Mao’s China · CHAPTER 5 ·
Hundred Flowers Campaign
Chapter 5 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976: “A Hundred Flowers”
In 1956–57 Mao invited China’s educated people to criticise the Communist Party under the slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom”. After Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and the Hungarian rising, criticism in May and June 1957 went to the Party’s foundations, and within weeks the critics were punished.
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The map above is the world of China, June 1957 — From a Hundred Flowers to the Anti-Rightist Campaign.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1960 · Europe in 1960.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
Mao asked China’s educated people to criticize the Communist Party in 1956–57. The invitation mattered because the Party ruled alone at every level, and had never before asked outsiders to judge it. Its slogan, “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”, suggested a new space for debate, rather like a newspaper opening a free letters page.
The pressures behind the invitation came partly from abroad. In February 1956 the new Soviet leader Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes; in October Hungarians rose against their Communist government. Mao argued that China could prevent a similar rising by letting grievances be heard. For about five weeks in spring 1957, professors, students, writers and leaders of the small “democratic parties”, non-Communist parties retained as junior partners, responded. Many challenged the Party’s monopoly of power, going much further than the mild complaints Mao seems to have expected.
In June the Party’s main newspaper, the People’s Daily, signaled a counterattack. The Anti-Rightist Campaign labeled about 550,000 people “rightists”, or enemies of socialism. Units were expected to identify a share of their staff, often around five percent. Without a trial, the label could bring consequences like a criminal record: people lost jobs, homes and marriages, and many were sent to frontier labor camps. The dark arrows trace routes from Beijing, Lanzhou and Shanghai.
The map hatches Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin because the campaign struck cities, universities and offices. Its consequences reached beyond those places. Engineers, economists and journalists who might have challenged the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s reckless industrial drive of 1958, had seen that speaking honestly could end a career or a life. The brief opening had shown how little opposition the regime would tolerate.
The full story
In 1956 Communist leaders faced a disturbing question: what happened when a party’s mistakes could no longer be discussed openly? Khrushchev’s secret speech in February condemned Stalin, showing that a Communist leader could be judged by his own party. Later that year, risings in Poland and Hungary showed the danger of accumulated grievances. Mao believed China could respond differently, by hearing complaints before they produced an explosion.
His speech of 27 February 1957, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, offered a distinction for doing so. Disagreements among the people should be settled through discussion; conflicts with enemies called for force. In April the Party, which ruled alone at every level, began a rectification campaign and invited outsiders to criticize its “bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism”. Mao seems to have expected grateful intellectuals to offer moderate complaints that would help correct officials. That expectation depended on his belief that the Party had won their loyalty.
Seven years of grievances gave the invitation a different result. In May and early June, critics questioned the Party’s right to govern without sharing power. Chu Anping, editor of the intellectuals’ newspaper Guangming Daily, accused it of treating China as its private property, the “Party’s empire”. Leaders of the democratic parties, retained as junior partners since 1949, proposed genuine power-sharing and a commission to review injustices from earlier campaigns.
Students at Peking University covered a wall with posters; Lin Xiling told crowds that the faults lay in the system itself. In Shanghai, marked on the map, workers struck over pay and conditions, and Wenhui Bao printed criticism at length. Mao was already watching the change. On 15 May he told senior officials in an internal article that “things are beginning to change”, and waited while critics revealed themselves. The invitation was becoming a record of people who could be pursued.
Deng Xiaoping, the Party’s general secretary, managed its daily business and organized the counterattack. The People’s Daily asked “What is this for?” on 8 June. On 1 July Mao’s editorial condemned Wenhui Bao and described the episode as an “open plot” to lure enemies into the light. Words offered as criticism could now serve as evidence of hostility.
About 550,000 people were labeled “rightists”, enemies of socialism, with consequences like a criminal record imposed without trial. They included sociologist Fei Xiaotong, novelist Ding Ling and Chu Anping. A punishment created in August 1957, “re-education through labour”, allowed people to be sent to camps without trial. At Hanyang, officials treated schoolchildren’s protests as a “little Hungary” and executed three adults. At Jiabiangou in Gansu, most of some 3,000 rightists died of hunger by 1961. China’s educated people had reason to conclude that silence could be the price of survival.
FULL EXPLANATION
A trap, or a gamble that went wrong?
Mao later encouraged the belief that the invitation had been a trap from the start. His 1 July editorial called it an “open plot”, and he spoke of luring snakes out of their holes. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday accept this account: in their reading, the campaign was a deliberate snare. Roderick MacFarquhar reconstructs a different sequence in the first volume of The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. Mao expected moderate criticism that would help discipline a bureaucratic Party, MacFarquhar argues, and changed course in mid-May when critics challenged its right to rule. The internal article of 15 May, “Things are beginning to change”, supports a turning point during the campaign. Most scholars now hold a mixed view: Mao took a real gamble and, after it failed, presented the result as cunning rather than admit a mistake. The critics suffered either way.
Who were the rightists?
The Party disclosed an official total of about 550,000 rightists when it began reversing verdicts in 1978. Even that figure leaves much of the campaign out. Others were punished as “anti-socialist elements” or “middle rightists”, and in 1958 the campaign spread into the countryside and the Party’s own ranks. The way people were selected helps explain its reach. Units were expected to find a share of their staff, often cited as around five percent; meeting a target and settling personal rivalries could determine who received a label. Democratic-party leaders Zhang Bojun and Luo Longji were among the accused, as were teachers, engineers and students who had spoken once at a meeting. Children of rightists could be barred from university and the army. Almost all labels were removed in 1978–80, after many of those accused had died in camps or during the Cultural Revolution.
