40th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命)

1966 was a significant year for China. It's the year the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) began. Howard French of the New York Times today profiles two figures from the Cultural Revolution in "Hearts Still Scarred 40 Years After China's Upheaval". One of them, Nie Yuanzi, was the college professor whose big-character poster allegedly started the Cultural Revolution. While it may seem like an example of non-state-controlled mass media sparking great cultural upheavals in China, one could actually argue that state-controlled media did in fact get things rolling before and after the poster was placed on the wall. From the article:

After the publication of an article criticizing Mao's political rivals, Ms. Nie, then Communist Party secretary of Beijing University's philosophy department, put up a poster that claimed the university was under the control of the bourgeoisie. Mao had the poster read over the radio, giving it his stamp of approval and encouraging attacks on authority figures.

The NYT article doesn't say which Chinese publication carried the article that prompted Nie to create the poster.

Approaching the situation using a counterfactual argument: Would the Cultural Revolution have taken place if the unnamed Chinese newspaper or magazine not published that article, and Nie didn't feel compelled to write a big-character poster?