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Free Thinking - The Cultural Revolution

Historian Frank Dik枚tter, Xiaolu Guo, Xinran, Kerry Brown and Patricia Thornton join Rana Mitter to revisit the Cultural Revolution 50 years on.

Rana Mitter is joined by the historians Frank Dik枚tter, Patricia Thornton and Kerry Brown, and by the writers Xinran and Xiaolu Guo, to revisit the Cultural Revolution 50 years on.

On 16th May 1966, Mao Zedong initiated a mass movement aimed at purging all "capitalist" and "traditional elements" from the Chinese Communist Party, and from Chinese society as a whole. This initiated the 10 years of social and political turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution.
There are no plans to publicly mark the anniversary of these events in China, but elsewhere this troubled period of Chinese history is being re-examined.

Frank Dik枚tter is the author of The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976, the final instalment in the People's Trilogy

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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45 minutes

Podcast