Hundred Flowers Campaign

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
- broad explanation of socialism and the relationship between china’s bourgeoise and working class
- may be best known for the beginning on the hundred flowers movement
  - brief campaign that ended in the betrayal of the principle on which it was based and the people he had invited to take part
zhou enlai emphasises a greater need for china’s intellectuals to participate in govenmental policy-making
mao, in his speech, declared his support for a policy of allowing criticism of the bureaucracy
- writers and intellectuals put forth competitng ideologies and opinion and did not engage in “destructive acts”
1957 — millions of letters poured in some constructive criticism while others were described as “harmful and destructive”
- calls for the party to give up power through transitional governments, claimed that communism and intellectualism could not co-exist and demanded more freedom
one of china’s first modern poets, ai qing, joined the chinese communist party in 1941 and after the party took power in 1949, consulted with mao on china’s literary policies and traveled the world representing the government
- was denounced from the party and stripped from his writer’s association membership in 1957 when defending ding ling who was a “rightist”
by the end of the cultural revolution in 1976, ai qing was deemed “rehabilitated” and was allowed to return to beijing with his family after twenty years of living in exile
the tragedy of hundred flowers movement:
- critics of the government were silenced as mao tried with the great leap forward to transform china quickly into a modern industrialized state
  - lasted from 1958 - 1960 and mandated collective farming which led to catastrophic grain shortage and famine that killed tens of millions of chese