A Brief History
On June 27, 1981, the Chinese Communist Party issued its report on the “Cultural Revolution” that took place in China from 1966 until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. A program designed to “purge” China from political dissidents and traces of capitalism, the Cultural Revolution cost between 400,000 and 7.7 million Chinese lives, depending on the source.
Digging Deeper
Mao had fought the National Chinese under Chiang Kai Shek since before World War II until he took control in 1949, establishing Communist China and assuming the mantel of a dictator. Mao followed the usual dictator script, glorifying himself and creating a national cult of personality about him.
Mao’s was not a benevolent dictatorship, and may have resulted in as many as 80 million deaths of Chinese citizens. Even the CCP acknowledges some of his errors in its “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” report of 1981.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Captivating History. Cultural Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong. Captivating History, 2020.
Tse-Tung, Mao. The Little Red Book: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Independently published, 2021.
The featured image in this article, a Chinese-language propaganda poster from Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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