The Circular of May 16, 1956 worked out under Chairman Mao's personal guidance laid down the theory, line, principles and policies for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and constituted the great programme for the whole movement. The Circular thoroughly criticized the "February Outline" turned out by Liu Shao-chi's bourgeois headquarters for the purpose of suppressing this great revolution. It called upon the whole Party and the people of the whole country to direct the spearhead of struggle against the representatives of the bourgeoisie who had sneaked into the Party and to pay special attention to unmasking "persons like Khrushchev . . . who are still nestling beside us," This was a great call mobilizing the people of the whole country to unfold a great political revolution. The cultural revolution Group Under the Central Committee, which was set up by decision of the Circular, has firmly carried out Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line.

Under the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, the broad revolutionary masses plunged into the fight. In Peking University a big-character poster was written in response to the call of the Central Committee. And soon big-character posters criticizing reactionary bourgeois ideas mushroomed all over the country. Then Red Guards rose and came forward in large numbers and revolutionary young people became courageous and daring path breakers. Thrown into a panic, the Liu Shao-chi clique rushed out with the bourgeois reactionary line, cruelly suppressing the revolutionary movement of the student youth. However, this did not win them much time in their deathbed struggle. Chairman Mao called out and presided over the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party. The Plenary Session adopted the programmatic document, Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (i.e., the 16-Point Decision). Chairman Mao put up hid big-character poster Bombard the Headquarters, thus taking the lid off Liu Shao-chi's bourgeois headquarters.