John M. Jackson

jojacks2[at]vt.edu

An Early Spring:

Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Intellectuals and the Hundred Flowers Campaign

copyright © John M. Jackson, 2004

On February 27, 1957, Mao Tse-tung made an unusual request. Addressing a session of the Supreme State Conference in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman called for a relaxation of constraints upon the nation's intellectuals. Moreover, Mao called on the intellectuals themselves to engage in open criticism of the Party.

Known as the Hundred Flowers campaign, Mao's new policy had a dramatic effect. For the next several weeks, China's intellectuals answered the chairman's call for criticism with a vengeance derived from years of CCP oppression. Finding itself the subject of serious criticism, the Party soon repealed its newly adopted liberal policy and placed the intellectuals under even more strict control. Despite its early demise, however, the Hundred Flowers campaign had far-reaching effects on the direction of the People's Republic of China and the CCP's view of intellectual debate. Under Mao's leadership, these policies hindered China's modernization efforts and would eventually culminate in the disastrous Cultural Revolution.

In this paper, I hope to show that the Hundred Flowers experiment was an attempt by Mao to further China's development by enlisting the aid of the nation's non-Party intellectuals, and that the movement's implementation signaled a major miscalculation on Mao's part. Furthermore, the evidence presented here should indicate that this miscalculation was a direct result of Mao's own prejudices and that the movement's failure compounded the chairman's distrust of the intelligentsia. Although contemporary standards placed Mao well within the ranks of the intellectual class, he maintained a closer attachment to the peasantry throughout his life. As a young man working in the Beijing University library, Mao's peasant background prevented his inclusion in the intellectual circles of the largely urban bourgeois campus (Uhalley 14-15). Neither did Mao have much regard for the academicians, for he blamed many of China's problems on their weakness, conservatism, and elitist nature (Goldsmith 41).

Like many of his contemporaries, Mao was searching for an ideology that would provide the struggling China a sense of nationalism and a means of modernization, allowing it to overcome its subservience to regional warlords and foreign powers (MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 4). In Marxist-Leninism, Mao believed he had found that ideology. Joining the newly formed CCP in the early 1920s, Mao asserted that any attempts to reform and unify China would depend upon a mobilization of the nation's peasant masses. The fledgling CCP, however, composed of those same bourgeois intellectuals that Mao despised, largely ignored the peasants as a factor in their plans (Benton and Hunter 4). Mao's own views on revolution and political reformation gained few advocates.

By the end of the Long March in 1935, Mao's theories on revolution had gained a much greater prominence in Party doctrine. Many of the Party's founding members had been lost to Chiang Kai-shek's purges and the Long March, leaving the path open for Mao's ascent to CCP chairman (Benton 5). Under new leadership, the Party reached out to the peasantry, providing assistance and instituting reforms designed to curry their favor. Though the communists had been routed from eastern China, the peasantry provided the CCP with a source of new allies--allies that had, through sheer number, toppled kingdoms and re-written Chinese history many times.

Having established the Party's base of operations at Yenan, Mao in 1942 undertook thought reform measures designed to combat the bureaucratism and elitism he saw among Party officials. In order to renew the Party's commitment to revolution and to maintain ties to the peasantry, Mao's own theories on socialism and revolution were incorporated into Party doctrine through study sessions and "struggling."

Initially, the Yenan rectification was conducted within Party bounds. Soon, however, non-Party intellectuals, who had drifted to Yenan to escape the Nationalists, joined in criticizing CCP members and policies (Benton and Hunter 8). Mao saw the public criticisms as a dangerous attack on the Party, and in May 1942, he addressed them and warned against focusing on the Party's shortcomings. Instead, Mao instructed them, they were to concentrate only upon the CCP's positive aspects. Mao's "Talks on Art and Literature" set forth specific limits upon the subject matter that was permissible under Party guidelines and became the basis for later policies regarding artistic and political expression. Never a strongly organized group, the intellectuals bowed under Mao's pressure (Benton and Hunter 11). From that moment on, Mao effectively controlled the intelligentsia at Yenan. Henceforth, they would produce works that would serve only to uphold the Party's authority and the doctrine of Marxist-Leninist Mao Tse-tung Thought. The Yenan rectification also taught Mao the value of the mobilization campaign. Throughout his career he would use the campaigns to accomplish specific goals and to institute thought reform and avoid political entrenchment. Such measures were necessary, in Mao's estimation, to maintain the people's revolutionary fervor (Starr 208-9).

