China’s Maoists still a force 50 years after the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution

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Fifty years after Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong unleashed the decade-long Cultural Revolution to reassert his authority and revive his radical communist agenda, the spirit of modern China’s founder still exerts a powerful pull.

Millions of people were persecuted, publicly humiliated, beaten or killed during the upheaval, as zealous factionalism metastasized countrywide, tearing apart Chinese society at a most basic level.

Student groups tortured their own teachers, and children were made to watch mobs beat their own parents condemned as counterrevolutionaries. Gangs engaging in “armed struggle” killed at least a half million people while countless more committed suicide, unable to cope with relentless persecution.

It was only in 1981 — five years after Mao’s death — that China’s government officially pronounced the Cultural Revolution “a catastrophe.”