During the Great Leap Forward, Pan sympathized with Marshal Peng Dehuai, a critic of Mao Zedong's collectivization policy.

When the Cultural Revolution began, Pan, then party chief of Heilongjiang province, embraced the rebel Red Guards movement and gained the support of Mao.

After the Mukden Incident, which led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Pan organized the Shandong students to join the anti-Japanese and anti-Kuomintang (KMT) protests in the capital Nanjing.

[3] During the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Great Leap Forward, Pan Fusheng sympathized with Marshal Peng Dehuai, who criticized Mao's disastrous collectivization policies.

[1] As a result, he became a major target of persecution by the fervent Mao loyalist Wu Zhipu, the Second Secretary of Henan, with the approval of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Under Wu's leadership, Henan was one of the worst affected provinces during the Great Chinese Famine, with nearly 3 million people starving to death from 1959 to 1961.

[4]: 84 After the end of the Great Leap Forward, Pan was rehabilitated in 1962 and became the minister-level director of the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.

[5] By enthusiastically embracing the "power seizure" movement by the rebel Red Guards, Pan was able to gain Mao's support and became a well-known figure throughout China.