The Anti-Rightist Movement (反右派运动) of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of a series of campaigns to purge alleged “rightists” within the Communist Party of China and abroad. The campaigns were instigated by the Chairman, Mao Zedong.
“At that time there were huge struggle meetings with more than 1,400 people attending. I was struggled for an entire day. I was 22 years old. The mayor and the Chengdu municipal Party secretary even attended. They told me to speak up for myself, and I said three things. One was that I had never hated the Communist Party because I was born to a poor family and my father had never been punished by the Party; the second was that I loved socialism and the Communist Party. The third was that I was not a rightist. They said I was diehard and sent me off to the labor camp for re-education through labor.”
– former ‘rightist’ Tie Liu
The following excerpts are taken from a series of Investigative Report programmes broadcast by RFA’s Mandarin service to mark the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, which came hard on the heels of the Hundred Flowers movement:
Former editor on the Chengdu Daily Tie Liu
Around that time, beginning with Party center and moving out to the provinces, there was a campaign to touch upon problems in life and criticize the dark side of society…around that time I too wrote a short novel illustrating this…It was published in Chengdu in 1956, but by 1957 it had been designated an big evil weed, and constituted an attack on officials and the official line. So I was designated a rightist…At that time there were huge struggle meetings with more than 1,400 people attending. I was struggled for an entire day. I was 22 years old. The mayor and the Chengdu municipal Party secretary even attended. They told me to speak up for myself, and I said three things. One was that I had never hated the Communist Party because I was born to a poor family and my father had never been punished by the Party; the second was that I loved socialism and the Communist Party. The third was that I was not a rightist. They said I was diehard and sent me off to the labor camp for re-education through labor.
Tan Tianrong – Beijing University student
At that time we were spending an awful lot of time in political study classes. Back then, we were being taught that the progress of history was the result of economic inevitability, and all the actions of the great historical personages of the time were carried out with a view simply to bringing this economic inevitability into being. I didn’t agree with this view. I thought that it had a lot to do with the ideology of Stalin. I said that there was a cult of personality around Stalin because Stalin had become inflated, and had made mistakes of subjectivism. I read it the first time without realizing that of course this was also the story of our Party, especially Mao Zedong. I was looking at it in a very specific way. I thought that I had made a new discovery and of course I hadn’t at all. This was the reason I was labeled a rightist. I just thought it was an academic issue.
Chen Fengxiao – another student at Beida
I was sentenced to 15 years. After that, my sentence was extended by seven years. In total I did 22 years of reform through labor. I was rehabilitated in 1979…I was subjected to all manner of punishments. You can say that I was a rightist, fine, but I don’t accept that I committed any crime. Because everything we did was within the Constitution, within the law. I didn’t break the law and yet I was tortured, tied up on a bench, hung up, scorched with fire and forced to watch executions.
Mao Yushi – former ‘rightist’ and signatory to an open letter calling for the Party to admit the anti-rightist movement was a mistake
This isn’t just an issue for individuals. It’s a question of China’s political development, and that is a very important issue. Because all the great mistakes that came afterwards are connected to this. This wasn’t the earliest mistake; there were some even earlier, too. But this movement was the first most concentrated example. This is when the Party lost its way and started to tell lies. This was when it became impossible to speak freely. It led to the famines of the Great Leap Forward and later to the Cultural Revolution. So it is a very important thing, and it matters what the Communist Party does to redress it, before all the old anti-rightists pass away. It’s an important indicator; it could change their way of thinking and governing. It offers an opportunity to repair the mistakes of the past. Not that I think that this will happen suddenly. Sudden change isn’t a good thing. But there should be the beginnings of indications of change. There is a problem with the way they are governing now. The demands of the rightists have a bearing on the relationship between the Party and the people, between the government and its citizens, those issues still look significant today. That is why we are bringing it up again.
Related links:
Bao Tong’s essay on the anti-rightist movement in Chinese
Rebecca MacKinnon: Chinese mark the anti-rightist period via the Internet
ESWN translates excerpts from Dai Huang’s book about being a rightist
Filed under: China, East Asia, cantonese, china_law, china_media, china_rights, china_unrest, east_asia, guangdong, human_rights | Tagged: anti-rightist, bao tong, china_humanrights, cultural_revolution, deng_xiaoping, mao_zedong, radio_free_asia
