ON THIS DAY ·
Mao’s editorial against Wenhui Bao
1 Jul 1957 — Mao himself writes a People’s Daily editorial attacking Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao for its “bourgeois orientation” in printing criticism during the Hundred Flowers. Over the following months, editors, writers, teachers and business people who had spoken out in Shanghai are named as rightists.
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The moment in context
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.
From Hundred Flowers Campaign, chapter 5 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976 (1957).
The place: Mao’s editorial against Wenhui Bao — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- 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…
- The turn — 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…
- 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…
Then ask the room: Was the Hundred Flowers campaign a genuine opening that failed, or a deliberate trap? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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