Workers and students in 1957
The complaints were not confined to the intellectuals whose speeches made the campaign famous. Elizabeth Perry’s research in Shanghai archives found hundreds of strikes, slowdowns and protests in spring 1957. Workers objected to pay and housing, and to benefits lost when private firms became joint enterprises. In Beijing, Wuhan and other cities, students organized debates and posters; some school pupils, including those at Hanyang, marched over their own grievances. The Party regarded collective action by workers and students as more dangerous than professors’ speeches, recalling their role in Hungary. Mao’s distinction between disagreements among the people and conflicts with enemies gave officials a way to reclassify a protest: they could declare its leaders rightists. The evidence shows both the breadth of dissatisfaction and a means by which the Party contained it.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
Khrushchev’s secret speech. On 25 February 1956 Khrushchev told the Soviet party congress that Stalin had been a criminal and a self-glorifying tyrant. His successors had condemned a Communist leader’s record, shaking parties throughout the movement. Mao was uneasy about an attack on a personality cult resembling his own. He also wanted China to air grievances before they accumulated and to show that its party, unlike the Soviet party, could face criticism without collapsing.
Hungary and Poland as warnings. Polish workers forced a change of leadership in October 1956. In Hungary a rising against Communist government ended when Soviet tanks crushed it, killing some 2,500 Hungarians. Mao saw a warning about pressures that repression alone could leave to build. Allowing criticism of officials, he argued, would help the Party correct faults before China faced its own Hungary. Soviet leaders drew the opposite lesson: an opening could invite revolt.
Mao’s confidence after collectivisation. Mao’s confidence rested on recent achievements. By the end of 1956 collectivization was complete, private business had been absorbed and the First Five-Year Plan was succeeding. He believed educated people were sufficiently loyal to criticize safely, and hoped their complaints would shake up a bureaucracy he distrusted. He had underestimated the trust lost during the campaigns of the early 1950s.
Real grievances after seven years. The invitation reached people who had reasons to complain. Intellectuals had endured thought reform and the purges of 1951–55; democratic parties had titles but no power. Workers had lost benefits as firms were nationalized, while students resented assignments and admissions quotas. Once they had permission to speak, grievances accumulated since 1949 emerged faster and more sharply than the leadership had expected.
THE TURNING POINT
8 June and 1 July 1957. The People’s Daily editorials of 8 June and 1 July 1957 converted a public invitation into a hunt. The Party had asked to be corrected; it now treated criticism as enmity to the state, using the critics’ words against them. Mao himself wrote the attack on Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao. Its “open plot” language presented frankness as a test. The reversal damaged trust in later invitations and helped produce the silence that shaped decisions in 1958.
What it changed
No one left to warn. The Great Leap Forward began in 1958 after economists, engineers, statisticians and journalists who might have exposed its impossible targets had been labeled, sent away or intimidated. Those experts still in office competed to praise the drive, and kept doubts private. The Anti-Rightist Campaign’s enforced silence helped make the ensuing famine possible.
Re-education through labour. From August 1957 police could use re-education through labour to send people to camps for years without trial. The power reached rightists, petty offenders and later political suspects, and remained available for later campaigns. It lasted until 2013, making it one of the Mao era’s longest-lived institutions; even in its final years it held well over a hundred thousand people.
From rightists to “right opportunists”. At Lushan in 1959 Mao called the defense minister’s criticism of the Leap “right opportunism”. A subsequent campaign purged officials across China. The method used against intellectuals in 1957 had reached the Party’s own ranks: even a senior comrade could be labeled for expressing honest doubts.
A generation of intellectuals broken. The label could shape a family’s life for decades. Some rightists spent up to twenty years in camps, villages or menial jobs, and their children carried the stigma. Many were attacked again during the Cultural Revolution. Rehabilitation in 1978–80 came too late for those who had died; survivors returned to professional life with the memory of what candor had cost.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Was the Hundred Flowers campaign a genuine opening that failed, or a deliberate trap?
The evidence favors a genuine gamble that Mao later presented as a trap. His February 1957 speech called for discussion of disagreements; the international crisis of 1956 made reform urgent; and rectification began with real criticism of officials. These facts fit an attempt to help the Party correct itself. There is evidence for the other reading. Mao later called the episode an “open plot”, and his internal article of 15 May shows him watching critics and preparing a response before the counterattack. MacFarquhar sees a change of course in that article; Chang and Halliday see the original plan unfolding. Teiwes also stresses divisions among other leaders. The documents cannot disclose Mao’s private intentions in March 1957, so the judgment remains uncertain. For those punished, the practical result was clear: an invitation to speak had supplied evidence against them, and the next invitation would be harder to answer honestly.
An interesting fact
Fei Xiaotong, the best-known social scientist labeled a rightist, trained in London under the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. His Peasant Life in China (1939), a study of a Yangtze delta village, remains a classic of fieldwork. After 1957 he was barred from research for more than twenty years and spent part of the Cultural Revolution doing manual labor. Rehabilitation in 1980 allowed him to return to studying small towns and rural industry. From 1988 to 1998 he was a vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress, serving the state he had once been accused of trying to overthrow.
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