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May 16 Notice

After the CCP came to power, it set off many "firecrackers", but the "May 16 Notice" on the Cultural Revolution was a heavy artillery in history. The "May 16 Notice" was the CCP Politburo's manifesto against "bourgeois agents within the party" issued by Mao Zedong that year. The May 16 Notice was the symbol and signal for the official start of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution not only exposed Mao Zedong's cruelty and treachery, but also clearly showed the so-called old generation of revolutionaries and the Communist Party cadres, big and small, were mean and cowardly. The Cultural Revolution was an exposé of the officialdom, and officials who used to be righteous in front of the people were made to look foolish.

This “Cultural Revolution” was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong. His main argument was that a large number of representatives of the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionary revisionists had infiltrated the Party, the government, the army and all circles in the cultural field, and that the leadership of a considerable majority of units was no longer in the hands of Marxists and the masses. The capitalist roaders in the Party had formed a bourgeois headquarters in the Central Committee, which had a revisionist political and organizational line and had agents in all provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions and central departments. All previous struggles could not solve the problem. Only by carrying out the Cultural Revolution and mobilizing the masses openly, comprehensively and from bottom to top to expose the above-mentioned dark side could the power usurped by the capitalist roaders be regained. This was essentially a great political revolution in which one class overthrew another, and it would be repeated many times in the future. These arguments mainly appeared in the May 16th Notice, which was the programmatic document of the "Cultural Revolution", and in the political report of the Ninth National Congress of the Party.

On May 16, 1966 , the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a notice. It is worth noting that this notice actually does not even have an official name. The full name is "Notice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China". However, the "Cultural Revolution" that was set off by this notice changed the fate of countless people. The meeting that issued the "May 16 Notice" was the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee that we mentioned in the previous lectures. It took place between May 4 and 26, 1966. A total of 76 people attended this meeting held in Beijing . At the meeting , they decided to overthrow Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, and Yang Shangkun as "sacrificial flags" for Mao Zedong to launch the Cultural Revolution. It was also at this meeting that they passed the resolution to launch the Cultural Revolution, which determined the fate of hundreds of millions of people. What is particularly strange is that Mao Zedong himself did not attend this meeting, and the host of the meeting was Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong's number one target of attack.

Everyone who has experienced the Cultural Revolution knows what the May 16 Notice means to contemporary Chinese people. On May 16, 1966, the CPC Central Committee issued a call to all party members across the country: to fiercely fire at all kinds of feudalism, capitalism, and revisionism, thus rolling up the tide of the Cultural Revolution, which not only swept across China, but also affected the entire Chinese world, and even affected the Communist parties and leftists in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Oceania, setting off a worldwide Cultural Revolution fever.

On that day, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a "notice" to party organizations at all levels across the country, asking everyone to "start the movement!", which sounded the clarion call for the Cultural Revolution throughout China. This notice was the "Notice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" drafted by Mao Zedong, known as the "May 16 Notice" in history.

According to the notice, the top leaders of the Communist Party of China, namely Mao Zedong, revoked the February Outline and the "Cultural Revolution Five-member Group" and its offices, and established a "Cultural Revolution Group" directly led by Mao Zedong, namely the Politburo Standing Committee, which was the well-known group with Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing as the "flag bearer". This was a very important step for Mao to launch the Cultural Revolution.

The leader of this group, who controlled the scale and direction of the Cultural Revolution and had the right to speak and real power, was Chen Boda, who had been Mao's secretary. Jiang Qing was the deputy leader but in charge of things. Other important members included Kang Sheng, who was later criticized as a spy. In fact, the three big men of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, and Zhou Enlai, actively planned or participated in all major activities of the Cultural Revolution Group and constantly issued orders. Jiang Qing, in particular, took orders directly from Mao Zedong, often bringing Mao Zedong up or using Mao's name to command the whole country.

