In China beginning in 1966, there was a Cultural Revolution. Hot on the heels of the mass-starvation that followed the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, the Maoist Red Guard set about tearing down what remained of pre-Revolutionary China. The Four Olds – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits – were extirpated as being the weapons of the Five Black Categories: rich farmers, landlords, counter-revolutionaries, right wingers, and ‘bad elements.’ The death toll was a paltry one to two million, dwarfed by the thirty to forty-five million who died thanks to the Great Leap Forward. With Mao’s death in 1976, the Cultural Revolution, which had exhausted China, ground to a halt.
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Our Failed Cultural Revolution
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In China beginning in 1966, there was a Cultural Revolution. Hot on the heels of the mass-starvation that followed the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, the Maoist Red Guard set about tearing down what remained of pre-Revolutionary China. The Four Olds – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits – were extirpated as being the weapons of the Five Black Categories: rich farmers, landlords, counter-revolutionaries, right wingers, and ‘bad elements.’ The death toll was a paltry one to two million, dwarfed by the thirty to forty-five million who died thanks to the Great Leap Forward. With Mao’s death in 1976, the Cultural Revolution, which had exhausted China, ground to a halt.