In 1957, a nationwide political campaign was initiated in China. Initially, this campaign involved Mao Zedong trying to mobilize non-Party people to help the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rectify certain shortcomings. However, the campaign soon became a political purge in which outspoken individuals were hunted out and labelled Rightists before being subjected to various forms of political persecution. Eventually over half a million Chinese people suffered. These persecuted people retained the stigma right up until the 1980s. The pivotal role of Chairman Mao Zedong in this witch-hunt-like political campaign is widely known. What is less understood is how Mao managed to see his destructive policies so faithfully and fervently implemented. In other words, to what individuals and institutions did Mao turn to realize his ambitions?
The simple answer is that Mao turned to Deng Xiaoping and the Central Secretariat (Zhongyang shujichu 中央书记处), an institution whose establishment Mao had proposed in the 1956 Eighth Party Congress. However, the behaviour of Deng and his Central Secretariat colleagues in the infamous political campaign of 1957 has received little research attention.Footnote 1 Based on newly available materials and recent interviews, this study attempts to remedy this. The investigation also represents a case study on how the Central Secretariat operated and functioned in CCP decision-making and policy-implementation prior to the Cultural Revolution.
The Central Secretariat's Power and Operations
Functions and power
The Central Secretariat was established in the mid-1930s. The influence of this political body peaked in 1945 when its chairman was concurrently elected chairman of the Central Committee and the Politburo, responsible for both decision-making and the daily affairs of the Party Centre. In 1956, a six-man Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) replaced the original Central Secretariat as the supreme policy-making organ, and simultaneously a new Central Secretariat was established.
Regarding the functions and power of the newly created Central Secretariat, in 1956 its head Deng Xiaoping stated: “It is responsible for dealing with the day-to-day affairs of the Party Centre under the leadership of the Politburo and the PSC.”Footnote 2 However, its real power was much greater than that of its predecessor, the Secretary General meeting (Zhongyang mishuzhang huiyi 中央秘书长会议), set up in 1954 with Deng Xiaoping as its head, using the title of Secretary General. The Secretary General meeting assisted the Politburo (of which Deng only became a member in 1955) in handling the daily affairs of the Party and mass work, and implementing missions assigned by the Politburo.
The newly created Central Secretariat was empowered to “deal with all business of the Party Centre (the Central Committee, the Politburo and the PSC); it should grasp all aspects of work, and issue documents on behalf of the Party Centre.”Footnote 3 In short, the main functions and duties of the Central Secretariat were twofold: first, it had to discuss, draft and issue the directives of the Party Centre, and ensure their subsequent implementation by Party officials; and second, it had to review all the documents and reports sent from the army, the government and the Party's own organizations to the Party Centre. If the Central Secretariat could not independently make a decision regarding the submitted documents and reports, it was obliged to propose an appropriate solution for the Party Centre.Footnote 4 In sum, the Central Secretariat was obviously intended to be a very important and powerful apparatus within the Party.
Undoubtedly, the powers and autonomy of the Central Secretariat were institutionally restrained. While it dealt independently with the daily affairs of the Party Centre, organizational discipline still required it to report its decisions to the Politburo, especially PSC members, who had the power of veto.Footnote 5 To prevent its decisions being vetoed, the Central Secretariat thus would sound out the wishes of the Party Centre, and particularly Mao, before making decisions. Consequently, it had to check regularly with Mao and other important Party leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇. As Mao became satisfied with Deng's performance, Deng gradually expanded his personal power by not seeking Mao's instructions as frequently as before.
In hindsight, the 1957 Rectification and subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign was the first political test for Deng and his Central Secretariat colleagues. Deng and other Secretariat Secretaries strove to please Mao and meet his expectations. They tried to fathom what Mao wanted and to fulfil what they believed to be his goals during the political campaign.
Internal operations
A basic description of how the Central Secretariat organized its work helps to understand its operations during the Rectification and Anti-Rightist Campaign. Its structure was as follows: Deng as General Secretary presided. Under Deng were six Secretaries and three Alternate Secretaries. Secretary Peng Zhen 彭真 acted as Deng's deputy, specializing in political and legal affairs as well as united front work. Secretaries Tan Zhenlin 谭震林, Li Xuefeng 李雪峰 and Wang Jiaxing 王稼祥 respectively managed organizational and local, industrial, and party-to-party affairs; Secretaries Huang Kecheng 黄克诚 and Tan Zheng 谭政 managed military affairs. Alternate Secretary Yang Shangkun 杨尚昆 was responsible for daily administration; Liu Lantao 刘澜涛 oversaw the affairs of various mass organizations; and Hu Qiaomu 胡乔木 supervised propaganda and cultural affairs. Besides their Secretariat positions, these Secretaries and Alternate Secretaries held many other positions closely associated with their duties in the Central Secretariat.
