Event Record
The Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976
From central mobilization, Red Guards, and factional conflict to military restoration, purges, rehabilitation, and memory management.
Contents
Event scope
From central mobilization, Red Guards, and factional conflict to military restoration, purges, rehabilitation, and memory management.
Timeline
- Record the policy or political conflict at its starting point without projecting later outcomes backward.
- Separate central decisions, local implementation, collective action, military or police intervention, and later accountability.
- State time, place, population, and method for every number.
- Label official conclusions, foreign-government archives, scholarship, and testimony separately.
Official response
The Chinese official historical account appears in [1]. The event file preserves that account and compares it with contemporaneous policy, statistical change, external archives, and regional records.
Evidentiary disputes
Unreleased meeting records, local rosters, and death or detention files limit precise attribution. Unknowns remain explicit rather than being replaced by the highest or lowest estimate. [3] [7]
Sources
Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of the PRC since 1949primary-recordUnavailable
Chronology of One Hundred Years of the CCPprimary-recordUnavailable
Library of Congress China Country Studygovernment-reportLive
CCP Central Committee May 16 Circularprimary-recordLive
Sixteen Points on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolutionprimary-recordLive
Bombard the Headquarters—My Big-Character Posterprimary-recordLive
UK National Archives Resource on the Cultural Revolutiongovernment-reportLive
Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966–1971academic-researchRedirected
The Political Legacy of Violence during China's Cultural Revolutionacademic-researchRedirected
Anatomy of a Regional Civil War: Guangxi, 1967–1968academic-researchRedirected
Official Historical Inquiries into Guangxi's Cultural Revolutionacademic-researchRedirected
Economic Legacies of the Cultural Revolutionacademic-researchLive
The Early Cultural Revolution, 1966–1968academic-researchRedirected
Demobilization and Restoration in the Late Cultural Revolutionacademic-researchRedirected
Harvard Fairbank Center Archive on Cultural Revolution Big-Character Postersacademic-researchLive
Foreign Relations during the Cultural Revolutionacademic-researchRedirected
The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the Cambridge History of Communismacademic-researchRedirected