With the CCP victory of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in 1949, Mao's restrictions on intellectual activity would encompass all of China. Throughout the 1950s, China underwent a massive political re-education, as the CCP consolidated its power. Study sessions, "struggling," and reform through labor--methods first developed in the Yenan rectification--were used on a national scale to eradicate former modes of social and political thought. The intellectual class--along with landlords and other groups labeled "counter-revolutionary"--were subject to especially brutal methods of thought reform. Criticism from the masses isolated them and squelched the creativity of the artists, writers and scientists. Throughout the early 1950s, the Party moved to purge counter-revolutionaries, a goal that, under Mao's authority, led to nearly 800,000 deaths; included in the purge were many academicians. By 1956, the intellectual class had been effectively reined in, its members' activities closely supervised by CCP cadres.

Meanwhile, the Party had undertaken Mao's demand for agricultural collectivization. By the middle of the 1956, the great majority of China's peasantry had been relegated to Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives. In June of that year, Mao felt comfortable in stating that China had effected a socialist victory over capitalism (Teiwes 212). The threat of counter-revolutionaries had seemingly been eliminated, and China's economy was developing ahead of schedule. On a global scale, communism was faring less well. Uprisings in Poland and Hungary, as well as Khrushchev's de-Stalinization of Russia, pointed toward challenges to the Party's power in the Soviet bloc countries (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 8). Still, Mao and the CCP remained confident in China's stability. There had been small-scale strikes earlier in the year, but they presented no real threat to the Party's authority (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 10). After a century of western domination, China seemed ready to resume a leading role in world affairs.

Party officials and cadres were understandably apprehensive of the new directive's possible consequences. Much of their own rise to power, after all, had been at the expense of the same intellectuals who were now invited to criticize them. Though the Party had been subjected to criticism before, it had always been through internal channels, or, as in the rectification campaign of 1948, from the peasantry. The Hundred Flowers movement instead solicited criticism from a group that the Party had relentlessly suppressed for over a decade (Teiwes 239, 274).

Because of the deep opposition to the movement, few steps were taken to make the Hundred Flowers campaign a reality. The few intellectuals who knew of the movement responded guardedly. 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 (MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 25). As Benton and Hunter (13) write, "Experience had shown that policy could change suddenly, with today's license becoming tomorrow's sentence." The intelligentsia had good cause to hesitate. Only a few months earlier, Mao had denounced many of them as counter-revolutionaries, and even as he offered them intellectual freedom, he demanded that they study Marxist-Leninist doctrine (Teiwes 232). Any blooming spurred by the policy, therefore, was half-hearted and soon withered away. Considering later events, the intellectuals' fear of an early spring was well-founded.

By February 1957, Mao was incensed at the Party's less-than-enthusiastic implementation of the campaign and the little response his policy had evoked. The cadres' lack of zeal underscored Mao's belief that they had become entrenched and had lost contact with the needs of the masses. As in Yenan in 1942, Mao called for CCP rectification to re-instill the revolutionary spirit in party officials (Teiwes 234). Mao's February 1957 speech to the Supreme State Conference was merely a re-iteration of the measures that he had called for the previous June. Unlike his earlier speech, however, Mao's February talk ultimately caused a vigorous blooming--and a more serious crop of criticism than the chairman had anticipated or wanted. Initially, it appeared that Mao's invitation would bring little more response than his 1956 entreaty. Mao had eliminated challenges to his power, however, and unlike during the 1956 movement, the cadres were mobilized to inform the intellectuals of their new rights (Teiwes 243). Early responses involved little political debate, though, and instead centered on scientific issues. Throughout early 1957, water conservancy experts held conferences and expressed their concern regarding CCP conservation policies. Though it was a start, it was not the type of serious criticism Mao had considered necessary to rectify the Party and spur development (Teiwes 258).

