Red Guards riot The revolution aimed to destroy the Four Olds and establish the corresponding Four News, which ranged from changing of names and cutting of hair to ransacking homes, vandalizing cultural treasures, and desecrating temples.
Academics and intellectuals , one of China's foremost
missile scientists, was beaten to death by a mob in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution (1968). This caused
Zhou Enlai to order special protection for key technical experts. Academics and
intellectuals were regarded as the "
Stinking Old Ninth" and were widely persecuted. Many were sent to rural labor camps such as the
May Seventh Cadre School. The prosecution of the Gang of Four revealed that 142,000 cadres and teachers in the education circles were persecuted. Academics, scientists, and educators who died included
Xiong Qinglai,
Jian Bozan, Wu Han,
Rao Yutai,
Wu Dingliang,
Yao Tongbin and
Zhao Jiuzhang. As of 1968, among the 171 senior members who worked at the headquarters of
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, 131 were persecuted. Among the members of the academy, 229 died. As of September 1971, more than 4,000 staff members of China's nuclear center in
Qinghai had been persecuted, while more than 310 were disabled, over 40 committed suicide, and 5 were
executed. Despite the hardships, some significant achievements came in science and technology: scientists tested the first missile, created China's first
hydrogen bomb and launched China's first satellite in the "
Two Bombs, One Satellite" program. Many health personnel were deployed to the countryside as
barefoot doctors. Some farmers were given informal medical training, and health-care centers were established in rural communities. This process led to a marked improvement in health and life expectancy.
Education system Schools and universities were closed at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. During this time university, senior middle, and junior middle school students took part in
Red Guard activities from 1966–1968. Elementary and middle schools gradually reopened after 1968. Universities were closed until 1970, and most remained closed until 1972. Post-secondary education was disrupted the most and suffered the greatest losses in quantity, changes in quality, and time passed before institutions reopened. Elementary schools were the least impacted; a small number of schools continued to hold classes without serious interruption, while some others only lost a semester. Most middle schools only resumed classes after the end of the Red Guard movement in 1968. Secondary school classes of 1966, 1967, and 1968 were unable to graduate on time later and became known as the "Old Three Cohort (老三届)". During this time, older cohorts were required to take part in the previously optional
Down to the Countryside Movement. In the post-Mao period, many of those forcibly moved attacked the policy as a violation of their human rights.
Education system reform The education system was to be thoroughly transformed as introduced in CCP’s “16-Point Decision” on 9 August 1966. University and senior middle school examination methods would be reworked so they no longer resembled the bourgeois format. Industrial universities were established in factories to supply technical and engineering programs for industrial workers, inspired by Mao's July 1968 remarks advocating
vocational education.
Gao Mobo observes that in many underprivileged areas, political campaigns brought improvements in education and public health.
School experiences Students from capitalist households often received poor treatment from peers and instructors in schools during the Cultural Revolution. Writing about her experiences as a student from such a household,
Xinran discussed how instructors forbade her from taking part in song or dance activities with other girls in her class because of her family’s status. Additionally, Xinran was not allowed to sit or stand in the front row during lessons despite her poor eyesight and short height; schools preserved the front rows for the children of peasants, workers, and soldiers as they were the “next generation of the revolution." Formal literacy measurements did not resume until the 1980s. Some counties in
Zhanjiang had literacy rates as low as 59% 20 years after the revolution. This was amplified by the elimination of qualified teachers—many districts were forced to rely on students to teach. Radical policies provided many in rural communities with middle school education for the first time.
Slogans and rhetoric '', with "revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified" written on a flag next to him, 1967 Huang claimed that the Cultural Revolution had massive effects on Chinese society because of the extensive use of political slogans. He claimed that slogans played a central role in rallying Party leadership and citizens. For example, the slogan "to rebel is justified" () affected many views. This changed during the CR. These slogans were an effective method of "thought reform", mobilizing millions in a concerted attack upon the subjective world, "while at the same time reforming their objective world."
