Some plays are so complex and elusive that it would be a crime for one person to try to explain all its intentions and messages. "The Hundred Flowers Project" is one such play. Still, the history of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party is long and complex; rather than attempt to describe the relevance of this history to "The Hundred Flowers Project," this essay will instead outline that history, so you may draw such conclusions for yourself.
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Written by Neal Ryan Shaw
The Cult of Mao and the Communist Revolution (1949)
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, during an effort to bring itself into the modern age, China found itself amidst a turbulent series of events. Once an imperial dynasty, the country withstood numerous incursions by foreign powers—the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century, the Opium Wars with Britain, and the First Sino-Japanese War in the nineteenth century. While warlords and infighting divided China, two groups sought to reunite the country: the Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Communist Party headed by Mao Zedong. The intense and bloody war between these two parties, made worse by the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 to 1945), ended in the CCP's favor.
I think it is safe to say that the Chinese Communist Party's military success is overwhelmingly owed to the cult of personality around Mao Zedong. Depictions in countless propaganda posters portray Mao as a “great helmsman,” a splendorous father figure. Millions of Chinese bought into this image of Mao, even if they didn’t fully comprehend his vision. As a young man Mao became enthralled with the Marxist-Leninist movement that swept turn-of-the-century Russia, and he developed his own brand of communism for China’s sake. Whereas Marx believed that a proletarian revolution could only be accomplished by an already advanced capitalist society, Mao contended that a rural peasantry could lead the way to social revolution. Much was made of Mao’s upbringing; his childhood as a peasant in the Hunan province of China caused him to identify with the very class that he wished to lead.
It was clear even before the party's victory against the Nationalists that Mao was a relentless and ruthless leader. He contended not only with the Nationalists but also with many in his own party, even driving some to suicide. In light of this history, Mao's love for the people of China coupled with his pathological fear of opposition describes a tantalizing contradiction.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956)
By 1956, the revolution had already seen some successes, successes won with force and suppression. In 1956 Chairman Mao attempted to slow down the progression of political reform by calling for a sort of "airing of grievances." The Chinese Communist Party inaugurated this campaign with a new slogan: Let a hundred flowers bloom/Let a hundred schools of thought contend. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was ostensibly about, in Mao’s words, "promoting progress in the arts and sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land." The idea was that no progress could be made if Mao’s administration held up one school of thought and banned another. The effort ultimately failed, making the Hundred Flowers Campaign such a contradiction, such an ironic failure. Some intellectuals did end up speaking out, many against their will, and for a time real discussions seemed to occur. But the campaign shifted its focus from encouraging dialogue to rooting out dissidents. Those intellectuals who had been encouraged to voice their disagreements with the Party were gathered up and sent to prison labor camps in a so-called Anti-Rightist Movement the following year.
The Great Leap Forward (1958–1961)
Not wishing to focus too much on punishing the outspoken, Mao and the CCP turned their attention to more positive and substantive reforms. Thus was born the Great Leap Forward, a grand economic and industrial vision that the party hoped would not only catapult China into a new industrial age but also prove that the Soviet economic model was inferior to his own. Propaganda posters for the movement certainly demonstrated Mao’s optimistic vision. Proud Chinese workers smile as they toil in gloriously cloudy or oceanic fields, the filtered sunlight illuminating the fruits of their labor. In practice, the Great Leap involved reorganizing China’s rural communities into new communes, where all shared equally in day-to-day duties as well as in the industrial work. Some of this work, such as the building of roads and bridges, succeeded. More numerous and infamous were the projects that failed, like those involving unskilled workers smelting steel in poorly constructed and highly inefficient smelters; workers couldn’t make quota and were forced to break down their own cookware to sustain production.
It is no understatement to say that the Great Leap Forward was a disaster, no matter what little progress it did make in infrastructure. And despite Mao’s attempt to inspire optimism and pride in his people, they were unable to deliver. Many local officials felt the pressure to hide their failures, falsely reporting success in their sectors instead. Because communes shifted their focus from agricultural to industrial work, food production plummeted, resulting in a famine that caused tens of millions of Chinese citizens to die.
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)
As his vision of a truly Sino-Marxist society failed to materialize, Mao doubled down on his efforts to rid China of its impurities and rebuild society anew. He set about starting a new movement in 1966 that would eradicate the “four olds” of China: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. The instruments of this eradication were Mao’s Red Guards, students and other youths who devoted themselves wholeheartedly to maintaining his cult of personality. The Red Guards went about Beijing ransacking homes and schools, burning books, and assaulting anyone considered disloyal to Mao.
The remaining years of the Cultural Revolution were marked by a failing economy and intense political paranoia. Simultaneously, Mao’s health waned. Premier Zhou Enlai and other top officials oversaw the daily administration of the country. When Mao died on September 9, 1976, China, the country he spent his life trying to unify, was as divided as ever.
