Anti-Rightist Campaign

The campaign was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong, but Deng Xiaoping and Peng Zhen also played an important role. The Anti-Rightist Campaign significantly damaged democracy in China and turned the country into a de facto one-party state.

Anti-Rightist Campaign
The slogan "carry out the anti-rightist struggle to the end" on display at the 1957 National Day parade on Tiananmen Square.
Location	People's Republic of China
Date	1957–1959
Target	Political opponents, alleged right-wing figures
Attack type	Political repression
Victims	550,000 (Official figures) 1–2 million (Estimates)
Perpetrators	Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping Peng Zhen

The definition of rightists was not always consistent, often including critics to the left of the government, but officially referred to those intellectuals who appeared to favor capitalism, or were against one-party rule as well as forcible, state-run collectivization. According to China's official statistics published during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period, the campaign resulted in the political persecution of at least 550,000 people. Some researchers believe that the actual number of persecuted is between 1 and 2 million or even higher. Deng Xiaoping admitted that there were mistakes during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and most victims have received rehabilitation since 1959.

Background

The Anti-Rightist Campaign was a reaction against the Hundred Flowers Campaign which had promoted pluralism of expression and criticism of the government, even though initiation of both campaigns was controlled by Mao Zedong and were integrally connected. Going perhaps as far back as the Long March there had been resentment against "rightists" inside the CCP, for example, Zhang Bojun.

While the Hundred Flowers Movement was going on, in 1956, Khrushchev published the On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, which along with the ensuing riots in Poland and Hungary, had a large impact on China, where similar social unrest began to take place.

First wave

During the Hundred Flowers Movement, some ideas that were not tolerated by the Party were gradually raised. Some people claimed that "now the students are on the streets and the citizens are following them", "the situation is very serious", "Chairman Mao and the others can't go on, it's time for them to step down"; and that the CCP should take turns to rule with the democratic parties and open "Hyde Park" for public debate.

The first wave of attacks began immediately as the Hundred Flowers Campaign drew to a close in June 1957. At the time, Mao began to view criticism during the Hundred Flowers as a threat to the rule of the party. In mid-May, Mao began writing Things Are Beginning to Change, an article that was not completed until June 11. In the article he said, "why is such a torrent of reactionary, vicious statements being allowed to appear in the press? to let the people have some idea of these poisonous weeds and noxious fumes so as to have them uprooted or dispelled." On June 8, 1957, Mao drafted an inner-party document, Muster Our Forces to Repulse the Rightists' Wild Attacks, saying that "some bad capitalists, bad intellectuals, and reactionary elements in society are mounting wild attacks against the working class and the Communist Party in an attempt to overthrow the state power led by the working class." On the same day, People's Daily published an editorial What is this for?, expressing the same view as the inner-party document. These marked the beginning of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. By the end of the year, 300,000 people had been labeled as rightists, including the writer Ding Ling. Future premier Zhu Rongji, then working in the State Planning Commission, was purged in 1958. Most of the accused were intellectuals. The penalties included informal criticism, hard labor, and in some cases, execution. For example, Jiabiangou, a notable labor camp in Gansu, held approximately 3,000 political prisoners from 1957 to 1961, of whom about 2,500 died, mostly of starvation.

One main target was the independent legal system. Legal professionals were transferred to other jobs; judicial power was exercised instead by political cadres and the police.

Second wave

The second part of the campaign followed the Lushan Conference of July 2 – August 16, 1959, a meeting of top party leaders. The meeting condemned the PRC's defense minister, General Peng Dehuai, a critic of the Great Leap Forward.

Criticism by Mao

Administering several provinces in the southwest, Deng proved so zealous in killing alleged counter-revolutionaries that even the Chairman felt obliged to write to him. Mao urged Deng Xiaoping to slow down the campaign's body count, saying:

If we kill too many, we will forfeit public sympathy and a shortage of labor power will arise.

— 

In a 2018 study by Zhaojin Zeng and Joshua Eisenman, analysing 144 counties within Anhui, Henan, and Jiangsu, it was found that the economic harm caused by the Anti-Rightist campaign continued for decades, even into 2000, compounded by existing issues with human capital at the time. The higher the percentage of the population were declared Rightists, the worse the economic outcomes would be in each county. Literacy rates were affected well into 1982, and academic performance at the high school level, as well as in compulsory education, continued to be affected into 2000. Counties that were previously Laoqu were found to have purged fewer Rightists than others because the party secretaries were local to the area. Negative correlations between the famine of the Great Leap Forward and China's economic performance in 1982 were also found, and distinguished from the Anti-Rightist Campaign, confirming a 2017 study by Elizabeth Gooch; additionally, it was found that the effects were more significant compared to the Cultural Revolution.

After Mao's death in 1976, many of the convictions were revoked during the Boluan Fanzheng period. At that time, under leader Deng Xiaoping, the government announced that it needed capitalists' experience to get the country moving economically, and subsequently the guilty verdicts of thousands of counterrevolutionary cases were overturned — affecting many of those accused of rightism and who had been persecuted for that crime the previous twenty two years. This came despite the fact that Deng Xiaoping and Peng Zhen were among the most enthusiastic prosecutors of the movement during the "First Wave" of 1957.

In 2009, leading up the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding, a number of media outlets in China listed the most significant events of 1957 but downplayed or omitted reference to the Anti-Rightist Movement. Websites were reportedly notified by authorities that the topic of the movement was extremely sensitive.

• Zhang Bojun, China's "number one rightist"
• Luo Longji, China's "number two rightist"
• Huang Qixiang
• Chen Mingshu
• Chen Mengjia
• Zhu Rongji, later Premier of China
• Wu Zuguang, playwright
• Qian Weichang
• Gu Zhun
• Long Yun, former warlord of Yunnan

• Great Leap Forward
• Great Purge
• Cultural Revolution
• De-Stalinization
• List of CCP Campaigns
• Sufan movement
• Yan'an Rectification Movement