Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (Chinese: 无产阶级文化大革命 wúchǎnjiējí wénhuà dàgémìng), also known simply as the Cultural Revolution or GPCR (Chinese: 文革 wéngé), was a series of policies enacted by the Communist Party of China with the stated goal of eliminating latent bourgeois and feudal influence in the People's Republic of China. The struggle lasted from May 1966 until the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976. It was and continues to be highly controversial: while the movement had some positive outcomes, such as increased equality for women and young people and greater political participation on the part of the working class and peasantry, it also led to serious political instability, violence and many deaths.

After the death of Mao, four of his close associates, now known as the Gang of Four, were blamed for the most extreme excesses of the GPCR. Deng Xiaoping further repudiated the GPCR itself starting in 1980. The modern Communist Party of China, which continues to express the Liu-Deng economic and theoretical position, considers the Cultural Revolution to have been a mistake attributable to the Gang of Four and, to some extent, Mao himself.