This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and Taoism was swept into its campaign against what the movement called the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. A religious tradition with roots stretching back nearly two thousand years found itself classified alongside anything the campaign judged a relic of China's pre revolutionary past.
Red Guards carried that classification into action against Taoism's own physical and institutional presence. Temples and sacred sites across the country were destroyed or badly damaged, and Taoist clergy were forced to disrobe, stripped of the religious status that had organized their lives, and sent to labor camps rather than left to continue their practice in any recognized form.
The effect on the mainland was close to total. Over a millennium of continuous institutional Taoist practice, temples operating, priests ordained, rites performed openly, came to an end everywhere except in private, hidden observance kept alive by individuals and families rather than by any functioning institution. The campaign's persecution of Taoism did not let up through the decade that followed, continuing until Mao's own death and the political shift that came after it finally opened room for change.
What the Cultural Revolution changed for Taoism's spread in China was the near total destruction, for over a decade, of the institutional base the faith had built and rebuilt across nearly two thousand years, leaving only private practice standing where temples, ordained clergy and open worship had stood before.