A few things that may be worth noting:
(1) In his attempt to explain the ease with which young kids acquire their first language, Chomsky concentrates on complex syntax. According to people like Piaget, all cognitive acquisitions, including language, are the outcome of the gradual process of construction.
Chomsky points out the obvious fact that children's language acquisition outpaces their cognitive development, especially when it involves complex syntax the acquisition of which requires computational abilities far beyond that of young children. In place of the cognitive acquisition theory, Chomsky proposes the innate language theory.
Here below is a 2016 Steven Pinker comment. Pinker is saying that Chomsky's fundamental claim--that language is innate--will endure in one form or another:
-----"My own view is that we need to create precise computational models of the language acquisition process – sentences in, grammar out – and see if they succeed in mastering the structure of any language whose sentences are fed into it, in a way that resembles the way children do it. Then whatever is in that model is the best theory of the child’s innate learning abilities. Every now and again someone will try to do that (I did in my first book, Language Learnability and Language Development, in 1984.) Failing that, it's all too easy to claim that children don't need any innate priors or assumptions or representations, only to sneak them back in when it comes to get serious and implement a model. That was the trick in a lot of the neural-network models of language that were popular in the 80s and 90s – when the rubber met the road, they always built in innate structure without calling attention to it. That's what I suspect will be true of models based on the current ideas."-----
–Steven Pinker
For his explanation of the effortless first language acquisition by children, Chomsky advances the theory of universal grammar, or a language acquisition device, that children are supposedly born with. Acquisition of complex syntax is accomplished as soon as a limited number of parameters within the universal grammar are set one way or another upon children's initial exposure to their mother tongue.
It is this device that presumably shuts down upon the completion of brain lateralization. In other words, the parameters remain flexible/resettable until puberty. This also explains why children are more susceptible to first language attrition than adults: the settings of the universal parameters have not been finalized by way of brain lateralization.
(2) It should be noted that there are elements of language, such as vocabulary and idioms, that are learned rather than acquired. There is no difference between first language and second language when it comes to learning these elements: their learning depends crucially on exposure and use-it-or-lose-it governs retention.
First of all, people, be they young or old, won't be able to learn these elements if they are not exposed to them. Many Chinese parents in the US can attest to this: they try their best to keep a Chinese immersion environment at home but find out home related topics do not provide their children with enough Chinese exposure for balanced language learning.
Most of these parents can similarly attest to the tyranny of use-it-or-lose-it: their children just don't seem to be able to retain much of what they learn in weekly Chinese classes.
(3) Now, a little bit about the Cultural Revolution, which I had the very bad luck of living through. Comparing it to anything other than Hitler Germany and Stalin USSR would fall short of fair-mindedness. If anything, it was worse.
Yes, there were some English-speaking folks then in China, such as Shafick George Hatem, Rewi Alley, David Crook, Isabel Crook, Sidney Rittenberg, Israel Epstein, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, etc. But these people were either branded as spies or suspected as being spies and were under close surveillance. Many were locked up and were not released until about 1973.
I'm not sure how helpful BBC and VOA would have been in helping a young child keep his/her language. But, yes, one could tune into VOA or BBC in those days. However, it was by no means easy. First of all, it would be very very risky to do so, as these were considered “enemy stations” and, if caught, one would be in big trouble. Secondly, these stations were always heavily jammed. The signal was so garbled most times people who were trying to learn English were forced to tune into Radio Peking.
Indeed, Kissinger and Nixon's visits in 1971 and 1972 brought about a great improvement in terms of English learning in China. But, seeing that the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, so much had already been lost in between.
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