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Mao’s China, 1945–76

The effects of the Cultural Revolution

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

The purge of officials, the fates of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Lin Biao, closed schools, the lost generation, families and religion, falling output, lost managers, city youth in the villages and Dazhai.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What happened to the party's own officials during the Cultural Revolution?

Key term

How did students win a university place once the universities reopened in the early 1970s?

Key term

Why is the youth of the Cultural Revolution called a lost generation?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What happened to the party's own officials during the upheaval?

    Model answer

    A majority of senior cadres were denounced, sacked or sent to labour, and around three million officials were disgraced.

  2. 2

    What became of Liu Shaoqi?

    Model answer

    He was denounced as China's Khrushchev, expelled from the party in 1968, and died in prison in 1969 after being refused medical treatment.

  3. 3

    What became of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1960s?

    Model answer

    He lost all his posts and was sent to work in a tractor factory in the countryside, and his son was crippled falling from a window.

  4. 4

    How did Lin Biao rise so high, and how did he fall?

    Model answer

    He was written into the party rules in 1969 as Mao's successor, then died in a plane crash in 1971 while fleeing after a suspected plot.

  5. 5

    When did schools and universities close, and how long did they stay shut?

    Model answer

    They closed in 1966; most schools reopened within a couple of years, but universities took in almost no students until about 1970.

  6. 6

    How did students win a university place once places existed again?

    Model answer

    By their class background and a recommendation for political loyalty from their work unit, since entrance examinations had been abolished.

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