Ruling clique opens vast Red China purge (June 1966)

“The Chinese Com­mun­ists use the word ‘cul­tur­al’ to de­scribe al­most every hu­man in­sti­tu­tion ex­cept the eco­nom­ic ones — and not in the nar­row­er sense used by the West. Chair­man Mao Tse-tung of the Com­mun­ist Party has him­self re­peatedly as­ser­ted that ‘cul­tur­al and in­tel­lec­tu­al activ­it­ies’ are more im­port­ant to the main­ten­ance of the party’s power than even eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies.”