Liu Shaoqi Passes Away in Kaifeng, Henan
After enduring prolonged and brutal persecution and detention in Kaifeng, Henan, Liu Shaoqi passed away from illness in the early morning of November 12, 1969, and was cremated immediately.
After enduring prolonged and brutal persecution and detention in Kaifeng, Henan, Liu Shaoqi passed away from illness in the early morning of November 12, 1969, and was cremated immediately.
In June 1969, the Nixon administration, in order to improve relations with Beijing and create conditions for the U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam War, ordered the disbandment of the Seventh Fleet's permanent patrol unit in the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese and Soviet troops engaged in an armed conflict in the Zhenbao Island area; the scale of the fighting was small.
To avoid accountability for failed technological exploration and to meet its KPIs, the Soviet Ministry of Radio Engineering, which controlled resource allocation, suppressed the scientific community and chose to copy the American IBM 360 through reverse engineering, leaving domestic hardware development in permanent stagnation.
In 1969, China and the Soviet Union broke out in a deadly armed conflict at Zhenbao Island and other places.
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.
Zhang Langlang was arrested in Hangzhou on charges including viciously attacking central leaders. At the time, Yu Qiangsheng served as the head of the special investigation team.
Wen Jiabao, who graduated with a graduate degree in 1968, was labeled a rightist and sent to a farm in Jiuquan, Gansu for a year of reform-through-labor after speaking out against physical violence at a struggle session.
Han Xiu said his father died of a fever on the flight returning from Panama to Washington.
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.
In 1968, Hu Jintao left Tsinghua and was assigned to the Liujiaxia hydropower project unit in Gansu, where he worked for many years as an ordinary technician and worker with no chance of promotion.
In 1968, Jiang Qing announced Liu Shaoqi as a major special agent and traitor when receiving the Peking Opera Troupe. During the Cultural Revolution, numerous political figures and intellectuals suffered brutal persecution.
A mass rally to criticize Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping was held in Tiananmen Square. Liu Shaoqi held up the Constitution to protest and was beaten by Red Guards, while Wang Guangmei was also publicly humiliated and subsequently arrested.
After the Cultural Revolution began in 1967, Jiang Zemin was subjected to two years of reform through labor due to his family background and inappropriate remarks.
Not long after the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1967, Han Xiu arrived at the Xinjiang Corps, and thanks to his proficiency in Russian was able to communicate and interact with local Uyghur residents who spoke Russian.
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.
In December 1966, Taiwan established the world's first export processing zone in Kaohsiung, attracting foreign companies such as Philips and General Instrument to set up operations.
In November 1966, Sun Fo and 1,500 others jointly proposed launching the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement to counter the Cultural Revolution on the mainland; in July 1967, the Promotion Committee was established.
In September 1966, with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the state completely stopped issuing fixed dividends to former private industrialists and businessmen, prematurely terminating the buyout period and completely zeroing out the status and assets of former capitalists.
During the Cultural Revolution, Lao She suffered denunciation and beatings at the hands of the Writers and Artists Federation; his wife Hu Jieqing was unable to hold him back, and Lao She ultimately ended his life by the Taiping Lake.
Mao Zedong posted the big-character poster 'Bombard the Headquarters' at the plenary session, pointing the spearhead directly at Liu Shaoqi. Liu Shaoqi's ranking within the party plummeted, marking his loss of power.
On July 8, 1966, Mao Zedong wrote to Jiang Qing from Wuhan, saying that "great chaos under heaven leads to great order under heaven," and said that such great chaos would come again after seven or eight years.
In May 1966, China's Cultural Revolution began, and the political campaign continued for many years thereafter.
The Cultural Revolution took place between May 16, 1966 and October 1976, during which multiple rounds of mass political campaigns were carried out. The masses were required to praise Mao Zedong and perform the loyalty dance; those who refused might be subjected to struggle sessions or re-education through labor.
On May 16, 1966, the "May 16 Notification" was issued and the Cultural Revolution began. Intellectuals at schools of all levels were struck, and Lao She, Fu Lei and others were persecuted to death.
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.
The video narrator says a teacher in Tianfuli, Xujiahui, Shanghai, was repeatedly denounced by students, and was taken to denunciation sessions even while bedridden with a high fever; the family says the teacher was ultimately scalded to death with boiling water by students; no public record of this case can be 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.
After the relics of the Philadelphia gunboat were salvaged in 1964, they were transported to the museum.
Han Xiu said that with the launch of the Socialist Education Movement in 1964, class backgrounds were upgraded: in rural areas, middle peasants could be labeled as rich peasants and rich peasants as landlords, and many young people were consequently affected in their school advancement.
After Khrushchev was overthrown in 1964, Zhou Enlai and He Long went to Moscow to explore reconciliation. Soviet Defense Minister Malinovsky told He Long that the Soviets had gotten rid of Khrushchev, and the Chinese should also get rid of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was deeply shocked upon hearing this, and this incident had a profound impact on the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1964, two years before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Hu Jintao joined the Chinese Communist Party, and through the counselor system established by Tsinghua president Jiang Nanxiang, he was selected to serve as a political counselor at Tsinghua.
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.
From October 20 to November 21, 1962, China and India went to war simultaneously on the western and eastern sections of their border, with the eastern sector, southern Tibet, as the main battlefield.
Because the Three Years of Great Famine exposed numerous problems, the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference was convened. Officials expressed dissatisfaction with the Great Leap Forward at the conference, forcing Mao Zedong to make self-criticism and step back to the second line of leadership, while Liu Shaoqi took over frontline economic management authority.
Stephen Chow was born into an ordinary family in Hong Kong. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother raised him and his siblings on her own.
In 1962, a border war broke out between China and India. Miles Yu said that such wars stem from ideological disputes and have no necessary connection with territorial integrity; the territories occupied by the Chinese Communist Party were ultimately all given up.
Four African American students staged a nonviolent protest after being denied service at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, an event considered to have helped push for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1960, a US U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down while carrying out a reconnaissance mission over Soviet airspace, and pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured.