Cultural Revolution · Full chronicle and history

On August 19, 2026, the Wuzhou Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau in Guangxi announced a typical case: a local private Cultural Revolution museum was forcibly shut down by the civil affairs authorities for carrying out activities without registering in accordance with the law.

On March 14, 2012, Wen Jiabao delivered a speech at the Two Sessions Chinese and foreign press conference, emphasizing that without political structural reform, economic structural reform cannot succeed, and warning that the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution could happen again.

In March 2012, Wen Jiabao spoke about reform of the system of Party and state leadership at his final press conference as premier, warning that if political reform stalled, the gains of economic reform could be lost again and even a historical tragedy such as the Cultural Revolution could happen once more; the next day, Bo Xilai was removed from his post as Chongqing Party Secretary.

On September 21, 1998, television networks broadcast footage of President Bill Clinton testifying before a federal grand jury, addressing his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and defending his denial of the affair.

The Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, repudiating the Cultural Revolution and distinguishing Mao Zedong's later errors from Mao Zedong Thought.

In 1981, a CCP Central Committee plenary session passed the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party, completely negating the Cultural Revolution, but the two slogans at Xinhua Gate — "Long live the great Chinese Communist Party" and "Long live the invincible Mao Zedong Thought" — were not removed.

On June 26, 1979, the "Opinion on Restricting the Use of Wen Gang" was formally revoked and Wen Gang was rehabilitated.

After Mao Zedong's death, in 1977, with the support of Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, China restored the gaokao (college entrance exam), allowing many children of families persecuted during the Cultural Revolution to change their fate through the exam. Subsequently, in the 1980s, overseas scholarships and government-sponsored study abroad programs emerged, and large numbers of Chinese students went to the United States for further studies.

On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong passed away. Newspapers across the country reported his death with black borders and large-scale memorial activities were held. The grassroots society was plunged into an extreme political atmosphere, with the public required to participate in collective mourning. Those with problematic family backgrounds faced severe political suppression during this period.

Deng Xiaoping again wrote to Mao Zedong, engaging in sycophantic praise and reiterating his guarantee never to reverse verdicts.

Lin Biao, the successor handpicked by Mao Zedong, was accused of staging a coup and died in 1971 in a plane crash shrouded in mystery while flying to Moscow.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong denounced Liu Shaoqi as a traitor, spy, and labor scab, calling him a Khrushchev lurking at his side. Liu Shaoqi was ultimately tortured to death during the Cultural Revolution.

Deng Xiaoping wrote an extremely humble self-statement, admitting he was a capitalist roader and pledging never to reverse verdicts.

During the Cultural Revolution, the two rival Red Guard factions at Tsinghua University fought a hundred-day armed clash, using improvised cannons, land mines, grenades, semi-automatic rifles, and even homemade tanks, leaving 18 dead, more than 1,100 wounded, and over 30 permanently disabled.

During the Cultural Revolution in 1967, with Mao Zedong's approval, Red Guards posted two slogans on both sides of Xinhua Gate at Zhongnanhai — “Long live the great Chinese Communist Party” and “Long live the invincible Mao Zedong Thought” — and they remain in place as of 2025.

In 1967, Wang Guangmei, wife of Liu Shaoqi, was publicly denounced at Tsinghua University, with Tsinghua President Jiang Nanxiang and Bo Yibo accompanying her in the struggle session.

Deng Xiaoping was labeled the second-numbered capitalist road faction within the Party, was sent to labor reform in Jiangxi, and his son Deng Pufang was tortured by Red Guards, resulting in disability.

In early 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Pu Xuezhai jumped into the water with his younger sister and died; his body was never found.

During the Cultural Revolution, a young worker in Shanghai was handed over by his work unit's security department to the police and sentenced to two years of re-education through labor after criticizing the bad-tasting noodles served in the canteen on Mao Zedong's birthday.

During the Cultural Revolution, the houses of families of former capitalists in Shanghai were confiscated by their work units or rebel factions, and many people were driven out of their own homes, left with only one room or even no housing at all; some were stripped of their clothes and forced to hand over their property, and many people, to save their lives, laid gold bars and silver dollars out in their homes to let the Red Guards take them away in raids. There were even cases of apprentices seizing their masters' houses and relatives turning against each other.

After the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, Hu Jintao was repeatedly subjected to struggle sessions and forced to write self-criticisms at Tsinghua because he was regarded as a lackey of Jiang Nanxiang's revisionist education line and as coming from a petty-bourgeois background; he neither defended himself nor took part in struggling others.

During the Cultural Revolution, Hu Jingzhi, Hu Jintao's father who was far away in Taizhou, was dragged out and denounced in the movement, framed on charges of embezzling funds from a cooperative shop, and ultimately died in depression.

Because the 10th Panchen Lama cooperated with the CCP in negotiations to seek benefits for Tibetans, he was placed under house arrest and denounced in struggle sessions from 1963 to 1977. After the Cultural Revolution ended, he was rehabilitated, and from then on always served as a buffering force between the central authorities and the Tibetan region.

When the CCP came to power, it painted a blueprint of a free ideal country for the world, but the reality was the opposite of the truth revealed by archives.

The Comintern dispatched Kinski to China, assisting Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in founding the Chinese Communist Party.

Yuan Shikai died in 1916, and his attempt to declare himself emperor ended with him; subsequently, China entered the Warlord Era.