People often say that the so-called ten-year Cultural Revolution began in 1966. But as early as July 1964 , the CPC Central Committee had set up a "Cultural Revolution Five-member Group", whose members included Beijing Municipal Party Committee First Secretary and Mayor Peng Zhen, Central Propaganda Minister Lu Dingyi, Central Theoretical Group Leader Kang Sheng, Central Propaganda Deputy Minister Zhou Yang, and Xinhua News Agency President and People's Daily President Wu Lengxi. This group held an enlarged meeting in February 1966 , at which Peng Zhen expressed dissatisfaction with the criticism of Wu Han. The meeting eventually passed a document, which was referred to in the May 16 Notice as the " Cultural Revolution Five-member Group's Report Outline on Current Academic Discussions ", also known as the "February Outline", which was subsequently passed by the CPC Central Political Bureau Standing Committee meeting chaired by Liu Shaoqi. At that time, Wu Han, a historian and deputy mayor of Beijing, was brutally suppressed and criticized because his new historical play "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office" was accused of reversing the verdict of Peng Dehuai. The Cultural Revolution group led by Peng Zhen believed that "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office" should be limited to academic discussions. The “February Outline” attempted to limit the criticism of Wu Han to academic discussion as much as possible.

After the February Outline was passed, Peng Zhen went to Wuhan to report to Mao Zedong who was there at the time. In this report, Mao Zedong adopted an ambiguous "playing Tai Chi" posture and induced Peng Zhen to say that Wu Han "can be said to be anti-party and anti-socialist". It can be said that he was very scheming. After that, Mao Zedong linked up with Lin Biao through his wife Jiang Qing, and thus launched a symposium minutes named by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. This minutes gave a very low evaluation of the literary and artistic line since the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1949 , believing that there was a "bourgeois" "black line" in literature and art that was opposed to Mao Zedong Thought and "anti-party and anti-socialist", and called on people to overthrow this "black line". In this way, Lin Biao, who symbolized the military power, showed a posture of standing on Mao Zedong's side, and Mao Zedong had enough confidence to directly take action against Peng Zhen. In fact, this "May 16 Notice" was not only revised seven times by Mao Zedong himself, but some important paragraphs in it were also directly written by Mao Zedong. Its drafting group was led by Chen Boda and Kang Sheng, and Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Guan Feng, Qi Benyu and others also participated in the drafting, and these people were all staunch Maoists in the CCP at that time. In other words, the "May 16 Notice" fully reflected Mao Zedong's will.

In April, Mao Zedong instructed Shanghai intellectual Yao Wenyuan to withdraw the February Outline and began to criticize Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi and Yang Shangkun. (Peng Luo Lu Yang) It was not until May 16 that an official document was issued to completely negate Peng Zhen's group and the February Outline, and the Central Cultural Revolution Group, which was actually led by Jiang Qing, was launched. Yao Wenyuan, who became famous for writing "Comment on the New Historical Drama Hai Rui Dismissed from Office", and Shanghai propaganda cadre Zhang Chunqiao were both important members of this Central Cultural Revolution Group under Jiang Qing. By the way: the people who were later called the "Gang of Four" were mainly from this Cultural Revolution Group, plus Wang Hongwen (Wang Zhang Jiang Yao), a Shanghai rebel worker who was promoted to vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China during the Cultural Revolution.

Mao Zedong's "May 16th Notice" launched a major criticism of the "February Outline", proposed a set of more left-wing theories, lines, guidelines, and policies, and required party committees at all levels to stop implementing the February Outline, occupy the cultural field, and fiercely fire at "representatives of the bourgeoisie" in various units. Once the "May 16th Notice" was issued, the whole country entered a "real war state", and the Cultural Revolution blossomed everywhere. The sound of artillery roared, the smoke filled the air, and 5% of the people in the country were "shot down". According to the population estimate at the time, there were tens of millions of bad elements and class enemies who were overthrown and criticized. Later, according to a speech by Ye Jianying, the number of abnormal deaths during the Cultural Revolution was also 20 to 30 million.