The Central Secretariat met at least weekly to discuss the various issues raised by the Party Centre. At these meetings, members offered detailed opinions mostly on the areas coinciding with their individual areas of responsibility. They also often summed up reports sent by the lower officials of concerned departments, and presented relevant policy proposals. When dealing with affairs too important to assume responsibility for making a final decision on, the Central Secretariat would discuss the issue and present a formal proposal to the Politburo or the PSC for approval. When dealing with less important matters, the Central Secretariat would make a resolution collectively. However, individual Secretaries bore their responsibility in the collective decision differently.
Although Deng headed the organization, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was closely related to the duties of Peng Zhen. Therefore, the roles and activities of these two key political figures merit particular attention. Although this study pays less attention to the other members, this does not mean they were unimportant in the campaign. Despite the variable influence exercised by different Secretariat Secretaries on the campaign, and the precise activities of some remaining unclear to this day, it is safe to assume that all members of the Central Secretariat actively offered advice on the campaign at Central Secretariat meetings and endeavoured wholeheartedly to realize campaign objectives,Footnote 6 and given that they wielded absolute power in the official departments under their jurisdiction these efforts were undoubtedly effective.
The Central Secretariat in the Rectification Stage
Numerous social riots occurred in China during the autumn and winter of 1956, resulting from the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and the international crises in Poland and Hungary, hasty social reforms, and unbalanced domestic investments.
Mao believed that the events in Poland and Hungary could be avoided in China through CCP rectification and enhanced mass supervision. His desire to forge a close link with the people provided the foundations for the Rectification campaign in the spring of 1957. However, when Mao proposed inviting Party outsiders to help rectify Party errors he encountered passivity and even resistance from many Party cadres. They worried such a policy might create a hotbed for dissent, stirring more social unrest. Moreover, they had strong vested interests in maintaining their power. Mao had to persuade his colleagues and subordinates that instead of provoking more political unrest, the policy would make the CCP healthier and stronger. He thus asked the Central Secretariat to push his plan forward.
Echoing Mao's initiatives
After Mao made the speech “Regarding the correct handling of contradictions among the people” on 27 February, the Central Secretariat applauded enthusiastically and began echoing his ideas. The Central Secretariat drafted three directives in early March: “Directive on handling the problems of workers' strikes, students' strikes and petitions,” “Directive on strengthening mass supervision within enterprises” and “Directive on researching the issues of the working class.” These were quickly issued following revision and sanction by the Party Centre.
Even if Deng and Peng had reservations about the Rectification plan, the Central Secretariat acted unanimously and the directives it issued indicate no such reservations. When Deng inspected north China in March and April 1957, he urged Party cadres in Taiyuan, Shanxi to face and rely on the masses, detect and solve their problems, and focus on the masses rather than the leaders. “By so doing, our Party will not meet its doom.” In Xi'an, Shaanxi, Deng also asked Party members to act cautiously and accept the combined supervision of the Party, the public and the Democratic parties.Footnote 7
On 12 March, Peng Zhen presided over a Central Secretariat meeting conveying Mao's speech on propaganda work given in a national conference. The speech strongly endorsed the Hundred Flowers policy. On 9 April, Peng presided over another Central Secretariat meeting to discuss how to conduct Rectification within the Party. Two weeks later, Peng delivered a speech stressing that “we would be displaying a bullying mentality if we allowed ourselves free expression, but deprived you of the same right.” The same speech also mentioned that “some cadres confused two different contradictions, and treated people using an approach used to treat counterrevolutionaries,” and “now the problem is not extreme democracy, but rather a lack of democracy.”Footnote 8
The members of the Central Secretariat can be assumed to have loyally obeyed Mao's instructions. Obedience was their first duty, and organizational disobedience would have resulted in political purging.
Conducting Rectification
On 27 April, the CCP approved the “Centre's directive on the Rectification campaign” and formally launched the campaign with the aim of combating the “three evils” of bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism. The main strategy of this campaign was to invite non-CCP people to participate in and facilitate the Party's Rectification. On 30 April, Mao ordered Deng to consult the Democratic parties and leading non-Party figures.Footnote 9 From 8 May, the Central Secretariat asked the United Front Department (CCUFD) to hold forums to encourage those outside the Party to speak out. Deng personally attended these forums to obtain first-hand information.Footnote 10 Meanwhile, the CCUFD reported on the forums to the Central Secretariat or to the PSC directly. As is now well known, the Party Centre changed its mind in mid-May and decided to set a trap for those expressing dissenting views. The Central Secretariat and the CCUFD continued to invite non-CCP people to attend the forums and express their views freely until 8 June. From mid-May to 8 June, The Central Secretariat and CCUFD behaved like wolves in sheep's clothing.
