[6][7][8][9][10] The definition of rightists was not always consistent, often including critics to the left of the government, but officially referred to those intellectuals who appeared to favor capitalism, or were against one-party rule as well as forcible, state-run collectivization.

[17] While the Hundred Flowers Movement was going on, in 1956, Khrushchev published the On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, which along with the ensuing riots in Poland and Hungary, had a large impact on China, where similar social unrest began to take place.

Some people claimed that "now the students are on the streets and the citizens are following them", "the situation is very serious", "Chairman Mao and the others can't go on, it's time for them to step down";[18] and that the CCP should take turns to rule with the democratic parties and open "Hyde Park" for public debate.

"[4]: 398 [20] On June 8, 1957, Mao drafted an inner-party document, Muster Our Forces to Repulse the Rightists' Wild Attacks, saying that "some bad capitalists, bad intellectuals, and reactionary elements in society are mounting wild attacks against the working class and the Communist Party in an attempt to overthrow the state power led by the working class.

[27] Administering several provinces in the southwest, Deng proved so zealous in killing alleged counter-revolutionaries that even the chairman felt obliged to write to him.

Mao urged Deng Xiaoping to slow down the campaign's body count, saying: If we kill too many, we will forfeit public sympathy and a shortage of labor power will arise.In a 2018 study by Zhaojin Zeng and Joshua Eisenman, analysing 144 counties within Anhui, Henan, and Jiangsu, it was found that the economic harm caused by the Anti-Rightist campaign continued for decades, even into 2000, compounded by existing issues with human capital at the time.

At that time, under leader Deng Xiaoping, the government announced that it needed capitalists' experience to get the country moving economically, and subsequently the guilty verdicts of thousands of counterrevolutionary cases were overturned — affecting many of those accused of rightism and who had been persecuted for that crime the previous twenty two years.

[4][5] In 2009, leading up the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding, a number of media outlets in China listed the most significant events of 1957 but downplayed or omitted reference to the Anti-Rightist Movement.