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and destroying the artefacts inside. They

renamed China’s streets, dispensing with

‘feudal’ names; they attacked and shamed

people with western hairstyles or shoes

fashionable in Hong Kong. One group

announced that traffic lights should be

re-sequenced, with a red light for ‘go’ –

after all, was it not counter-revolutionary to

believe that red meant ‘stop’?

Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, formed with him

a ‘Cultural Revolution Group’ that now

seized power. She took a leading role in

setting an austere new cultural policy that

authorised performance of only eight model

plays and ‘revolutionary operas’. Foreign,

‘reactionary’ and ‘feudal’ music, art and

literature were suppressed.

DISORGANISED CHAOS

Seeing the results of the ‘red terror’, Mao’s

adherents modified their endorsement in

1967, but the chaos proved difficult to

control. All over China people realised that

there could be no riding out this storm. If

they were not involved, they could not win

• and if they did not win, they stood a
  chance of losing everything and being
  damned for life as ‘counter-revolutionaries’
  or ‘black elements’. So faction fought
  faction to seize the ‘headquarters’ and
  defend the chairman. From 1967 to 1969
  they fought with loudspeakers, pamphlets
  and posters; they fought with their fists,
  then armed with sticks and clubs; then
  they fought with guns, tanks and
  warplanes. Whole suburbs of major cities
  were wrecked.
  As the country collapsed into civil war,
  Mao called on the army to step in, and Lin
  Biao’s forces imposed order on the warring
  factions, often with further violence.
  A ‘Campaign to cleanse the class ranks’
  followed; hundreds of thousands more
  were purged and many killed, as they were
  in further campaigns in 1970–72.
  The Red Guards, idealistic heralds of the
  revolution, were brutally dispensed with,
  REX-SHUTTERSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES/AKG IMAGES and millions of them were sent from the

Liu Shaoqi

Leader who

instituted

economic

reforms but was

denounced in the

Cultural

Revolution

Lin Biao

Mao’s army chief

and annointed

heir, killed in

a plane crash in

1971, allegedly

after planning

a coup

Deng Xiaoping

An economic

reformer toppled

in the Cultural

Revolution, Deng

returned to

power after

Mao’s death

Jiang Qing

Mao’s wife

was a key

member of the

Cultural

Revolution

Group that

came to power

in 1966

Mao Zedong applauds a parade of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. These young militants followed Mao’s call in early

August 1966 to defend the party from a ‘white terror’

BBC History Magazine

1967

Red Guards seize control of

the Chinese foreign

ministry, and storm and burn

down the British Mission in

Beijing. Mao starts to move

against them, ordering in the

army to restore order.

1969

Chinese and Soviet military

clash on their common

border. Mass campaigns are

launched in China to dig

air-raid shelters and prepare

for war. The Chinese army

suppresses factional fighting.

1971

Concerned about its

international isolation,

China signals its desire

to re-open relations

with the US. President

Richard Nixon is

receptive.

1972

Nixon visits

China and

meets Mao.

Other western

powers follow

suit.

1976

The Tangshan earthquake

kills 500,000. Mao dies in

September, and the Cultural

Revolution Group (aka the

Gang of Four) is arrested.

The end of the Cultural

Revolution is proclaimed.