China's Cultural Revolution Timeline

Using your printed timeline, complete the following:

• Read the timeline and annotate
• Mark what you think are the three most important events with an asterisk (*)
• Answer the following on the back of the timeline in complete sentences:

1. What were Mao’s goals for the Cultural Revolution?
2. What were some of the outcomes of the Cultural Revolution?
3. Based on the timeline, why might teenagers have supported the Cultural Revolution?

Next, create a visual timeline on a google slide or drawing.  Choose 7 of the 9 events from the timeline.  Put them in order.  Add an image that represents each event.

October 1949:       Mao declared victory in the Communist revolution and established the People’s Republic of China.

May 1966:             Articles in the state controlled papers introduced the idea of a “Cultural Revolution.”

Red Guard groups, made up of Chinese youth, emerged throughout China.

Aug. 1966:            Mao officially launched the “Cultural Revolution” with a speech at the Chinese Communist Party.

Oct. 1966:             Mao called for the Red Guards to destroy the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.

Jan. 1967:             Red Guards achieved the overthrow of provincial party committee officials and replaced them with radicals.

Feb. 1967:             Top-level Communist Party officials called for an end of the Cultural Revolution, but Mao continued to support it.

Summer 1967:      Mao replaced pre-Cultural Revolution party officials with radicals who supported the revolution.

1968:                     On Mao’s orders, the Red Guards were broken up in the “rustification movement,” where individual teenagers were “sent down” to villages throughout China to “learn from the peasants.”

April 1969:            Mao declared “victory” of the Cultural Revolution and supported Lin Biao as his new successor.