Cultural Revolution suppression; CCWV.LIFE

In the Cultural Revolution the campaign against the Four Olds fell on Daoism as on every religion in China. Temples were closed, looted, or turned to other uses, statues and scriptures were destroyed, and priests and monks were laicized, denounced, and sent to labour in the countryside. The White Cloud Temple in Beijing survived as an emptied shell while its community was dispersed. A tradition carried by temples and ordination lines for eighteen centuries came within a decade of being broken.

Tagged: Persecution Celestial Masters and Zhengyi Daoism Quanzhen

The Event

Date: 1966-1976 (exact)
Era: Suppression and Revival; Standard periodization of Daoist history
Location: China; today China
Traditions: Daoism
Streams: Celestial Masters and Zhengyi, Quanzhen
Key texts: Daodejing

How the Tradition Tells It

The suppression fell unevenly. Famous temples were emptied and many were destroyed, while household practice and village ritual persisted in places beyond the campaigns' reach. The record here names the national experience; local histories differ in how much was lost and how much was hidden and kept.

Primary Sources

Chinese state records of the Cultural Revolution.

Secondary Sources

Kirkland, Russell. Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. Routledge, 2004.
Robinet, Isabelle. Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Translated by Phyllis Brooks, Stanford University Press, 1997.

Provenance: HIST-0815; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.