Economic context

Section A: The Plan of Investigation

This investigation aims to answer the question: To what extent was the Hundred Flowers campaign designed as a trap? In February 1957, Mao started the Hundred Flowers campaign, which encouraged opened criticism of the party, however after only six months he launched the Anti-Rightist movement directed at the intellectuals, who spoke out and leading to the prosecution of half a million people.

The scope includes domestic and international context of the campaign, the events of campaign and its consequences up to 1958. The method used to answer the question is putting the Hundred Flowers campaign into context with Mao’s previous policy towards intellectuals; his ideology, reactions as the campaign unfolded, as well as the key historiographical debate[1], in order to bring out his underlying intention.

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Section B: Summary of Evidence

Roots in Mao’s Ideology:

• Officials should undergo regular criticism to prevent them from becoming self-satisfied and elitist, i.e. Yan’an rectification campaign, 1944[2].

State’s policy towards intellectuals

• National bourgeois and pretty bourgeois given civil rights in an attempt to harness their expertise when the Republic was created[3].
• Pro-democratic intellectual Wang Shewei executed during the Yan’an Rectification campaign after his open- criticism of the party[4].
• Autumn of 1951, the “thought reform” movement.” 6500 intellectuals and university professors obliged to undertake courses in communist thinking, artists and writers opposing CCP imprisoned[5].
• 1950s: Intellectuals treated as black classes; there were individualized attacks against Hu Shi and Liang Shuming[6].
• Persecution of left-wing writer Hu Feng and a countrywide hunt for “Hu Feng elements” was a terrifying warning for intellectuals in 1955[7].

• In 1956 Mao raised salaries and gave better apartments to intellectuals, allowing more freedom from the bureaucracy of the party[8].

• 1956: Mao gave “useful” intellectuals, such as engineers, better standards of living then the average[9].
• Tried to woo back Chinese professors living abroad.

Context of the campaign:

Economic context

· By 1956 China was in a position to further advance the transition to a socialist economic system[10].

• The tight grip on all aspects of life and bureaucracy was counter-productive for the transition to a socialist economic system. The focus of Mao’s speeches became decentralization of power[11].

• Shortage of skilled labor of intellectuals^[12] was blocking Mao’s economic plans[13].
• Mao’s decision to stop mechanically copying USSR (Secret Speech 1956), required intellectuals initiative[14]. (Short)

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