IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

The Impact of the Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution attacked all forms of traditional Chinese culture.  All foreign influences were ridiculed. New operas, poems, music, paintings were produced that glorified the revolution and the people of China. Temples, shrines, works of art and gardens were destroyed. Western music and other forms of culture were banned.

The attacks on Chinese traditions were the work of Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao. While Mao was trying to regain his pre-eminent position in China, Jiang was leading a personal crusade to destroy everything that had existed before the Cultural Revolution. After Mao’s death, Jiang became one of the ‘Gang of Four’ that attempted to seize power in China. The four were eventually arrested and put on trial.

The main effect of the Cultural Revolution was to undermine and destroy all forms of authority. Any attempt to challenge the Red Guards or the Thoughts of Chairman Mao was met with accusations of being counter-revolutionary. The authority of the central government was seriously weakened and industrial production came to a standstill. Teachers were a prime target for attack and as a result, all schools, colleges and universities were closed for two years. Even the CCP was unable to operate successfully and many local organisations were destroyed. In the People's Liberation Army (PLA) all ranks were abolished.
 
Soon rival groups of Red Guards began to clash with one another in efforts to prove their loyalty to Chairman Mao. Factories also set up groups of workers, which competed with the students to hunt out counter-revolutionaries. Individual took the opportunity to do away with rivals by accusing them of opposing the Cultural Revolution. Mao's opponents in the Party leaderships were all accused of 'revisionism', capitalist ideas, and were arrested and dismissed from their offices.

Within two years the country was in complete chaos. Law and order had virtually broken down and the Chinese economy was in chaos. All of the industrial and progress that had been made in the early 1960s was destroyed almost overnight. Many factories were at a standstill and agriculture reverted to traditional manual labour. Many ‘reactionaries’, people who were accused of supporting old ideas, were sent to work as labourers in the countryside. Finally even Mao was forced to order the Red Guards to stop their attacks in 1969. The PLA was called in to restore order. But in fact continued the attacks, often with even more brutality. The Cultural Revolution eventually came to an end in 1971.

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