Cultural Revolution

China is opening it's first museum on the Cultural Revolution. The Independent has an article about the controversy surrounding how China has dealt with this dark history.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cultural Revolution, but there has never been a proper assessment of what happened during the period, and children are taught little about it in school. Their parents are unlikely to tell them what they went through.

The Cultural Revolution last from 1966 to 1976 and was started by Mao Zedong as a way to control power and squash opponents. From Wikipedia:

On August 8, 1966, the Central Committee of the CCP passed a bill, "Decisions on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". This bill stated that the official position of China's government was now supportive of the purging of intellectuals and imperialists. In December 1968, Mao began the "Down to the Countryside Movement". During this Movement, which lasted for the next decade, young intellectuals were ordered to go into the country and receive "education" from "middle and poor peasants". Mao saw this disruption of ordinary social processes as a way to remove future emerging forces who could be a threat to the CCP. For many of the 'intellectuals,' most of whom were recently-graduated college students, this deployment to the countryside was in effect a kind of internal exile, and the conditions under which they were forced to labor were often harsh in the extreme; many deaths from malnutrition, overwork, and disease were reported, although many were not.

The Cultural Revolution affected essentially every Chinese person. During this period the Chinese economy and education systems grinded to a stop as the revolution was the predominant focus and intellectuals were purged. Although the number of deaths attributed to the revolution is unclear is ranges from the hundreds of thousands to the millions.