What was the Hundred Flowers Campaign intended to achieve?

The Hundred Flowers Campaign, initiated by Mao Zedong in 1956, was intended to lift restrictions on Chinese intellectuals to grant them greater freedom of thought and speech.1

The Chinese Communist Party leadership sought to resolve tensions with the intelligentsia, whose expertise was increasingly necessary for managing the country's expanding urban firms and commerce. By encouraging free-ranging discussion and inquiry under the slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend," the party assumed that such openness would demonstrate the superiority of Marxism-Leninism and accelerate the conversion of intellectuals to communism.21

There remains historical debate regarding whether the campaign was a genuine attempt at liberalization or a calculated "trap" designed to identify and expose critics of the regime. When the resulting criticism grew unexpectedly severe, the government abruptly ended the movement, launching an anti-rightist campaign that led to the severe retribution, imprisonment, or forced labor of those who had spoken out.21