As spring progressed, intellectuals grew bolder in their criticism of the Party. Criticism continued to revolve around technical subjects but began to center on the Party's repression of scientific inquiry through "irrational practices," "inadequate resources" and "unreasonable security restrictions" (Teiwes 263). Scientists claimed their research and development efforts were stifled by CCP cadres who insisted on adherence to party doctrine. Furthermore, the critics claimed, Party organs often made important policy decisions without the necessary technical expertise and without asking for input or feedback.

At a May 12 symposium of scientists, Engineer Li Kouzi spoke of 600,000 double-share wheel plows lying idle in South China, manufactured by order of a bureaucrat who was unaware that the plows were unsuitable for use in South China's wet soil. At the same conference, a Beijing University math professor complained of good textbooks being discarded by the Ministry of Education and replaced with antiquated Soviet texts for ideological reasons (Benton and Hunter 95). Such examples called into question the Party's wisdom and commitment to development.

The Hundred Flowers movement quickly gained momentum throughout May, when debates turned from the shortcomings of Party officials and cadres to criticism of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Party's role in governing the country. During the second week of May, the democratic United Front Parties' Beijing forum revealed deep-seated frustration with the Chinese system. Many speakers berated the elitism of Party cadres, and a few outspoken activists, such as Huang Shaohong of the Guomindang Revolutionary Committee, accused the CCP of exercising government prerogatives without the proper authority (Benton and Hunter 87).

Criticism was especially rampant on college campuses, where students published all posters denouncing the party and calling for a re-examination of capitalist and democratic doctrines. If these attacks were cause for concern among lower Party ranks, sentiments were soon emerging which must have alarmed Mao himself. The anonymous author of a June 2 wall poster at Qinghua University joined many other scholars in castigating both the Party and its 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. They are a group of fascists who employ foul means, twist the truth, band together in evil adventure, and ignore the people's wish for peace both at home and abroad ... 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. That son of a bitch! 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! (Qtd. in Benton and Hunter 101).

Such accusations of Mao's deception and brutality were by no means uncommon during that first week of June. With their appearance, the Party quickly moved to contain and halt the experiment. The college campuses had been Mao's main source of hope for China's leap toward industrial vitality. To find that there was such widespread dissidence among this first generation of the People's Republic undoubtedly presented a shock to Chairman Mao and the CCP (MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 12).

On June 18, Mao's February speech was published for the first time. Admittedly revised from the original, the published speech contained six criteria that intellectuals were to consider before criticizing the Party. The criteria, in effect, negated the validity of any criticism which served to undermine the Party's authority, and they reinforced the limits set forth by Mao at Yenan in 1942. Had the measures been in the speech that Mao actually delivered in February, it is doubtful that even one of the hundred flowers would have bloomed (Starr 197; MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 262). The attacks that the movement had brought upon the Party and himself renewed Mao's distrust of the intellectuals. A return to political norms was in order, and Mao instituted the Anti-Rightist campaign. Conducted by Deng Xiaoping, the campaign labeled as "rightist" all those who had used the Hundred Flowers experiment as a platform for Party criticism. The worst offenders were imprisoned, but many more students, teachers and technical experts were "sent down" for years of reform through labor. Why, then, considering Mao Tse-tung's long-standing disdain for the intellectuals and his underlying faith in the peasantry, did he reverse Party policy and make overtures to the intelligentsia in 1956-57? The answer to that question appears to remain locked in a complex interplay of international domestic issues along with the political and personal views of Mao himself.

