Cultural Revolution & Gang of 4

The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China from 1966 until 1976. Launched by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve Chinese Communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Mao Zedong Thought (known outside China as Maoism) as the dominant ideology in the Communist Party of China. The Revolution marked Mao's return to a position of power after a period of less radical leadership to recover from the failures of the Great Leap Forward, whose leftist policies led to a famine and approximately 30 million deaths only five years earlier. The Cultural Revolution paralyzed China politically, damaged its economy and society, and killed an estimated 500,000 to 2,000,000 people.

The Gang of Four controlled the power organs of the Communist Party of China through the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, although it remains unclear which major decisions were made by Mao Zedong and carried out by the Gang, and which were the result of the Gang of Four's own planning.

The Gang of Four, together with general Lin Biao who died in 1971, were labeled the two major "counter-revolutionary forces" of the Cultural Revolution and officially blamed by the Chinese government for the worst excesses of the societal chaos that ensued during the ten years of turmoil. Their downfall on October 6, 1976, a mere month after Mao's death, brought about major celebrations on the streets of Beijing and marked the end of a turbulent political era in China.

Their fall did not amount to a rejection of the Cultural Revolution as such. It was organized by the new leader, Premier Hua Guofeng, and others who had risen during that period. Significant repudiation of the entire process of change came later, with the return of Deng Xiaoping at the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and Hua's gradual loss of authority.Read more