It stands on a battlefield where 70 young Chinese died in pitched fighting between rival factions during the chaos that engulfed China during the 1966-76 ultra-leftist movement.

The museum is the brainchild of Peng Qi’an, 74, a former deputy mayor of nearby Shantou, and has courted controversy since its recent opening by leaving little doubt about who created the Great Cultural Revolution that blighted an entire generation.

Carved into a granite panel at the entrance is a huge image of Chairman Mao waving to young Red Guards brandishing his Little Red Book. Inside, 623 black marble plates are etched with harrowing scenes from a decade of madness that even now officials remain deeply reluctant to discuss with candour.

Mao is everywhere, swimming in the Yangtze river to prove his ability to rule at 72, or standing with his reviled wife, Jiang Qing. She was sentenced to death after Mao died in 1976 as leader of the Gang of Four accused of the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

Mao has never been directly blamed for the atrocities, although his successors have posthumously assessed his contribution to history as 70 per cent good and 30 per cent bad. That is a political compromise that allows today’s party to retain its legitimacy even after overseeing a convulsion that ruined the lives of millions.

Covering the walls are engravings of officials and opera singers, writers and actors, all paraded in dunce’s caps and beaten as bourgeoisie, revisionists and counter-revolutionaries. Many committed suicide to escape the torture and the humiliation. Inscriptions honouring the dead are careful not to link Mao directly to the purges. But the candid portrayal of the Great Helmsman as a man nearing death, slumped in his armchair, eyes glazed, comes as a shock to Chinese accustomed to Mao the great hero.

“I know that Chairman Mao was a talented leader and I knew he played a part in the Cultural Revolution, but I didn’t expect to see him like this,” one visitor said.

The Gang of Four were convicted of killing 35,000 people and persecuting 750,000. “The Cultural Revolution was the most wild, savage, blind and ridiculous tragedy,” one plaque reads. “It blackened the face of the Chinese nation. We should never forget it.”

Mr Peng has cited the need to remember as one reason for creating the museum. But he has now fallen silent, apparently under pressure from Chinese leaders. “I will not give interviews,” he said tersely.

A few dozen visitors tour the museum each day. Many appreciate its role in confronting one of the most tragic eras in modern Chinese history. “Looking straight into history is the first step for the Chinese nation to recover its humanity,” Wang Ping, from Beijing, wrote in the visitors’ book.

The battle between “capitalist roaders” and Red Guards that left 70 dead on this site in 1968 was repeated in warfare across China as Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution ran out of control. It was a struggle played out also in the highest echelons of the party. One of the most striking inscriptions bears testament to why Mao’s heirs even today regard such a memorial with suspicion. “The cause of the Cultural Revolution was a high-level struggle for power,” it declares, and proceeds to describe Mao’s campaign to wrest back influence that he had ceded to President Liu Shaoqi and to Deng Xiaoping.

Such words raise questions about the legitimacy of the ruling party — and about such power struggles today. Nerves are clearly on edge. An official bustled up to question The Times and kept watch until the rare foreign visitor had left.

THE HUMAN TOLL

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