In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution broke out, Yu Huiyong and many of the Shanghai Conservatory staff were targeted as bourgeois intellectuals and forced to resign, submit to self-criticism and criticism by students, and do physical labor.
Yu Huiyong however took active part at the movement: he was called to Beijing to stage the "eight model revolutionary theatrical works", then returned to Shanghai where he joined the "rebel faction".
Taking an ever more prominent role, in 1968 Yu Huiyong chaired the criticism meeting against He Luting, president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
In 1970 Yu Huiyong was transferred to Beijing to become a member of the Cultural Group Under the State Council of the People's Republic of China chaired by Wu De.
In the last stages of the Cultura Revolution, Yu Huiyong oversaw art production and anti-revisionist works in China, as the film Chunmiao (Spring Sprout), which was criticized by Deng Xiaoping as "ultra-leftist".