16 May Notification

The 16 May Notification (Chinese: 五一六通知; pinyin: Wǔyīliù Tōngzhī) or Circular of 16 May, originally titled simply Notification (通知; Tōngzhī), was the initial political declaration of the Cultural Revolution. Initially a secret inner-party document, it was issued at a May 1966 expanded session of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The notification ended a political dispute within the CCP stemming from the Beijing Opera play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office by dissolving the top level of the party's cultural apparatus and encouraging mass political movement to oppose rightists within the party. The result was a political victory for Mao Zedong. The Notification is often viewed as the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and would be declassified and published in People's Daily on 17 May 1967.^[1]: 41