Talk:Hundred Flowers Campaign

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Contents 1 Pro Mao Bias 2 "Mao had simply grown sick of continual bashing of the CCP." 3 Anti-Maoist Propaganda 4 Who Concluded? 5 Source 6 NPOV 7 The campaign was not a "trap" 8 Neutrality Dispute 9 There's a lot of information missing from this article

[edit] Pro Mao Bias

Several sections of this article have a strong pro-Mao bias. This article is littered with POV statements.

Example: "Many of these letters, as stated by Mao in early 1957, had violated the Healthy Criticism level and had reached a harmful and uncontrollable level."

"..a harmful and uncontrollable level" according to whom? This was simply Mao's excuse for crushing the movement and purging/killing those who had spoken out.

Example 2: "If any new forms of cultural institutions or arts were being suggested, such proposals were overshadowed by the amount of "unhealthy" political criticism."

Again, this is using the vague notion of "unhealthy" (even though it is in quotes). Also, the stated goal of the movement was to generate criticism not "cultural institutions or arts."

The Chinese name says "White Flowers Movement", is it an error?

I don't exactly know what you're saying. Colipon 04:27, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It was an error, which was corrected. Refer to the page history. --Jiang 05:14, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"White" sounds similar to "Hundred" when pronounced in English. --Taishaku 05:14, 25 Aug 2006 (UTC)

Er, I think you mean that the Chinese character for "hundred", 百, is very similar to "white", 白. At least it's that way for Japanese kanji, and should be pretty much the same in Chinese characters...

[edit] "Mao had simply grown sick of continual bashing of the CCP."

I removed this phrase from the article. If there is a source that can show that Mao had gotten tired of criticism, it should be reformulated so as to not trivialize it ("simply grown sick") and in a more encyclopedic language. Foolip 19:53, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Maoist Propaganda

This is a simply anti-Maoist propaganda, if Mao despised intellectuals, why would he have written so much about epistemology and the importance of learning? Mao wasn't against dissent. The Cultural Revolution was all about dissent; it was a massive movement against a corrupt government.

I welcome you to fix the article. I based some of these writings 3 years ago on a book by Stuart Schramm on Mao. Some of my ideas have changed from then. Colipon+(T) 19:10, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Who Concluded?

Some concluded that Mao knew the outcome before the campaign had even started.

Who is "some"? Right-wing Americans? Flag-waving Communist party members? European historians? FireWorks 07:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Source

Anyone have a source for "death toll possibly in the millions"? That's a really shakey statement as is. FireWorks 07:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A good source on the Chinese Revolution is Keith Schoppa's book on the Chinese revolution. Schoppa gives estimates in his book. Also, A good memoir to read about the Revolution is by Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro, The Son of the Revolution.It is a memior that may give you a heartfelt account of the Chinese revolution from someone who experienced it.

[edit] NPOV

Is this NPOV? - "However, it turned out to be a trap, and Mao persecuted those who had views different than the party."

[edit] The campaign was not a "trap"

Mao instituted this campaign as a way to hear from his intellectual elite what the party could work on in order to become stronger and more efficient. He hoped that a few members of the party could give some valuable constructive criticisms and opinions. Mao never expected to see the bombardment of criticisms that resulted from his call, and as a result, may well have taken the criticisms personally. Consequently, those who demonstrated the greatest opposition to the way of the regime were persecuted. However, there is a distinct difference between a planned result and an unseen consequence and the persecution of those in opposition was an unseen consequence. Mao did NOT plan to punish people. Therefore the use of the word "trap" is completely erroneous.

- and you know this because.... (user: FieryPhoenix)

[edit] Neutrality Dispute

As a few people have already said, this article does not present a neutral point of view. It insinuates that the Hundred Flowers Movement was deliberately designed as a "trap" for opponents when this is not fact, only one particular opinion. The more common revisionist take on the reason for the movement and then the sudden turn around and the Anti-Rightist Campaign that followed is described above (The campaign was not a "trap").

-- I have cleaned up that section to say that it may have been a trap, not to definitively state that it was. Accordingly, I'll remove the NPOV dispute if people feel its appropriate.

[edit] There's a lot of information missing from this article

I read an article on asiansentinel and am was surprised to see how deep this campaign was. I have heard a little bit about it from various other sources but with the current wikipedia article it's a question of white washing Mao's purge. The article might be biased but is there anybody willing to dispute the facts stated in the article? Yukon guy 19:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=31

---

"Many of these letters, as stated by Mao in early 1957, had violated the Healthy Criticism level and had reached a harmful and uncontrollable level."

This statement is strong POV as to what consists healthy vs harmful criticism (how did criticism that the government was totalitarian become "harmful"?). I have added quotes appropriately, since the viewpoint is attributed to Mao:

Many of these letters, as stated by Mao in early 1957, had violated the "healthy criticism" level and had reached a "harmful and uncontrollable" level.

I humbly suggest that those who contribute to this page, and all others, should simply cite their sources. Discussing the issue of neutrality of this topic is much grounded if we are able to read one another's sources and then evaluate one another's opinions.

The dates (1958-1966) don't add up.

I will clean this up. Colipon+(T) 02:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)