Arts and literature In 1966,
Jiang Qing advanced the
Theory of the Dictatorship of the Black Line. Those perceived to be bourgeois, anti-socialist or anti-Mao (black line) should be cast aside, and called for the creation of new literature and arts. For instance,
Mei Zhi and her husband were sent to a tea farm in
Lushan County, Sichuan. She did not resume writing until the 1980s. In 1970, the CCP came to view the
Ministry of Culture as so disruptive that it decided to dissolve the Ministry and establish a Culture Group within the
State Council in an effort to rein in cultural politics. The literary situation eased after 1972, as more were allowed to write, and many provincial literary periodicals resumed publication, but the majority of writers still could not work. Their narratives begin with them oppressed by
misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of internal strength and the CCP. Revolution-themed songs instead were promoted, and songs such as "
Ode to the Motherland", "
Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman", "
The East Is Red" and "
Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China" were either written or became popular during this period. "The East Is Red", especially, became popular; it
de facto supplanted "
March of the Volunteers" (lyrics author
Tian Han persecuted to death) as the national anthem of China, though the latter was later restored to its previous place. "Quotation songs", in which Mao's quotations were set to music, were particularly popular during the early years of the Cultural Revolution. Composer Li Jiefu first published quotation songs in ''People's Daily
in September 1966 and they were promoted thereafter as a means for studying Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong''. Records of quotation songs were played over loudspeakers, their primary means of distribution, According to the principle of the "three prominences," the good are more prominent than the bad, the very good are more prominent than the good, and the one outstanding figure is more prominent than the very good. Among the most significant visual works of the Cultural Revolution was Liu Chunhua's 1967 oil painting,
Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan. Red Guards from fine arts academies organized large art exhibitions, often in cooperation with rebel groups in work units or the army, which included many amateur art works. The two main posters genres were the big-character poster or
dazibao and commercial propaganda poster. • The
dazibao presented slogans, poems, commentary and graphics often posted on walls in public spaces, factories and communes. Mao wrote his own
dazibao at Beijing University on 5 August 1966, calling on the people to "Bombard the Headquarters". After decreasing in prominence throughout the 1980s, Cultural Revolution posters became prominent in public life again in the 1990s in connection with
red tourism, as collectibles, in commercial advertising, and in contemporary art. In contemporary China, they continue to be reproduced in large amounts and sold commercially. Historic posters have been the subject of exhibitions and auctions, including in the United States and Europe. Among the most prominent examples of this style included the peasant paintings of Huxian. Applied in the literary context, the principle of the three prominences was that texts should demonstrate the struggle between revolutionary and reactionary forces in a stark and
dichotomous manner.
Film The
Four Hundred Films to be Criticized booklet was distributed, and film directors and actors/actresses were criticized with some tortured and imprisoned. No feature films were produced in mainland China for seven years apart from a few approved "Model dramas" and highly ideological films. A notable example is
Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. China rejected Hollywood films and most foreign films. Mobile film units brought
Chinese cinema to the countryside and were crucial to the standardization and popularization of culture during this period, particularly including revolutionary model operas. The release of the filmed versions of the revolutionary model operas resulted in a re-organization and expansion of China's film exhibition network. Numerous valuable old books, paintings, and other cultural relics were burnt. Later
archaeological excavation and preservation after the destructive period were protected, and several significant discoveries, such as the
Terracotta Army and the
Mawangdui, occurred after the peak of the Revolution. After the most violent phase, the attack on traditional culture continued in 1973 with the
Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-Confucius Campaign as part of the struggle against moderate Party elements.
Media During the early period of the Cultural Revolution,
freedom of the press in China was at its peak. While the number of newspapers declined in this period, the number of independent publications by mass political organizations grew. According to
China's National Bureau of Statistics, the number of newspapers dropped from 343 in 1965, to 49 in 1966, and then to a 20th-century low of 43 in 1967. From 1966 to 1969, at least 5,000 new broadsheets by independent political groups were published. Several Red Guard organizations also operated independent printing presses to publish newspapers, articles, speeches, and
big-character posters. For example, the largest student organization in Shanghai, the Red Revolutionaries, established a newspaper that had a print run of 800,000 copies by the end of 1966. == Foreign relations ==