Bombard the Headquarters

"Bombard The Headquarters – My First Big-Character Poster" ( _zh. 炮打司令部——我的一张大字报) was a short comment written by Mao Zedong on August 5, 1966 during the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and published on the Communist Party's official newspaper People's Daily the same day. It is commonly believed that this "poster" directly targeted Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who were then in charge of Chinese government's daily affairs and who tried to cool down the mass hysteria which had been coming into shape in several universities in Beijing since the May 16 Notice, through which Mao officially launched the cultural revolution, was issued.

Much larger scale of mass persecutions came after the publication of this big-character poster, resulting in turmoil of the whole country and the death of thousands of "class enemies", including Liu Shaoqi.

Transcription follows::"China's first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster and Commentator's article on it in People's Daily are indeed superbly written! Comrades, please read them again. But in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great cultural revolution of the proletariat. They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964 which was 'Left' in form but Right in essence, shouldn't this make one wide awake?"全国第一张马列主义的大字报和《人民日报》评论员的评论，写得何等好啊！请同志们重读这一篇大字报和这篇评论。可是在五十多天里，从中央到地方的某些领导同志，却反其道而行之，站在反动的资产阶级立场，实行资产阶级专政，将无产阶级轰轰烈烈的文化大革命运动打下去，颠倒是非，混淆黑白，围剿革命派，压制不同意见，实行白色恐怖，自以为得意，长资产阶级的威风，灭无产阶级的志气，又何其毒也！联系到1962年的右倾和1964年形“左”而实右的错误倾向，岂不是可以发人深省的吗？

ee also

* Cultural Revolution
* Two Whatevers