Internal Section

March 22

Huang Yongsheng and Wu Faxian, trusted followers of Lin Biao, are appointed chief and deputy chief of PLA General Staff; Administrative Group of Central Military Commission reorganized, with Lin and followers gaining more military power.

May 7

Mao Zedong calls on cadres to engage in agricultural labor, learn from poor and lower-middle peasants. Large numbers of cadres are sent to countryside in turns to do manual labor in May 7 cadre schools.

May 25

CPC Central Committee broadcasts: Experiences of the Military Control Committee of the Beijing Xinhua Printing House in Mobilizing the Masses to Struggle Against Enemies, calls on all regional and work units to purify their ranks.. Persons with a landlord background or related to landlords, as well as rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, spies, so-called capitalist roaders, plus those labeled as bourgeois reactionary academic authorities and the stinking ninth category (intellectuals considered to be having ideological problems) are investigated, criticized, some persecuted.

August 25

Instructed by Mao Zedong, CPC Central Committee issues circular on dispatch of workers' propaganda teams to all universities, schools, cultural and educational units throughout country and on propaganda teams' permanent leadership of schools.

October 13-31

Beijing, 12th Plenary Session of Eighth CPC Central Committee. Prepares for CPC's Ninth National Congress, approves Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng's Report on the Crimes of the Traitor, Enemy Agent and Scab Liu Shaoqi (all based on false charges), passes resolution to expel Liu Shaoqi from Party forever and remove him from all his posts inside and outside Party.

December 22

Renmin Ribao publishes Mao Zedong's directive educated young people should go to countryside to be re-educated by poor and lower-middle peasants. This leads to sending educated youth to mountainous and rural areas in large numbers.

December 29

Nanjing Changjiang (Yangtze) River Bridge is opened to traffic. With a 6,700-metre-long railway bridge On the lower tier and a 4,500-metre-long highway bridge on the upper, it is at present China's longest railway-highway bridge.

¡¡ Foreign Relations

January 31

Diplomatic relations established with Democratic Republic of Yemen.