Religious Events
The Cultural Revolution
Also Known As Cultural Revolution The bare term, without the definite article.
Persecution
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
The Cultural Revolution was the campaign launched in China in 1966 in which religious institutions of every tradition were closed, clergy were forced out of their roles, and temples, mosques, churches and monasteries were damaged or destroyed by Red Guard units acting against what the campaign called the four olds. Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, Confucian temples, Christian congregations, mosques in the northwest and the monasteries of Tibet were all affected, and much of the destruction was of buildings, texts and images that could not be replaced. Public religious life resumed only after the campaign ended in 1976, and the losses of the decade still shape what survives to be catalogued.
Facts
The Event
When It HappenedSourced to the subject's own accountLaunched in May 1966 and formally ended with Mao Zedong's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976; the campaign against religion intensified after Mao reviewed a rally of roughly a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square on 18 August 1966, the moment usually marked as the start of the Destroy the Four Olds campaign. 1 PeriodSourced to the subject's own account Where It HappenedSourced to the subject's own accountChina nationwide; Tibet's monasteries were hit with particular severity, most of them damaged or destroyed by 1976. 3 Principal PartiesSourced to the subject's own accountMao Zedong, who launched the campaign and personally reviewed the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square; the Red Guards, the student movement that carried out much of the physical destruction of religious sites. 1 Victim GroupClergy, monastics and religious practitioners of every tradition present in China, Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim and Confucian alike, whose institutions were closed and whose religious roles and observance were suppressed under the campaign against the Four Olds. 2 Perpetrator RegimeThe People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, who launched the campaign in 1966 and personally reviewed the Red Guards who carried out much of the destruction, acting through the state and Communist Party apparatus and the Red Guard movement it mobilized. 2 Disputed
Death TollAndrew Walder's 2014 county-annals study, covering 99 percent of local jurisdictions, estimates 1.1 to 1.6 million Cultural Revolution era deaths nationwide from 1966 to 1971. Walder and Su's earlier 2003 study of the same evidence base restricted to rural counties found 750,000 to 1.5 million rural deaths, a figure Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals's Mao's Last Revolution independently cites as a conservative estimate, and other historians surveying the wider literature, including factional armed conflict and urban campaigns the county annals undercount, cite totals running well over two million from sources of uneven reliability. This is the overall political death toll of the whole campaign, not a figure isolating deaths caused specifically by anti-religious persecution: no study has published that narrower breakdown, which remains its own recorded open question. Death TollThe upper bound of Walder's 2014 county-annals estimate (1.1 to 1.6 million nationwide, 1966 to 1971). Some historians surveying the broader literature, including sources the county annals do not fully capture, cite still higher totals running well over two million; those wider tallies rest on sources of uneven reliability and are named here rather than adopted as the recorded ceiling. This figure covers the campaign's overall political death toll, not a religion-specific isolation, which remains its own recorded open question. Consequences
What It SettledPublic religious life resumed only after the campaign ended in 1976; the destruction of buildings, texts and images that decade still shapes what survives to be catalogued. 2 Lasting ConsequenceReligious policy was not restored until Document 19 of 1982, the Central Committee directive that acknowledged religion would persist under socialism and reopened a tightly bounded framework for organised religious activity to resume. 4 Status
Official RecognitionNot formally recognized by any body 2 Recognition BasisThe Chinese Communist Party's own 27 June 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of the Party denounced the Cultural Revolution as a whole as a catastrophe that brought the party, state and people their most serious setback since the founding of the People's Republic, and Document 19 of 1982 formally acknowledged that religion would persist under socialism and reopened a bounded framework for organized religious activity. Neither document is a specific acknowledgment of, or apology for, the religious persecution of the decade, and no formal apology to China's religious communities has been issued. 2 Learn More
A Decade in Which Religious Institutions Were Closed
Between 1966 and 1976 organised religious life in China effectively ceased in public. Places of worship of every tradition were closed or put to other uses, clergy and monastics were required to return to lay life or were sent to labour, and religious associations that had operated under state supervision since the 1950s stopped functioning.
Fenggang Yang's study of religion in China under Communist rule treats the decade as the extreme point of a longer policy rather than as an isolated episode, since the institutional space available to religion had already been progressively narrowed in the preceding fifteen years. The campaign against what it called the four olds directed action at temples, monasteries, mosques, churches, images, texts and graves.
Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, Confucian temples including the Kong family complex at Qufu, Christian congregations, mosques in the northwest and the monasteries of Tibet were all affected, and the destruction of buildings was accompanied by the destruction of libraries, archives, images and ritual objects. Some sites were protected by local decision or by military order and survived; many did not. The atlas records the period as documented in the scholarly literature and does not extend beyond what that literature establishes.
What the Losses Mean for the Record
The decade matters to a reference work for a reason beyond the history itself. A great deal of what was destroyed was unique: manuscripts held in single copies at a single monastery, images that were the only surviving example of a local form, lineage records, ordination registers and the physical fabric of buildings that had stood for centuries. Where those are gone, the entries a catalogue can write about the traditions concerned are correspondingly thinner, and the gaps are not evenly distributed. Traditions with printed canons circulating internationally lost less than traditions whose transmission was local and oral.
Meir Shahar's history of the Shaolin monastery is a useful illustration of what recovery looks like in practice, since the site was damaged, emptied and later rebuilt and heavily commercialised, and disentangling the pre 1966 institution from its reconstruction is a real scholarly problem. Public religious life resumed after 1976 under a policy that recognised five religious associations, and the following decades saw very substantial rebuilding and growth. The atlas records both the losses and the revival, and flags where an entry rests on evidence that has itself been reconstructed rather than continuously preserved.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Buddhist monasteries in China and Tibet were closed and damaged.
Confucian temples, including the Temple of Confucius at Qufu, were attacked.
Mosques in the northwest were closed and in places destroyed.
Daoist temples and their clergy were among the targets.
Tibet, Regions Most Tibetan monasteries were damaged or destroyed during the campaign.
Conducted By
Persecuted Group
Related To
Sources
1. Four Olds (Wikipedia)
2. Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule
Fenggang Yang, Oxford University Press, 2011
3. Cultural Revolution in Tibet (Wikipedia)
4. Government Policy Toward Religion in the People's Republic of China: A Brief History
5. Walder, "Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966-1971" (2014)
Andrew G. Walder, Social Science History (Cambridge University Press), 2014Walder, "Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966-1971," Social Science History 38 (2014): 513-539View the Source The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts
Open Questions (1 open question)
What Was the Religion-Specific Death Toll of the Cultural Revolution?
The Cultural Revolution's suppression of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Confucianism and Christianity is well documented, but no historian has published a death toll isolating deaths caused specifically by anti-religious persecution from the campaign's much larger political death toll, itself estimated across a wide range by different historians.
What would resolve this A study disaggregating Cultural Revolution-era deaths by the target's religious identity or role, comparable to the campaign-specific tallies that exist for other twentieth-century religious persecutions elsewhere in the atlas.
Modern Chinese historyFenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.