen protests    1989–2002, A Rising Power        One country, two systems            Hong Kong (post 1997)            Macau (post 1999)        Chinese reunification    2002–present, China Today        Sichuan Earthquake        The Beijing Olympics        Ürümqi 7·5 riots        Shanghai 2010 Expo

   See also:        Constitutional history         History of China         History of Beijing         History of Shanghai

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The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or simply the Cultural Revolution was a violent mass movement that resulted in social, political, and economic upheaval in the People’s Republic of China starting in 1966 and ending officially with Mao's death in 1976. It resulted in nation-wide chaos, economic disarray, and stagnation.

It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16, 1966; he alleged that liberal bourgeoise elements were permeating the party and society at large and that they wanted to restore capitalism. Mao insisted, in accordance with his theory of permanent revolution, that these elements should be removed through revolutionary violent class struggle by mobilizing China's youth who, responding to his appeal, then formed Red Guard groups around the country.

The movement subsequently spread into the military, urban workers, and the party leadership itself. Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, its active phase lasted until the death of Lin Biao in a plane crash in 1971. The power struggles and political instability between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 are now also widely regarded as part of the Revolution.

After Mao's death in 1976, forces within the party that opposed the Cultural Revolution, led by Deng Xiaoping, gained prominence, and most of the political, economic, and educational reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution were abandoned by 1978. The Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon ever since. The people involved in instituting the policies of the Cultural Revolution were persecuted. In its official historical judgment of the Cultural Revolution in 1981, the Party assigned chief responsibility to Mao Zedong, but also laid significant blame on Lin Biao and the Gang of Four for causing its worst excesses.

In 1958, after China’s first Five-Year Plan, Mao Zedong called for increased growth of "grassroots socialism", in an attempt to bring about a bottom-up approach to turn the country into a self-sufficient Communist society. To accomplish this goal, Mao began the Great Leap Forward, establishing special People's Communes in the countryside through the usage of collective labour and mass mobilization. Many communities were mobilized to produce a single commodity - steel, and Mao vowed to double agricultural production to twice 1957 levels.

The Great Leap was an economic failure. Industries went into turmoil because peasants were producing too much low-quality steel while other areas were neglected. Furthermore, uneducated low-income farmers were poorly equipped and ill-trained to produce steel, partially relying on backyard furnaces to achieve the production targets set by local cadres. Meanwhile, essential farm tools were melted down for steel, reducing harvest sizes. This led to a decline in the production of most goods except substandard pig iron and steel. To make matters worse, in order to avoid punishment, local authorities frequently exaggerated production numbers, thus hiding and intensifying the problem for several years.

Having barely recovered from decades of war, the Chinese economy was again in shambles. In 1958, the party had no choice but to admit that production numbers were exaggerated. In addition, much of the steel produced was impure and useless. In the meantime, chaos in the collectives, bad weather, and exports of food necessary to secure hard currencies resulted in the Great Chinese Famine. Food was in desperate shortage, and production fell dramatically. According to various sources, the death toll during this period was some 20 to 30 million.