Home>Course>[CHES5105] Selected Themes on Chinese History: The Cultural Revolution>CHES5105

The 2021 ‘Resolution on History’ reaffirmed the Communist Party of China’s official renunciation of the Cultural Revolution in an earlier party resolution on certain historical questions written in 1981, which stated that the revolutionary social movement from 1966 to 1976 was ‘an extremely bitter lesson’. The new resolution, in fact, reasserted that Mao Zedong’s mistakes and the many crimes of Lin Biao’s military cabal and the Gang of Four ‘brought disaster to the country and the people, resulting in ten years of domestic turmoil which caused the Party, the country, and the people to suffer the most serious losses and setbacks since the founding of the People’s Republic’ in 1949. This class will explore the origins of the Cultural Revolution, trace its course between 1966 and 1976, and discuss its legacy today using a chronological and thematic approach to the study of this important historical event. 

Week 1: Introduction: The Chinese Revolution

Week 2: Introduction: Origins of the Cultural Revolution

Week 3: Introduction: Causes of the Cultural Revolution

Week 4: The First Act: Hai Rui Dismissed from Office

Week 5: Chaos in the Halls of Culture: Campuses Join the Revolution

Week 6: Culture of Violence: Rise and Fall of the Red Guards

Week 7: Attack on Bourgeois Culture: The Four Olds

Week 8: Cult of Personality: Mao as a Cultural Icon

Week 9: Down to the Countryside: Urban Youth Get Cultured

Week 10: Struggle for Succession: A Fractured Political Culture

Week 11: The Final Act: Mao’s Death and the Arrest of the Gang of Four

Week 12: Remembering the Cultural Revolution

Week 13: Legacy of the Cultural Revolution