ON THIS DAY · 1 JULY 1957

Mao’s editorial against Wenhui Bao

1 Jul 1957 — A People’s Daily editorial, written by Mao himself, attacks Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao for its “bourgeois orientation” in printing criticism during the Hundred Flowers. Editors, writers, teachers and business people who had spoken out in Shanghai are named as rightists in the months that follow.

The moment in context

The Hundred Flowers grew out of a crisis in world communism and Mao’s confidence that China was different. Khrushchev’s secret speech of February 1956 had shown that a Communist leader could be judged and condemned by his own party, and the risings in Poland and Hungary that autumn showed what could happen when grievances were suppressed for too long. Mao’s speech of 27 February 1957, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, drew a line between disagreements among the people, which should be settled by discussion, and conflicts with enemies, which called for force. In April the Communist Party, which ruled alone at every level of government, launched a rectification campaign, a drive to correct its own faults much like an organisation inviting complaints about its managers. It asked outsiders to criticise its “bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism”. Mao seems to have expected mild complaints from grateful intellectuals, and his confidence that the Party had won their loyalty was the premise of the whole experiment.

From Hundred Flowers Campaign, chapter 5 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976 (1957).

The place: Mao’s editorial against Wenhui Bao — map and full story →

The atlas that shows it

The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976

12 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP