The Cultural Revolution, a mass political campaign he launched in 1966, began to subside after his death, with casualty figures placed in the millions. During the Cultural Revolution, authorities moved to eradicate religious observance, longstanding customs, and independent political thought, while also purging perceived rivals from within the Communist Party. Launched between 1958 and 1962 under Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, the nationwide industrialisation drive — which aimed to match the economic output of the United States and the United Kingdom — disrupted agricultural production through forced collectivisation, the redeployment of rural labour away from farming, and failures in centralised planning, factors that historians link to the widespread famine that followed. Following Mao Zedong's death in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party assigned formal blame for the Cultural Revolution to the Gang of Four, a faction that included his widow, though the subsequent prosecution was broadly interpreted as a political manoeuvre to shield Mao's legacy from direct scrutiny. Sheng Xue, a Canada-based writer and human rights advocate, told a television broadcaster that the Chinese Communist Party faces inherent obstacles in formally repudiating Mao Zedong, because doing so would require the party to acknowledge that its own conduct since founding constitutes a pattern of criminal and terroristic behaviour; she also argued that the party's preferred explanation — attributing the failures of that period to excessive centralisation of power and a cult of personality — sidesteps the more fundamental question of whether a governing system built on communist ideology can avoid such outcomes. Feng contended that stripping Mao of his venerated position and formally repudiating his historical record could threaten the ideological foundations underpinning the party's legitimacy and governance. Certain historians have characterised the 70-30 formula used to evaluate Mao's legacy as falling well short of a balanced historical reckoning, while state-run media marked the anniversary of his death on September 9 with tributes in his honour. At 15, Xi was sent from Beijing to the rural village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi Province to carry out farm work under a programme the authorities described as peasant re-education, and certain observers have contended that he now aims not only to follow Mao's path but to surpass what Mao achieved. According to her account, Xi harbours ambitions to extend his reach across the entire international arena. Her characterisation of Mao portrayed him as a leader whose tenure, drawing on a range of historical scholarship, was associated with a death toll that researchers have placed among the largest documented in human history. He observed that the ruling party employs online platforms, a social credit framework, and a range of digital tools to surveil and regulate citizens, and that, with few viable channels for dissent, a number of people turn to the writings and recorded statements of Mao Zedong as a way of contesting the authority of Xi Jinping's administration.
