May 16, 1966 - Cultural Revolution Officially Launched by Mao Zedong

On May 16, 1966, you're looking at the moment Mao Zedong officially launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He did it through a secret inner-party document called the "Notification," drafted by Chen Boda and heavily revised by Mao himself. It revoked existing party policy, dissolved key leadership groups, and signaled open season on anyone Mao deemed a bourgeois threat. What followed would consume an entire nation — and there's far more to uncover about how it all unfolded.

Key Takeaways

On May 16, 1966, the CCP Central Committee issued a secret "Notification" formally launching the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The document was drafted by Chen Boda and heavily revised by Mao Zedong to reflect his views on socialist class struggle.
The Notification revoked the "February Outline," dissolved the Group of Five, and triggered major top-level party restructuring.
It warned against bourgeois infiltration across party, government, military, and cultural institutions, demanding criticism of reactionary ideas.
The document remained classified until May 17, 1967, when it was published in People's Daily for broader dissemination.

What Was the May 16 Notification?

The May 16 Notification was a secret inner-party document issued on May 16, 1966, by an expanded Politburo meeting of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, marking the official start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This political memorandum addressed regional bureaus, provincial committees, departments, and the PLA General Political Department.

The document dissolved the Group of Five in Charge of Cultural Revolution, triggering significant party restructuring at the highest levels. It revoked the "February Outline" report, warned of bourgeois infiltration across party, government, army, and cultural institutions, and demanded thorough criticism of reactionary bourgeois ideas.

Originally titled simply "Notification," it remained classified until People's Daily published it on May 17, 1967, cementing its role as the Cultural Revolution's foundational declaration. It systematically expressed Mao Zedong's views on class struggle in the socialist period, serving as the guiding document for launching the Cultural Revolution. The document was initially drafted by Chen Boda, though Mao made major revisions including the warning about secret rightists sleeping alongside loyal party members.

Why Mao Launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966

With the May 16 Notification setting the Cultural Revolution in motion, it's worth asking what drove Mao Zedong to unleash such a sweeping upheaval in the first place.

Mao's insecurity about losing control within the Communist Party pushed him toward radical action. He believed rivals and bourgeois infiltrators had corrupted the revolution's ideological foundation. Three core motivations shaped his decision:

Preventing Soviet-style revisionism from taking hold in China
Purging party members who challenged his authority after the Great Leap Forward's failures
Engineering generational upheaval by mobilizing youth to dismantle traditional culture

You can see how these forces combined into something explosive. Mao didn't just want policy changes — he wanted total ideological dominance, using Red Guards as instruments to remake Chinese society from the ground up. The revolution's devastation continued for over a decade, finally coming to an end with Mao's death in 1976.

Before the Cultural Revolution, Mao had launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign, encouraging intellectual and artistic expression, only to reverse course and persecute those who spoke out, revealing the deep contradictions at the heart of his rule.

How the Red Guards Turned Ideology Into Violence

Mao's open endorsement of rebellion transformed ideological zeal into license for brutality. After the August 18, 1966 rally, Red Guards received directives targeting the "Four Olds," and propaganda mechanisms amplified Mao's personal letters and public appearances into commands for action. Peer policing intensified as rival factions monitored each other's revolutionary commitment, pushing members toward increasingly extreme acts to prove loyalty.

Violence escalated rapidly. Red Guards searched homes, destroyed temples, burned books, and tortured teachers, intellectuals, and officials. The movement, comprising an estimated 11 to 12 million students, represented an unprecedented mobilization of youth as instruments of revolutionary terror.

On August 5, female Red Guards beat vice principal Bian Zhongyun to death. Authorities received same-day notification and did nothing. Police chief Xie Fuzhi publicly declared it "no big deal" if Red Guards beat "bad people" to death, effectively sanctioning murder across China.

Red Guard factionalism, as rival mass organizations competed for revolutionary authority, frequently produced violence among competing groups themselves, turning the movement's aggression inward as power struggles emerged alongside external terror. Factional violence among groups ultimately contributed to the chaos that forced Mao to call in the People's Liberation Army to restore order.

Who Were the First People Mao Wanted Gone?

Targeting wasn't random—Mao had a clear hierarchy of enemies he wanted dismantled. At the top sat Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, political rivals blocking his ideological grip on the party. Below them, intellectual targets absorbed immediate Red Guard fury—teachers, academics, and cultural figures branded as bourgeois elements corrupting China's revolutionary identity.

His priority list broke down clearly:

Political rivals – Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Peng Zhen represented dangerous internal opposition
Intellectuals – educators and academics were among the first publicly humiliated and purged
Class enemies – families with capitalist, landlord, or Nationalist government histories faced persecution

You weren't safe if you'd achieved anything under the old order. Status itself became a liability overnight. The campaign explicitly targeted the Four Olds—old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits—giving persecutors an ideological framework to justify destroying anything tied to China's pre-revolutionary past. To mobilize this sweeping assault, Mao relied heavily on urban youth, organizing them into Red Guard units and unleashing them as the primary instrument of revolutionary enforcement against designated enemies.

How Many People Died in the Cultural Revolution?

The death toll from the Cultural Revolution remains one of history's most contested figures. Death tolls range from 500,000 to over 8 million, depending on the source and methodology. Most mainstream casualty estimates cluster between 1 and 2 million deaths, with Britannica, the National Archives, and Wikipedia all citing this range.

Stanford researcher Andrew Walder calculated 1.6 million deaths between 1966 and 1969 alone, drawing from 2,200 local annals. Scholar Ding Shu estimated 2 to 3 million, while R.J. Rummel placed abnormal deaths at 7.73 million.

Beyond the killings, tens of millions faced persecution, torture, forced relocation, and public humiliation. Internal CCP investigations conducted in 1982 and 1987 reported estimates of 1.2 million and 1.7 million deaths respectively, aligning with scholarly findings. The true number will likely never be confirmed, as the Chinese government tightly controls access to relevant historical records.

A classified report cited by Cheng Min in 1996 estimated that nearly 2 million people were killed and 125 million were persecuted throughout the course of the campaign.

Why the Cultural Revolution Still Shapes China Today

While historians may never agree on an exact death toll, the Cultural Revolution's impact didn't end when Mao declared it over in 1976.

Its consequences still shape China's political, social, and cultural landscape today.

Memory politics keeps this era contentious.

The Party avoids full reconciliation, leaving survivor resentments unaddressed and public discourse restricted.

This suppression fuels a lingering moral vacuum across Chinese society. Official textbooks allocate only a few paragraphs to the Cultural Revolution, with no mention of suffered harms.

Nearly three million CCP members and other citizens awaited reinstatement after being wrongfully purged.

You can see its fingerprints in three critical areas:

Political culture: Purges eroded internal trust, and fear still haunts party discourse
Social ethics: Decades of ideological terror hollowed out traditional moral frameworks
Cultural identity: Destruction of the Four Olds created irreversible losses in heritage and continuity

China moves forward, but it carries this unresolved weight.