The CCP leadership circulated the “16 May Notification”, a Politburo document warning of “bourgeois” forces inside the Party and repudiating earlier restraints on cultural-ideological struggle. It is widely treated as the political signal that initiated the Cultural Revolution.
The CCP set up the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) to direct and coordinate the movement, sidelining existing Party structures and giving radical leaders major influence over propaganda and campaign tactics.
A People’s Daily editorial, commonly summarized as “Sweep Away All Cow Demons and Snake Spirits,” urged mass struggle against alleged “monsters and demons,” helping legitimize escalating denunciations and attacks on targeted groups.
At the 11th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, the Party approved the “Decision…Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (often called the Sixteen Articles), providing formal programmatic guidance for mass mobilization and political struggle.
Mao Zedong “received” Red Guards at a massive rally in Tiananmen Square; a student leader (Song Binbin) famously placed a Red Guard armband on Mao. The event publicly validated Red Guard activism and accelerated nationwide mobilization.
Red Guards launched a drive to destroy the “Four Olds” (old customs, culture, habits, ideas), targeting cultural sites, books, religious artifacts, and everyday symbols—an emblematic push to remake society through revolutionary purification.
Radical rebel groups, backed by key Cultural Revolution leaders, overthrew Shanghai’s local Party authorities during the January Storm, briefly establishing the Shanghai People’s Commune before it was reorganized as a revolutionary committee—an influential model for “power seizure” politics.
Fighting between rival mass organizations in Wuhan escalated into the Wuhan Incident, exposing severe factionalism and tensions between local PLA units and central authorities during the high-intensity phase of the Cultural Revolution.
Mao’s call to send urban youth “up to the mountains and down to the countryside” helped drive the late-1960s expansion of rustication, moving large numbers of students and young people to rural areas as a social and political reordering measure.
The 9th Party Congress met after years of upheaval, reshaping Party leadership and affirming a Cultural Revolution political line. It also elevated Lin Biao’s status as Mao’s close associate and successor in the Party constitution.
Lin Biao died when a military Trident aircraft crashed in Mongolia. The episode triggered a major political shock and subsequent campaigns to denounce Lin, reshaping elite politics in the later Cultural Revolution period.
A new ideological campaign began to attack Lin Biao’s legacy and mobilize historical-cultural critique (especially of Confucius), later being used within elite struggles and debates over policy direction.
Zhou Enlai’s death prompted widespread public grief and intensified leadership conflict in Beijing, with mourning becoming entangled in disputes over the Cultural Revolution’s course and succession politics.
Large crowds gathered in Tiananmen Square around Qingming to mourn Zhou Enlai; the gatherings turned into a broader protest and were suppressed, later becoming a key marker of late-Cultural-Revolution political conflict.
A catastrophic earthquake struck Tangshan (Hebei), causing massive destruction and loss of life amid a year of acute political transition near the Cultural Revolution’s end.
Mao’s death removed the dominant figure of the era, accelerating leadership realignment and setting the stage for decisive moves against radical factions associated with Cultural Revolution politics.
Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and key allies (the Gang of Four) were arrested, a pivotal break with Cultural Revolution radicalism and a major step toward political normalization.
The 11th CCP National Congress formally declared the Cultural Revolution concluded, while also issuing a mixed political verdict that criticized the Gang of Four yet continued to affirm certain “achievements” of the period.
The Party adopted the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the PRC,” providing an authoritative CCP assessment that repudiated the Cultural Revolution as a grave mistake and catastrophe.
Cultural Revolution and Mass Political Campaigns (1966–1976)
