The Chinese Intelligentsia During the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Movement

The Chinese Intelligentsia during the Hundred Flowers and Anti-rightist Movement

After the coming to power of the CCP and the formation of the People's Republic of China, thorough and drastic changes began to take place in China. A country which had been founded on a mixture of Confucianism and a very spiritual lifestyle, with ancestor worship and even praying to the god of a particular object, which had went through various revolutions and changings of the guard, began to follow the influence of a Red Giant.

The theories of Communism which were developed through a collaboration of Marx and Engels began to penetrate China through the Soviet influence. The sweeping changes that were introduced by Mao Zedong and his party would influence China in every aspect, and attempt to eradicate the old ways, which were consider to be corrupted and no longer represented what was right for the country as a whole.

The CCP changed the way the government was set up, changed the way foreign relations were handled, re-evaluated the economic policies of the country, and, possibly more drastically, attempted, arguably successfully, to control and change the way people thought. The anti rightist movements of the 50s and 60s attempted to do just that. These movements followed on the heels of what was known as the Hundred Flowers.

The Hundred Flowers slogan was "Let a hundred Flowers Bloom, a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend". The movement which had started in the spring of 1956 was a movement that was began by the party to do several things. The main theme behind the movement was to welcome criticism of the party by the intellectuals of the country, and was considered a good way for the party to prove that it cared about the people, was interested, and listening to what they had to say.

According to Teiwes:

Lu (Ting-i) argued the victory of socialist transformation and a fundamental change in