The Party's official explanation for the movement and its abrupt termination was that it had been a ruse to ensnare counter-revolutionary elements remaining after the purges instituted earlier in the decade. To the masses, reeling from the constant revolutionary fervor invoked by earlier campaigns, the "snake trap" explanation must have seemed quite plausible. As MacFarquhar (Hundred Flowers 12) writes, however, "It is certainly unlikely that Mao would have gone to all the trouble of formulating his doctrine on contradictions to unearth bourgeois thoughts of whose existence he was already aware." Instead, it seems more likely that Mao was a victim of his own propaganda. The success of collectivization had left the chairman feeling overly confident. On the surface, it appeared that antagonistic contradictions among the people had been greatly obliterated. According to Teiwes, though, Mao "grossly underestimated both existing tensions in Chinese society and the conflict which would be generated by the striking departure from established political norms" (242). Moreover, Mao underestimated the convictions of the intellectuals. Still regarding them as the class that had readily bowed before the imperialists, Mao believed the intellectuals had conceded the Party's supremacy. Though they had not been indoctrinated, Mao felt that the repression of artists, scientists and writers had made them pliant to his will (MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 13).

Despite his disparagement of intellectuals, Mao recognized their value to the nation's attempt to invigorate its economy. While technicians held the expertise necessary for ushering in an era of industrialization, writers helped to shape public opinion, even in the most oppressive of regimes (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 232). Certainly Mao was willing to make some concessions to appease groups that could do so much to further his goals.

Mao also recognized that the Chinese people would not tolerate the totalitarian type of repression used in the Soviet-bloc countries. The uprisings in Eastern Europe served only to underscore Mao's theories on the limits to which the masses would submit to regimentation (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 8-9). In order to retain its hold on the people, the Party would have to allow some modicum of freedom. The shortage of consumer goods that accompanied Mao's collectivization movement may have reminded the Chairman of how despotic rulers had been overthrown by the hungry masses in China's imperial past. Mao undoubtedly recognized that the Party's legitimacy would rest on its ability to feed the populace (MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers 9).

The Hundred Flowers campaign could also be viewed as an attempt by Mao to consolidate his power within the CCP. The de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union had brought with it challenges to the type of dictatorial position Mao had cultivated for himself in China. A party rectification that undermined the authority of his challengers while leaving his own intact would preserve Mao's supremacy.

The ultimate failure of the Hundred Flowers experiment reminded Mao that antagonistic contradictions still remained among the people and that he could not rely on the intellectuals to further his goals. In 1958, Mao would instead turn to the group for which he felt the closest affinity and in which he retained a deep faith. While the intellectuals languished under new restraints, Mao called for full-scale peasant mobilization to develop industry. If China could not rely on its head to expand its industrial output, the nation would use its hands instead. As MacFarquhar (Hundred Flowers 14) writes, "The 1958 'Great Leap Forward' was launched on the premise that manual laborers working all-out could do anything intellectuals could do better." Centuries of Imperial China's experience in corvée labor served as a model for the campaign.

Despite the successes of Mao's earlier movement to collectivize agriculture, the Great Leap was an economic disaster. The campaign's failure caused a slight fall from grace for Mao and led to the pragmatic measures instituted by Den Xiaoping and others in the early 1960 (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 17). Mao was still in power, however, and he marshaled strength to combat the pragmatic reforms and launch the last campaign of his career: the Cultural Revolution.

Mao's Cultural Revolution, his final assault on the intellectual class, did untold damage to the nation's economy and morale. Through the movement, Mao would effectively eliminate the class that he blamed for China's weakness against imperialism and that had betrayed him during the Hundred Flowers campaign (MacFarquhar, Secret Speeches 41). Despite his ambitions for China's development, the chairman would never again be tempted to sacrifice Party domination for economic gain.

Works Cited

• Benton, Gregor and Alan Hunter, eds. Wild Lily, Prairie Fire: China's Road to Democracy, Yan'an to Tian'anmen, 1942-1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995.
• MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals. New York: Octagon Books, 1974.
• MacFarquhar, Roderick, Timothy Cheek, and Eugene Wu, eds. The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: from the Hundred Flowers to the Greta Leap Forward. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies / Harvard University, 1989.
• Starr, John Bryan. Continuing the Revolution: the Political Thought of Mao. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1979.
• Teiwes, Frederick C. Politics & Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950-1965. White Plains, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1979.
• Uhalley, Stephen Jr. Mao Tse-tung: a Critical Biography. New York: New Viewpoints, 1975.

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