"[1][2] It was a campaign that allowed citizens to offer criticism and advice to the government and the party;[3] hence it was intended to serve an antibureaucratic purpose, at least on the Maoists' part.
[4] The campaign resulted in a groundswell of criticism aimed at the Party and its policies by those outside its rank and represented a brief period of relaxation in ideological and cultural control.
Citizens were rounded up in waves by the hundreds of thousands, publicly criticized during struggle sessions, and condemned to prison camps for re-education through labor or execution.
The name was used to arouse the interest of China's intellectuals, referring to the Warring States period when numerous schools of thought competed for ideological, not military, supremacy.
In late March, Mao inscribed a dedication for the establishment of the Chinese Opera Research Institute: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; weed through the old to bring forth the new."
[11] It is suggested that the launching of the campaign was delayed by the shocking impact of the speech denouncing Stalin at the Twentieth Soviet Party Congress in February 1956 delivered by Nikita Khrushchev.
To this end, in an attempt to reduce hesitancy, intellectuals were invited to forums in which they were allowed to ask exploratory questions, slowly discovering what was deemed acceptable speech.
[13] Criticisms became more specific in May, citing the regimentation of education, thought reforms in previous years that were described as "painful", and the lack of employment prospects for those who went to American and British scholars.
[14] Nonetheless, most of the commentary was premised on complete acceptance of socialism and the legitimacy of the Communist Party and focused on making the existing socialist system work better.
"[15] One professor mentioned that Marx and Lenin had repeatedly revised their theories and suggested that the two would be displeased if they had seen how strictly the CCP leaders were applying doctrine.
[16] They protested CPC control over intellectuals, the harshness of previous mass campaigns such as that against counter-revolutionaries, the slavish following of Soviet models, the low standards of living in China, the proscription of foreign literature, economic corruption among party cadres, and the fact that 'Party members [enjoyed] many privileges which make them a race apart'.
[16]On June 8, 1957, the major party newspaper, People's Daily, published an editorial that signaled the conclusion of the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
This, the editorial claimed, amounted to a hostile struggle "between the enemy and the people", indicating the beginning of a crackdown that later became the Anti-Rightist Campaign led by then party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping.
In essence, Mao was threatened by the intellectuals efforts to reclaim the position as loyal guardians of the proper moral framework for the political system.
Another consequence of the Hundred Flowers Campaign was that it discouraged dissent and made intellectuals reluctant to criticize Mao and his party in the future.
The Anti-Rightist Movement that shortly followed, and was caused by the Hundred Flowers Campaign, resulted in the persecution of intellectuals, officials, students, artists, and dissidents labeled "rightists".
In the summer and early fall of 1957, roughly four hundred thousand urban residents, including many intellectuals, were branded as rightists and either sent to penal camps or forced into labor in the countryside.
[23] The Hundred Flowers Movement was the first of its kind in the history of the People's Republic of China in that the government opened up to ideological criticisms from the general public.
With criticism allowed, some of the minorities' activists made public their protest against "Han chauvinism" which they saw the informal approach of party officials toward the local specifics.
As Lieberthal puts it, "The Chairman…in the Hundred Flowers campaign and in the Cultural Revolution, proved willing to bring in non-party people as part of his effort to curb officiousness by cadres.
[25] Authors Clive James and Jung Chang posit that the campaign was, from the start, a ruse intended to expose rightists and counter-revolutionaries, and that Mao Zedong persecuted those whose views were different from those of the Party.
Because we informed the enemy in advance: only by allowing the monsters and demons to come out of their lairs can we exterminate them; only by letting the poisonous weeds emerge from the ground can we easily uproot them.
She writes that many interpretations of the Hundred Flowers campaign "underestimate the fear on the part of Mao and party leadership over an escalating atmosphere of anticommunism within the communist world in the aftermath of the East European uprisings.