Hundred Flowers Campaign
In May 1956, Mao Zedong, the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC), announced that the Communist government would relax its strict control over freedom of thought and expression. Mao adopted the slogan of "Let a hundred flowers bloom together, let the hundred schools of thought contend" and invited intellectuals to voice criticism of party cadets and government policies. Mao intended to win over the alienated intellectuals by giving them a degree of intellectual freedom. More access to foreign publications, for example, was given to intellectuals who worked in schools, colleges, and universities, as these people were losing faith in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the introduction of a Soviet-style education system to China starting from 1949, in which liberal arts education was discarded in favor of science and technology education.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign was not quick in taking off. On the one hand, there was resistance to criticism within the CCP. On the other hand, Chinese intellectuals were reluctant to criticize the government, fearing reprisal. It was only in the spring of 1957, after Mao's open reassurance, that members of democratic parties, writers, journalists, teachers, and professionals in China started to criticize communist rule, government policy, and party members openly. In extreme cases, wall posters appeared in public denouncing the whole communist system. Some even questioned the legitimacy of CCP rule over China. Mao and other leaders of the CCP were all shocked by the volume and intensity of the criticism.
By early July, just five weeks after the inauguration of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, a dramatic new campaign was launched by the CCP, shifting the target of criticism from the CCP to the intellectuals. Recent critics of the regime were severely criticized by party members, and about half to three-quarters of a million intellectuals were denounced or blacklisted. Some were arrested, and many were sent to the countryside to "rectify their thinking through labor." It was only in 1979, three years after the death of Mao, that Deng Xiaoping, the new leader of the CCP, restored a "decent name" to these denounced intellectuals.
Chinese Communist Party; Deng Xiaoping; Mao Zedong
Further Reading
Goldman, Merle. (1967) Literary Dissent in Communist China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacFarquhar, Roderick. (1960) The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals. New York: Praeger.
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