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| 1965–68 |
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| THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION was launched by Chairman Mao. This movement attempted to transform radically the very consciousness of the Chinese people, to keep alive the revolution begun by Mao, to attack bureaucratism and complacency among Communist cadres and officials, and ultimately to revolutionize the nature of China's state and society. At the broadest level, it was Mao's effort to transform complacency with an everpresent revolutionary ethic. Mao and his many supporters also sought to retaliate against his critics, who had proliferated since the disastrous days of the Great Leap Forward. To accomplish these goals, Mao was prepared, if necessary, to demolish the very party and state institutions he had built up. The cataclysmic results of this movement—including the shutting down of all institutions of higher education for several years, the dislocations of large numbers of people, and the widespread abuses of marauding Red Guards—would unfold in the ensuing three years. | 1 |
| Mao's first salvo comprised an attack on “reactionary bourgeois ideology” and bureaucrats whom he described as the “Beijing Black Gang.” A duel resulted, in which Lin Biao and the army supported Mao, while Liu Shaoqi (head of state of the PRC) and Deng Tuo (deputy mayor of Beijing) retained control of the party apparatus and did not side with Mao. | 2 |
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| 1966, March 26 |
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| Liu departed on a trip to Pakistan. On the same day, Peng Zhen (b. 1899), mayor of Beijing and vice premier, disappeared—an early victim of the purge. | 3 |
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| April 18 |
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| The PLA newspaper called for a “great cultural socialist revolution” directed against “persons in authority in the Communist Party who have taken the capitalist road,” namely, those who relied too heavily on expertise and incentives in industry and not sufficiently on ideological purity. This stance represented the culmination of a conflict between the Military Affairs Committee of the CCP (led by Lin Biao, who supported Mao, emphasized ideology, and believed in popular mass action) and the Party Secretariat (led by Deng Xiaoping (b. 1904), and supported by Liu Shaoqi, who advocated more cautious, traditional approaches to both internal and foreign issues). | 4 |
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| May |
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| Mao's supporters designated his thought, codified in Quotations from Chairman Mao (or The Little Red Book), as the ideological weapon of choice for the Cultural Revolution. | 5 |
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| June 1 |
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| The Maoists seized control of the People's Daily and on June 4 took over the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. On July 18, Mao returned to Beijing. | 6 |
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| Aug. 1 |
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| In the Central Committee of the CCP, Mao engineered the promotion of Lin Biao as first vice chairman and demoted Liu Shaoqi. The party announced the FORMATION OF THE RED GUARDS, who would implement the assault on dissidents and target institutions throughout the country. The Cultural Revolution had come to fruition. The Red Guards, mostly younger students, soon brought the country to the verge of chaos: they fought pitched battles, carried out summary executions, drove thousands to suicide, and forced tens of thousands into labor camps, usually far from home. Intellectuals were sent to the countryside to learn the virtues of peasant life. Countless art and cultural treasures as well as books were destroyed, and universities were shut down. Insulting posters and other personal attacks, often motivated by blind revenge, were mounted against educators, experts in all fields, and other alleged proponents of “old thought” or “old culture,” namely, anything pre-Maoist. Liu Shaoqi (among others) was forced to undergo “self-criticism,” placed under house arrest, ultimately deprived of all power (Oct. 1968), and driven to his death through lack of adequate health care after mistreatment in prison. Many other high officials were humiliated, including Zhu De, the founder of the Red Army. Eventually the turmoil and confusion reached such a state that factional fighting among contending cliques of Red Guards took place in many parts of the country, requiring measures to check the disorder. | 7 |
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| Nov. 22 |
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| Mao's secretary, Chen Boda (b. 1904), was appointed chairman of the Central Cultural Revolutionary Committee, of which Mao's wife, Jiang Qing (1914–91), was vice chair. This committee, together with Lin Biao's Military Affairs Committee and Zhou Enlai's State Council, constituted a ruling triumvirate. | 8 |
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