Chinese Cultural Revolution

China is a country that is located in East Asia. China has the greatest population density in the world, with a population of over 1.35 billion people. China is the second largest country by land mass. China is a communist country that has jurisdiction over 22 Providences, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities, and two mostly self-governing regions. China has become one of the world’s fastest growing economies, has the world’s largest army, and has been recognized as a nuclear weapons state.

The Cultural Revolution in China started in 1966. Mao Zedong did not believe that the country’s communist leaders were taking China down the wrong path, and gathered some radical followers to help him attack current party leadership and reassert his authority. Mao wanted China to be a classless society where peasants and the working class were all equals. Mao started the revolution at a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee. He shut down schools so that he could use the country’s youth to help with the revolution. Students formed parliamentary groups called red guards, and they harassed China’s elderly and educated people who showed a lack of revolutionary spirit. The revolution was a very violent one, where people were bullied and harassed into having (or at least pretending to have) the same views as Mao.

The Cultural Revolution did not work out as well as Mao had hoped; it was not good for China’s economy, and the red guards got out of hand. The different groups of red guards would fight because they each thought they knew the best way to serve Mao. They turned on foreigners and foreign embassies, and even burned the British Embassy all the way down.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao was forcing his beliefs on everyone by producing a book of his quotes and having them everywhere where everyone would read them. He also had flyers of his teachings all over China so that everyone would remember his ways. There was an estimated 1.5 million deaths due to the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1969. People who were considered enemies of the Cultural Revolution were tortured in many ways, including public humiliation, beatings, imprisonment, rape, seizure of 

property, denial of medical attention, and much more.

Lu Shin Chi was given power back when Mao and another leader in the government both became chronically ill. There was still some strong Maoist believers who would not let Chi completely take over the government. Eventually, Lu Shin Chi resigned. This made Mao feel as though there was not another party opposing his beliefs, and he saw no need for the Cultural Revolution to Continue.