Quick questions on Mao's Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns 1956 to 1958: HSC Modern History Personality

| Reversal | | 1957 to 1958 | Anti-Rightist Campaign | 552,877 to 1.2 million labelled | | 1978 to 1980 | Rehabilitation | About 90 percent restored |

Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" at the 20th CPSU Congress of 25 February 1956 denounced Stalin's cult of personality and the Great Terror. The text reached Mao via the Polish translation and shook the international communist movement. Polish workers rose at Poznan in June 1956; the Hungarian Revolution broke out on 23 October 1956 and was crushed by Soviet tanks on 4 November.

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).

On 27 February 1957 Mao addressed the Supreme State Conference with the speech "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" (Guanyu zhengque chuli renmin neibu maodun de wenti). Mao distinguished:

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.

Deng Xiaoping, General Secretary of the CCP Secretariat from September 1956, was placed in operational charge of the Anti-Rightist Campaign under Mao's overall direction. The campaign ran through 1957 to early 1958, with continuing "supplementary" rounds into 1959.

Official PRC figures (released in 1980) gave 552,877 Rightists labelled. Mao's confidential remarks suggested over 800,000. Modern Chinese researchers (Ding Shu, Yang Kuisong) and Western specialists give about 1 to 1.2 million when secondary categories ("centre rightists", "anti-Party elements", local equivalents) are included. The Rightist label was hereditary in practice, attaching to children and spouses.

Silenced intelligentsia. 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.

Roderick MacFarquhar (The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 1: Contradictions Among the People 1956 to 1957, 1974) gave the canonical chronology and treats the reversal as genuine.

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.

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.

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.

Even on the most charitable reading it was bounded; on the most sceptical it was a trap. The reversal was decisive.

Deng's operational leadership of the Anti-Rightist Campaign is essential and is often quietly omitted.

552,877 is the official figure; modern estimates are about 1 to 1.2 million, with family members carrying the label.