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The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China

Publications and Documents which are Now Difficult to Find


      This is an archive of all the pamphlets and other documents we can locate from the GPCR, primarily in English, but also to some extent in other languages eventually. This great revolution fortified, secured, and to some extent re-established genuine proletarian rule in China while Mao was still alive, overthrew the “capitalist roaders” within the Chinese Communist Party and within Chinese society more generally who (consciously or not) were attempting to destroy socialism and move China back to capitalism, and which made serious efforts to gradually but continually transform socialist society in the direction of communism.

      The GPCR itself was originally dated from 1966-1969, and Mao envisioned the need for a whole series of periodic additional cultural revolutions of that sort occurring throughout the entire period of socialism. However, this initial GPCR was not fully consolidated, and new struggles continued to break out. Most notably, there was the campaign to Criticize Lin Biao [Lin Piao] and Confucius, and then the need for another campaign against Deng Xiaoping and his allied capitalist-roaders. These came to be viewed as extensions of the GPCR, and consequently most people today view the GPCR as having extended up until Mao’s death in September 1976. That is the way we will view things here, though we will put the campaigns against Lin and Deng in separate sections near the bottom.

      As with other sections of BannedThought.net about Maoist China, some of the documents here are written by, or promote, individuals who later became targets of the revolution themselves, including Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping. We are including them as part of our complete archive of the history of the GPCR and the entire Chinese Revolution.

      These documents from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution are now suppressed in China (at least as far as mass access is concerned) and many of them are becoming very difficult to locate anywhere else in the world as well, except for those few with access to major research libraries. This is why we are posting them here on BannedThought.net.

      For information about other aspects of China in the Maoist era, or about present-day capitalist-imperialist China, please see the links at the bottom of this web page. Note also that there are some documents touching on aspects of the GPCR on these other pages.

      If you know of other materials which should be posted here, or if you have other comments or suggestions, please contact us at: freespeech@bannedthought.net


Basic Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Writings by the So-Called “Gang of Four”:


Other GPCR Pamphlets and Documents:


Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius:

Last Campaign against Deng Xiaoping:

  • “总理、邓小平、张春桥副总理 在国务院领导人见面会上的讲话 时间：一九七五年二月一日下午四时至五时十分 地点：人民大会堂东大厅”   [“Harbin Small Vehicle Company: Premier [Zhou Enlai], Deng Xiaoping, and Vice-Premier Zhang Chunqiao, Remarks at a Meeting with the State Council”], Compiled Record, February 1, 1975, 4:00 PM, East Wing of the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, 7 page transcript.  
  • “中发〔1975〕26 号 清华大学关于教育革命大辩论的情况报告 December 10, 1975”   [“Report on the Mass Debates on Educational Revolution in Tsinghua University”], CCP Central Committee Document #26, December 10, 1975, 12 pages.
  • “《毛主席重要指示》 1976.03.03；中发［1976］4号.”   [“Chairman Mao’s Primary Directives: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Document 4 (1976)”], issued by the General Office of the Central Committee, March 3, 1976, 2 pages. Includes critical comments by Mao of Deng Xiaoping and his associates.  
  • “毛泽东关于天安门事件性质问题所写的字迹及毛远新和毛泽东谈话的笔记 中共中央批示 1976 -4-7”   [“Mao Zedong’s Writing on the Question of the Qualitative Nature of the Tiananmen Incident, and Notes on the Dialogue between Mao Yuanxin and Mao Zedong”], Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, April 7, 1976, 4 pages.
  • “中央政治局同志在接见全国计划工作座谈会全体代表时的指示, July 13, 1976”   [“Directives from Comrades on the Politburo upon Receiving Representatives for Lectures on National Planning Work”]. Description: As part of his “Consolidation” program (Zhengdun 整顿) in 1975, Deng Xiaoping ordered rebel workers shot to death at several locations, including at the Zhengzhou Railway Bureau. Workers struck back in response. The directive concerning the problem of “sabotaging the production forces with [backwards] relations of production” (生产关系破坏生产力) was put forward by Wang Hongwen in this document. In the same paragraph, Yao Wenyuan clarifies that this is in direct reference to the above calamity, which members of the railway spoke about, caused by the “Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts Trend” whipped up by Deng. This report is 7 pages long.  
  • “胡耀邦公开支持刘冰两次上书毛泽东”   [“Hu Yaobang Twice Openly Assisted Liu Bing Deliver Letters to Mao Zedong”], by Qian Jiang. This is a rightist testament intending to justify Liu Bing’s actions, but in the process documents the complicity and involvement of Deng Xiaoping and his close ally Hu Yaobang in Liu Bing’s attack on Mao’s associates in 1975.
  • [More To be added.]

The Coup d’Etat After Mao’s Death and the End of the Cultural Revolution:

Collections of Documents from the GPCR:

Magazines from China with Issues from the GPCR Period:

Contemporary Foreign Commentary about China During the GPCR Period:

Retrospective MLM Commentary about the GPCR:

Bourgeois Works on the GPCR:

Scholarly Commentary on the GPCR (From various, sometimes academic Marxist, political perspectives):



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