Editing Cultural Revolution (section)

=== Notification ===
{{Main|16 May Notification}}
[[File:人民日报516.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.13|The 16 May Notification]]
In May 1966, an expanded session of the [[Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party|Politburo]] was called in Beijing. The conference was laden with Maoist political rhetoric on [[class struggle]] and filled with meticulously prepared 'indictments' of recently ousted leaders such as Peng Zhen and [[Luo Ruiqing]]. One of these documents, distributed on 16 May, was prepared with Mao's personal supervision and was particularly damning:{{r|Mac|pp=39–40}}

<blockquote>Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]] into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev for example, who are still nestling beside us.{{r|Mac|p=47}}</blockquote>

Later known as the "16 May Notification", this document summarized Mao's ideological justification for CR.{{r|Mac|p=40}} Initially kept secret, distributed only among high-ranking party members, it was later declassified and published in ''[[People's Daily]]'' on 17 May 1967.{{r|Mac|p=41}} Effectively it implied that enemies of the Communist cause could be found within the Party: class enemies who "wave the red flag to oppose the red flag." The only way to identify these people was through "the telescope and microscope of [[Mao Zedong Thought]]."{{r|Mac|p=46}} While the party leadership was relatively united in approving Mao's agenda, many Politburo members were not enthusiastic, or simply confused about the direction.<ref name="Nianyi">{{cite book |last=Wang |first=Nianyi |script-title=zh:大动乱的年代：1949–1989 年的中国 |trans-title=Great age of turmoil, a history of China 1949–89 |language=zh |year=1989 |publisher=Henan People's Publishing House}}</ref>{{rp|13}} The charges against party leaders such as Peng disturbed China's intellectual community and the [[United Front (China)|eight non-Communist parties]].{{r|Mac|p=41}}