The Latest Breaking News from Cultural Revolution

Harvard battle is Trump’s ‘Mao moment’: lessons from China’s state-sanctioned university crackdown

During the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong pushed for the closure of Chinese universities, seeing higher education as little more than a breeding ground for counterrevolutionary bourgeois intellectuals. After closing for a period, China’s universities reopened on a limited basis from 1970, with selection criteria based on class background, revolutionary…

The Conversation · Jun 5, 2025

What does China really think of Trump? That he and vengeful Chairman Mao would have got on well

Many see parallels with the architect of the Cultural Revolution. Both relished disruption and have exploited the power of the mob, says the Guardian’s foreign leader writer Tania Branigan

The Guardian - UK · Apr 14, 2025

Netflix’s 3 Body Problem is sci-fi. But beyond the alien threat lies the trauma of modern China

Though Liu Cixin’s revered trilogy has been westernised for TV, it dares to trace the scars of the Cultural Revolution, says Guardian foreign leader writer Tania Branigan

The Guardian - UK · Apr 3, 2024

Red Memory by Tania Branigan review – the toxic afterlife of Mao’s Cultural Revolution

The Guardian’s former China correspondent assembles a cast of eye-witnesses to tell a story now being suppressed once more

The Guardian - UK · Feb 1, 2023

Red Memory by Tania Branigan review – the Cultural Revolution up close

In gathering histories from one of the country’s darkest, most divisive periods, the former Guardian China correspondent has created a gripping and important document

The Guardian - UK · Jan 30, 2023

Cocoon by Zhang Yueran review – families warped by the state

China’s generational trauma and the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution are brought into the light in this precise and gripping novel

The Guardian - UK · Nov 17, 2022

Cocoon by Zhang Yueran review – a story that needed to be told

Two old friends dissect the impact of a violent act on their families in a vital, baroque critique of the Cultural Revolution

The Guardian - UK · Nov 13, 2022

To understand what Xi Jinping's concentration of power really means, we must turn to history

After he secured an unprecedented third term as the leader of both Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the country’s Central Military late last month, Xi Jinping led the seven-member Standing Committee of the Politburo on a visit to Yan’an. This is the CCP’s sacred revolutionary base from where the first-generation…

The Conversation · Nov 3, 2022

Chinese Leader Xi Jinping’s Rise and Rule

Chinese President Xi Jinping, the son of a communist revolutionary leader, was a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial chief who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. On Sunday, China's 69-year-old leader secured a widely expected third term as general secretary of…

Asharq Al-Awsat · Oct 23, 2022

Timeline: Chinese leader Xi Jinping's rise and rule

Chinese President Xi Jinping, the son of a communist revolutionary, was a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial chief who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago

The Independent UK · Oct 23, 2022