The Cultural Revolution was a period of political and social transformation that rocked China between 1966 and 1976. It was Mao Tse-tung, who led the country since 1949, when the Communists came to power. Unhappy with the course of his own system, Mao wanted China to flee from the Soviet model of communism, to consider it bankrupt and where government bureaucrats lived in an unreal world with stewardship that the rest of the population did not have. Thus, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (PCC) in August 1966, he formally launched the Cultural Revolution. "Mao had four objectives: to correct the course of the CCP's policies; substitute his successors for leaders more in tune with what he thought; ensure a revolutionary experience for Chinese youth; and make the educational, cultural, and health systems less elitist, "says political scientist Kenneth Lieberthal of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan in the United States.
To achieve these goals, Mao relied on a huge mobilization of China's urban youth by organizing groups known as Red Guards (see table below). In addition to questioning the course of Chinese communism, the Cultural Revolution fought Confucianism, ideas based on the thinking of the philosopher Confucius, who for millennia influenced Chinese society. Because of the value they gave to the hierarchy and to the cult of the past, such ideas came to be regarded as reactionary. "The Cultural Revolution was the struggle against an intellectual class separate from the mass," says historian Mario Bruno Sproviero of USP. The problem is that, in practice, it resulted in closed schools, the attack (not only verbal) on intellectuals and the over-worshiping of Mao's personality. The death of the leader, in 1976, paved the way for the rise of politician Deng Xiaoping. With the change in power, in 1977, the Cultural Revolution was officially closed.