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NSWModern HistoryQuick questions
Section III (Personalities): Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China
Quick questions on Mao's Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns 1956 to 1958: HSC Modern History Personality
9short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is This For?Show answer
| Reversal | | 1957 to 1958 | Anti-Rightist Campaign | 552,877 to 1.2 million labelled | | 1978 to 1980 | Rehabilitation | About 90 percent restored |
What is the Hundred Flowers, 1956 to early 1957?Show answer
Propaganda chief Lu Dingyi gave the formulation in a speech on 26 May 1956: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend" (baihua qifang, baijia zhengming). The phrase was a literary borrowing from the Warring States period. The Party invited criticism on three areas: bureaucratism (guanliao zhuyi), sectarianism (zongpai zhuyi), and subjectivism (zhuguan zhuyi).
What is the 8 June 1957 reversal?Show answer
A People's Daily editorial of 8 June 1957, "What is This For?" (Zhe shi weishenme?), drafted by Mao, announced that criticism had revealed "bourgeois rightists" attempting to overthrow socialism. The Anti-Rightist Campaign (Fanyou yundong) was launched.
What is silenced intelligentsia?Show answer
A generation of intellectuals, including senior natural scientists, engineers, and the Western-trained returnee scholars, was removed from public life or sent to labour reform. The First Five-Year Plan's technical achievements had drawn on these people; the Great Leap Forward's amateurism would suffer their absence.
What is mao re-ascendant?Show answer
Mao's authority within the elite was restored after the Eighth Congress demotion of his Thought. He moved within months to launch the Great Leap Forward.
What is deng Xiaoping marked?Show answer
Deng's prominent role in the Anti-Rightist Campaign was held against him in the early reform period and apologised for in his 1978 to 1980 rehabilitation of the Rightists.
What is q1?Show answer
Source A is an extract from Mao's "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" (February 1957). Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the Hundred Flowers Campaign. [5 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Evaluate the extent to which the Anti-Rightist Campaign reshaped Chinese intellectual life. [25 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Compare the views of Roderick MacFarquhar and Frederick Teiwes on the Hundred Flowers Campaign. [10 marks]