How the Cultural Revolution Systematically Destroyed China’s Cultural Heritage

By Dong Jia, Vision Times

“Endless falling leaves rustle down; the Yangtze flows on without cease,” reads an ancient poem from China’s affluent Tang Dynasty. Yet in China today, since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in 1949, everything has been subordinated to the needs of authoritarian rule. To seize, maintain, and consolidate its grip, the Party replaced its own rich history with rigid party loyalty, while replacing China’s traditional culture with a culture of “falsehood, brutality, and struggle.”

This destruction went far beyond the visible demolition of historical relics, monuments, and ancient texts. It reshaped behavior, thought, and daily life, systematically eroding traditional values, ethics, and worldviews.

At the same time, the regime preserved only superficial cultural symbols deemed politically harmless, repackaging them as “essence” while hollowing out their meaning and replacing it with Party ideology. All of this was done under the banner of “inheriting and developing traditional Chinese culture,” deceiving both the Chinese people and the international community.

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What follows is a non-exhaustive list, compiled from online sources and not subject to formal verification, documenting the widespread destruction of cultural heritage during the Cultural Revolution. Though incomplete, it offers a stark glimpse into the magnitude of the devastation.

During China’s Cultural Revolution period, many historical and well-respected Buddhist statues were recklessly destroyed by CCP guards. (Image: Public Domain) The main hall of the Yan Emperor Mausoleum was burned; the tomb excavated; remains burned and ashes scattered. The tomb of Cang Jie, the legendary creator of Chinese characters, was destroyed and converted into a “Martyrs’ Cemetery.” The Shun Emperor Mausoleum in Shanxi was demolished; loudspeakers were mounted on the burial mound. The Great Yu Temple on Mount Kuaiji (Shaoxing, Zhejiang) was torn down; the massive statue of Yu the Great was smashed, its head severed and paraded through the streets. A sacred eight-year-old life-size statue of the Buddha, one of Buddhism’s most revered relics, was defaced beyond recognition. Confucius’s tomb was leveled; his epitaph monument shattered; statues in the Confucian Temple destroyed; the grave of his 76th-generation descendant was desecrated. The Xiang Yu Temple and Yu Ji’s tomb in Anhui, revered for over two millennia, were reduced to rubble. General Huo Qubing’s mausoleum was vandalized; incense holders and his statue destroyed. The Tower of Buddhist Incense at the Summer Palace was smashed; its large Buddha statue destroyed. Wang Yangming’s ancestral temples and statues were completely obliterated. In Taiyuan, nearly 190 temples and historic sites were demolished in a single day under orders from a new Party secretary. The tomb and shrine of Zhang Zhongjing, revered as the “Medical Sage,” were destroyed; the memorial hall was looted. Zhuge Liang’s memorials in Nanyang, including ancient archways, statues, and glazed Arhat figures from the Ming Dynasty, were smashed; rare Qing-era woodblock texts were burned. The Dingjun Mountain stele was destroyed because Zhuge Liang was labeled a “landlord element.” Calligraphy master Wang Xizhi’s tomb and temple complex were nearly razed. Statues of Songtsen Gampo and Princess Wencheng, personally commissioned by Wencheng herself, were destroyed. The tomb of Bao Zheng (Justice Bao) in Hefei was demolished. Yue Fei’s statues, temples, and tombs were destroyed; remains burned and ashes scattered. Genghis Khan’s mausoleum was smashed to ruins. The Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang’s imperial tomb was vandalized with explosives. Hai Rui’s tomb in Hainan was desecrated; remains paraded publicly. Tombs and memorials of prominent historical figures, including Zhang Juzheng, Yuan Chonghuan, Wu Cheng’en, Pu Songling, Kang Youwei, Chiang Kai-shek’s family, Zhang Zizhong, Yang Hucheng, and many others, were destroyed, looted, or desecrated. The Thousand Buddha Caves near Turpan were intentionally defaced with eyes gouged out or murals smeared with mud. Temples, steles, ancient pagodas, and calligraphy monuments across Shanxi, Anhui, Jilin, Zhejiang, and other provinces were damaged beyond repair. Ancient texts destroyed

Beyond monuments, the destruction of books, artworks, and private collections was even more catastrophic, including:

Scholar Liang Shuming recalled how Red Guards burned generations of family books and paintings, shouting slogans around the fire. Calligrapher Lin Sanzhi, painter Lin Fengmian, scholar Ma Yifu, and master calligrapher Shen Yinmo all saw their life’s work destroyed — some by force, others by their own hands to protect their families. Writer Shen Congwen watched priceless Ming-era texts burned after a military official declared, “I’ll disinfect them with fire, do you accept?” Hundreds of tons of Ming and Qing-era books in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were pulped into paper. Women’s script (“Nüshu”) manuscripts, a rare female-only written tradition in Hunan, were burned in an irreplaceable loss to linguistics and anthropology. Qi Baishi’s tomb and studio were vandalized; his son was forced to chisel away his father’s calligraphy. National treasures by Zhang Daqian, Zhu Youlin, Liu Xian, Chen Banding, Shi Lu, and many others vanished forever.

China today has few ancient artifacts, few authentic classical paintings, and scant genuine historical relics, not because such heritage never existed, but because it was deliberately destroyed by the CCP.

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