Mao organizes hard-line radicals, including his third wife, Jiang Qing, a severe critic of bourgeois cultural tendencies. Mao launches the Cultural Revolution. Politburo directs Cultural Revolution leaders to attack bourgeois elements in the CCP, the government, the PLA, and cultural circles. First appearance of the Red Guards, encouraged by Mao to criticize and reform the CCP from below. Quotations from Chairman Mao is published for the general public.
Schools are closed.
China's youth are urged to destroy old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking, to attack teachers, leaders, and parents. An outpouring of violence begins, with mass criticisms, imprisonments, torture, and killings. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are purged. Red Guards spread chaos throughout China. China explodes its first hydrogen bomb.