The May 16 Notice fiercely criticized the February Outline in a very high tone at the beginning, saying: " The Central Committee decided to revoke the ' Outline of the Report of the Five-member Cultural Revolution Group on Current Academic Discussions ' approved on February 12, 1966 , to abolish the original ' Five-member Cultural Revolution Group' and its office, and to re-establish the Cultural Revolution Group, which will be subordinate to the Political Bureau Standing Committee. The so-called ' Five-member Group 's ' report outline is fundamentally wrong, and violates the line of socialist cultural revolution put forward by the Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong, and violates the guiding principles of the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in 1962 on the issue of classes and class struggle in socialist society. This outline is a veiled violation of and strenuous resistance to the Cultural Revolution led and launched by Comrade Mao Zedong himself, and to Comrade Mao Zedong's instructions on criticizing Wu Han at the Central Working Conference in September and October 1965 (i.e., a meeting of the Central Political Bureau Standing Committee attended by responsible comrades from various central bureaus)."

Mao Zedong revised and published the "May 16 Notice", which was full of gunpowder. He said: From the central government to the local governments, there are a group of bourgeois representatives. The notice also called for the purge of these people and not to let them lead the Cultural Revolution. This sentence in the "May 16 Notice" became popular throughout the country: The bourgeois representatives who have infiltrated the party, the government, the army and various cultural circles are a group of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once the time is ripe, they will seize power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

"The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the struggle between the truth of Marxism and the fallacies of the bourgeoisie and all the exploiting classes, is either the east wind prevailing over the west wind, or the west wind prevailing over the east wind. There is no question of equality. Can there be any equality on these basic issues, such as the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat in the superstructure, including in all cultural fields, the continued elimination of the representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Communist Party and waved the red flag to oppose the red flag, etc.?"" Mao Zedong's words were very targeted and were widely quoted and spread during the Cultural Revolution: "Some of these people have been seen through by us, some have not been seen through yet, and some are being trusted by us and being trained as our successors, such as Khrushchev, who are now sleeping beside us. Party committees at all levels must pay full attention to this." Soon after that, Mao Zedong threw out his long-time comrade-in-arms, Liu Shaoqi (November 24, 1898 - November 12, 1969), Chairman of the People's Republic of China, and fought against him cruelly and mercilessly until he died in a place in Henan. People in the Cultural Revolution called Liu Shaoqi "Liu Helu", "Khrushchev sleeping beside Mao Zedong".

In general, according to the logic of this notice, the so-called "bourgeois academics" are not qualified to compete with "proletarian academics" on an equal footing, and can only be "overwhelmed and eliminated". Moreover, Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought are equal to truth, a supreme principle. The "proletariat" has greatly surpassed the "bourgeoisie" because they have mastered this "supreme principle". In the face of the crushing of this so-called "truth" and this "supreme principle", the "bourgeoisie" do not deserve equality at all, but only deserve to be " dictated".

In fact, the "May 16 Notice" of the top CCP was just an internal document, which was conveyed to party committees and party cadres at all levels. More than ten days later, on June 1, 1966, the CCP published an editorial through the People's Daily: "Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons". Later, it published editorials one after another, spreading the content of the May 16 Notice to the whole country. At this time, the nationwide Cultural Revolution was truly launched, and the rebels in various places really sharpened their knives to kill the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and all things and individuals they considered to be "feudal, capitalist, and revisionist".

The “Cultural Revolution” was described as a struggle against the revisionist line or the capitalist road. This statement has no factual basis at all and confuses right and wrong on a series of major theoretical and policy issues. Many of the things criticized as revisionism or capitalism during the “Cultural Revolution” were actually Marxist principles and socialist principles, many of which were proposed or supported by Comrade Mao Zedong himself.

The "capitalist roaders" overthrown by the "Cultural Revolution" were leading cadres in the Party and state organizations at all levels, that is, the backbone of the socialist cause. There is no so-called "bourgeois headquarters" headed by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in the Party. Conclusive facts have proved that the charges of "traitor", "traitor" and "labor traitor" imposed on Comrade Liu Shaoqi were completely false accusations by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and others.