BIZARRE: The cultural revolution - What They Never Told You

The Anarchists Who Thought Mao Was on Their Side

As the Cultural Revolution turns 60, here's a look back at some of the fantasies that people projected onto it—and at one moment of possible prescience.

Reason · May 16

China’s ‘nightmare’ youth revolution was lit by its neurotic authoritarian leader, Mao Zedong. What can we learn from it?

In the 1960s and 70s, the youth of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia rebelled by protesting against the Vietnam War, trying psychedelic drugs, embracing free love and discovering the Beatles. Meanwhile, what their contemporaries in China were getting up to was just as transformative.

The Conversation · Jul 15, 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

Looking into China's recent past to learn about the state of the world

NONFICTION: Tania Branigan looks at how the Cultural Revolution still affects China — and beyond.

Tribune News Service · May 24, 2023

'Red Memory' aims to profile people shaped by China's Cultural Revolution

Tania Branigan, once China correspondent for the Guardian, makes the strongest English-language effort yet to reconstruct what it was like to live through, and then with, this part of Chinese history.

WEKU · May 8, 2023