Editing Chinese Communist Party (section)

===Sino-Soviet split and Cultural Revolution===
{{Main|Sino-Soviet split|Cultural Revolution}}
[[File:MaoZedong19660818.jpg|thumb|On August 18, 1966, Mao Zedong met with student Red Guards on Tiananmen]]
During the 1960s and 1970s, the CCP experienced a significant ideological separation from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which was going through a period of "[[de-Stalinization]]" under [[Nikita Khrushchev]].{{sfn|Kornberg|Faust|2005|p=103}} By that time, Mao had begun saying that the "continued revolution under the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]" stipulated that class enemies continued to exist even though the socialist revolution seemed to be complete, leading to the [[Cultural Revolution]] in which millions were persecuted and killed.{{sfn|Wong|2005|p=131}} During the Cultural Revolution, party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi, [[Deng Xiaoping]], [[Peng Dehuai]], and [[He Long]] were purged or exiled, and the [[Gang of Four]], led by Mao's wife [[Jiang Qing]], emerged to fill in the power vacuum left behind.