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SCMP Reporter

May 16, 1966 The Communist Party  issues  the May 16 notice  announcing the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

May 25 A big-character poster is put up at Peking University denouncing school leaders; sparks soon spread to other universities and secondary schools, with Red Guards spurning classes to join the revolution and vowing to 'die fighting to protect Chairman Mao'

August 1 Mao Zedong supports the Red Guards in a speech  to the 11th plenum of the eighth Communist Party Congress

August 5 Mao writes a big-character poster headlined 'Bombard the Headquarters' - a clear attack on state president Liu Shaoqi

August 8 The party plenum ends with a 16-point document on the  revolution setting down so-called guidelines.

August-November Mao receives an estimated 11 million Red Guards from across the country on eight occasions in Tiananmen Square

January 1967  Red Guards and workers seize power in Shanghai; revolution reaches the army

July 18 Liu Shaoqi and his wife Wang Guangmei are publicly denounced   in  Zhongnanhai; Liu is stripped of his duties  weeks later. Power is left in the hands of Lin Biao and Mao's wife, Jiang Qing

July  Insurrections erupt in big cities

August The eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party approves the Cultural Revolution

October 1968 Liu  is expelled from the party

December 'Down to the Countryside Movement' begins. Hundreds of thousands of purged cadres are sent for re-education.

Summer 1969 The party  ratifies the overthrow of Liu,  branding him a 'renegade, traitor, and scab'

November 12 Liu  dies in Kaifang , Henan. News of his death is not immediately announced

September 13, 1971 Lin  dies in plane crash in  Mongolia

April 1973 Deng Xiaoping is rehabilitated and named vice-premier

January 8, 1976 Premier Zhou Enlai dies

April Hua Guofeng succeeds Zhou as premier

April 5, 1976 About 2 million people gather in Tiananmen Square to protest against the Gang of Four

September 9 Mao dies

October 6 Hua orders the arrest of Gang of Four, marking the end of the Cultural Revolution

June 1981 'Resolution of several historic issues of the Communist Party since the founding of the People's Republic' is adopted by the party. The resolution states that Mao should shoulder 'principal responsibility' for the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in 'the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party and the people since the founding of the People's Republic'.



Mainland's 'most severe setback'