Hundred Flowers Campaign
period in Chinese history
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also known as the Hundred Flowers Movement (Chinese: 百花齊放; pinyin: Bǎihuā Qífàng) and the Double Hundred Movement (雙百方針; Shuāngbǎi Fāngzhēn), was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong, proposed to "let a hundred flowers bloom in social science and arts and let one hundred points of view be expressed in the field of science." The movement was in part a response to tensions between the CCP and Chinese intellectuals. It encouraged citizens to offer criticism and advice to the government and the party. From the Maoist perspective, the campaign was intended to serve an anti-bureaucratic purpose. The campaign was a relaxation in ideological and cultural policy, and it resulted in an increase of advice and criticism directed at the Party and its policies by those outside its rank.
As criticism increased, the Communist Party began to view it as a threat. A subsequent suppression of criticism developed into the Anti-Rightist Campaign, re-imposing Maoist orthodoxy in public expression.
The campaign
The Hundred Flowers campaign was a period of relaxation in PRC ideological and cultural policy. Mao Zedong proposed to "let one hundred flowers bloom in social science and arts and let one hundred points of view be expressed in the field of science."
The campaign allowed citizens to offer criticism and advice to the government and the party; hence it was intended to serve an antibureaucratic purpose, at least on the Maoists' part. The campaign resulted in a groundswell of criticism aimed at the Party and its policies by those outside its ranks.
Naming
The name of the movement consists two parts.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hundred Flowers Campaign” is period in Chinese history. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hundred, Flowers and Campaign, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q517371. The Library of Congress control number is sh85024124. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hundred Flowers Campaign” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.