Hundred Flowers Campaign

Hundred Flowers Campaign
Simplified Chinese百花齐放
Traditional Chinese百花齊放

The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement (Chinese: 百花齐放), was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the Communist Party.[1][2]

During the campaign, differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Mao Zedong: "The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science."[3] The movement was in part a response to the demoralization of intellectuals, who felt estranged from the Communist Party.[4] After this brief period of liberalization, the crackdown continued through 1957 and 1959 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology. Citizens were rounded up in waves by the hundreds of thousands, publicly criticized, and condemned to prison camps for re-education through labor, or even execution.[5] The ideological crackdown re-imposed Maoist orthodoxy in public expression, and catalyzed the Anti-Rightist Movement.

  1. ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick. 1960. The Hundred Flowers. pp. 3
  2. ^ "Hundred Flowers Campaign." Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
  3. ^ "Definition of Hundred Flowers". Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved 2012-05-17.[dead link]
  4. ^ "Double-Hundred Policy (1956-1957)". chineseposters.net. Archived from the original on 2017-02-12. Retrieved 2017-02-11.
  5. ^ Short, Philip (2000). Mao: A Life. Macmillan. pp. 457–471. ISBN 978-0-8050-6638-8.

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search