By Paul Letters Fifty years ago, the Politburo passed Mao’s circular that launched the Cultural Revolution. The reasons go beyond domestic party-infighting and the failure of Mao’s big economic set piece, the Great Leap Forward. However inadvertently, foreign powers played a vital role in Mao’s policy-making, as did the personal neuroses and unrestrained ambitions of … Continue reading HKFP History: Half a century on, how did the Cultural Revolution begin?