Why China still can’t make sense of the Cultural Revolution

If there is one certainty in contemporary Chinese politics, it’s that any mention of the Cultural Revolution, which began half a century ago in May 1966, must always be negative. The “turbulent decade” of the Cultural Revolution, as it is called by many within China, is regarded as an unmitigated disaster, an event that weakened and destroyed the country and the Communist Party, in which a group of radicals ultimately to be known as the “Gang of Four” bamboozled, misled and humiliated the country’s beloved chairman, Mao Zedong. Read more