How many people are estimated to have died during the Cultural Revolution?

It is estimated that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 people died during the Cultural Revolution, which took place in China from 1966 to 1976.1

Launched by Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, the movement utilized groups of urban youths known as the Red Guards to target those deemed "bourgeois" or insufficiently revolutionary, including intellectuals, educators, and traditionalists. This period of state-sanctioned upheaval and anarchy resulted in widespread persecution, physical abuse, and death, while also displacing millions of people and severely disrupting the nation's economy.12