In this post, a Chinese citizen reflects on the outcome of the short lived "Hundred Flowers Campaign."The short-lived Hundred Flowers Campaign, initiated by Mao Zedong in February 1957, probably started as a reaction to the anti-Soviet uprisings in Eastern Europe. Mao recognized the failure of the oppression by the Soviet Union and its consequences and wanted to prevent the same fate for China. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was an effort to welcome and include Chinese intellectuals back into the Communist Party. The thought was that the country and the economy needed to industrialize better than it had since the ouster of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. Mao was fearful that without a better quality of life for the common Chinese people, the same fate that occurred in the Eastern Europe Soviet-bloc would happen to China.
Mao Zedong may have developed a resentment of intellectuals as a young man when he was working in the library at Beijing University. His peasant background may have excluded him, and resentment of the intellectual class may have begun. This resentment stayed with him and may have influenced him throughout his oppressive rule, for it was the intellectuals who were mostly singled out by the Chinese Communist Party.
The Hundred Flower Campaign was Mao’s thought “to let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” in order to enlist the intellectuals in developing much-needed industrial improvements through freedom of expression of artistic and political ideas. The intellectuals were at first reluctant, remembering the oppressive policies against free thought begun in 1942. “Skeptical of Mao’s motives, the ‘hundred flowers’ feared an early spring, one that promised a healthy growing season before killing with a deadly, late-winter frost.” After Mao then instructed the Party to encourage the intellectuals to participate, the flood gates were opened, much to the Party’s and Mao’s displeasure. Criticism of the Party and its policy was especially great from college campuses by way of posters published by students. One anonymous poster from Qinghua University was especially hard on the Party and it’s chairman:
“ We have given our blood, sweat, toil and precious lives to defend not the people but the bureaucratic organs and bureaucrats who oppress the people and live off the fat of the land… In Yan’an was Chairman Mao, who had two dishes plus soup for every meal, having a hard time? Were the peasants, who had nothing to eat but bitter vegetables, enjoying the good life? Everyone was told that Chairman Mao was leading a hard and simple life… a million shames on him! …Our pens can never defeat Mao Zedong’s Party guards and his imperial army. When he wants to kill you, he doesn’t have to do it himself. He can mobilize your wife and children to denounce you and then kill you with their own hands! Is this a rational society? This is class struggle, Mao Zedong style!”
The Party quickly moved to end the campaign, stating that it was a ruse to flush out “counter-revolutionary elements.” The failure of the Hundred Flowers Campaign led Mao to turn to the group that he had the most favor for, the peasant class. In 1958, Mao Zedong instituted the ‘Great Leap Forward” where he would call upon the peasant class to work extra hard in order to achieve the success that the intellectual class could not. Once again Mao’s ideas failed, which led him to the “Cultural Revolution”, his final assault on the intellectual class. Mao’s early exclusion from the intellectual class may have influenced his actions until the end of his rule.
Hu Chijia
胡痴佳
