Hundred Flowers Campaign

Hundred Flowers Campaign, movement begun in May 1956 within the communist government of China to lift the restrictions imposed upon Chinese intellectuals and thus grant greater freedom of thought and speech. Motivated by the relaxation of strict communist controls in the Soviet Union that accompanied Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in February 1956, the Chinese chief of state Mao Zedong invited criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s policies, even by noncommunist...