On 15 and 20 May, the Central Secretariat held meetings to discuss and deal with the “Guangxi incident” of 1956. Because of excessive grain procurements and intentional misinformation by local officials, 1,500 peasants starved to death and a further 12,000 were forced to leave their homes to seek food.Footnote 11 This man-made tragedy clearly reflected the urgent need for the CCP to conduct Rectification. To help the Party learn from this lesson, the Central Secretariat decided to punish strictly those officials who neglected their duties. Consequently, the first Party secretary of Guangxi province was dismissed as a result of the incident.
However, circumstances soon changed Mao's views. When non-CCP people sincerely pointed out that the Party suffered shortcomings needing reform, Mao became alarmed about some of their perspectives, which he interpreted as hostile to CCP rule. He was particularly concerned by speeches criticizing the CCP's monopoly on power and questioning the correctness of its fundamental policies. For example, Zhang Bojun 章伯钧, Minister of Communication, alluded to the necessity of drawing a clear line between the duties and authority of the state administrative organs and the Party organizations. He also said: “At present the Party's organization exercises control over virtually everything … The responsibility of leading non-Party figures who were assigned an office and invested with authority should be respected. However, the current situation is that the Party organization overtakes the work entrusted to non-Party people.” Zhang Naiqi 章乃器, Minister of Food, said he had acquired power corresponding to his position only after a series of struggles. He also criticized: “Some of the Party's members advocated one set of truths inside the Party, but another outside the Party. They made obvious mistakes, but refused to admit them, showing their partisanship.” Long Yun 龙云, vice-chairman of the National Defence Council, criticized the relationship between China and the Soviet Union: “It was unreasonable for China to bear all the expenses of fighting in the Korean War … The Soviet Army dismantled and shipped away the machinery of our factories when they occupied our north-east region. What price did they pay [for the machinery]? Will the Soviet Union compensate us?”Footnote 12
On seeing these criticisms, Mao started to change his mind on this open-door Rectification, and the Central Secretariat rapidly followed suit.
The Central Secretariat in the “Open Conspiracy”
Broadly speaking, the Hundred Flowers experiment comprised two phases. The first phase started with the CCP's announcement of the start of the Rectification in late April, and ended in mid-May when the CCP leaders, especially Mao, started to think that some of the criticisms from non-Party people were challenging the authority and legitimacy of the CCP. But during this phase that lasted for only two-and-a-half weeks, the CCP leaders did wholeheartedly want to find a way to deal with the problems of the Party and the people by appealing to outside Party sources. They did not at this point intend to lure out suspect intellectuals.
From mid-May onwards, the Hundred Flowers experiment proceeded to its second phase which lasted three weeks or so until early June. There is no doubt that Mao's perceptions of the situation were the main driver for the campaign development. Mao, as indicated above, was wary of the “malicious criticisms” expressed by non-Party politicians such as Zhang Bojun, Zhang Naiqi and Long Yun; he was also equally concerned about the growing student unrest in Beijing, and the possibility of a linkage between the students and the non-Party politicians. Mao thus changed his mind and decided to shift his ground concerning the Hundred Flowers experiment.
In earlier spring and the first phase of the Hundred Flowers experiment, Mao had to make special efforts to get Party cadres to accept his initiatives with the assistance of the Central Secretariat led by Deng. In the second phase, Mao and the members of the Central Secretariat easily and quickly gained a consensus among the high-ranking cadres and provincial leaders, who had reservations from the start about the open-door Rectification campaign, on the need to strike back at the critics. The only difference was the timing of the crackdown.
Some Party officials, who now happily rallied behind Mao after he opted for a tougher stand against critics, wanted to cut short the policy of “blooming and contending,” but Mao did not choose to counterattack straight away. He developed an intriguing plan which he termed “open conspiracy.” It was planned to continue encouraging intellectuals, especially non-Party politicians, to speak out freely, using the same method adopted in the first phase of the Hundred Flowers experiment. But this time round the Mao-led Party Centre began to harbour the malicious intention that was to lure out and destroy “the enemies.” The Central Secretariat assisted Mao in deploying and implementing this notorious tactic.
During this phase of “luring out the snakes” (yinshe chudong 引蛇出洞), Mao and the Central Secretariat had to urge enthusiastic Party bureaucrats to overcome their impetuosity and to exercise patience, so that the Party Centre could execute its malicious plot. Moreover, Mao and the Central Secretariat not only ordered Party cadres to collect the so-called “erroneous/reactionary criticisms” from their opponents during the continuing movement of “blooming and contending,” but also instructed them to prepare counter-criticism. In other words, Mao and his trusted followers in the Central Secretariat wanted Party cadres to sharpen their swords for the impending battle against their critics.
Feeding the carrot and preparing the stick
Party historians generally take Mao's article “Things are starting changing” as the turning point in his change of heart towards intellectual critics, although a recent scholar argues that it should have come much later, on the basis that though drafted in mid-May, Mao only finished the article on 11 June; therefore, it could not really reflect what he thought in mid-May.Footnote 13 However, we do have other clear evidence pointing to Mao's change of attitude in mid-May.
On 14 May, Mao instructed the Central Secretariat to draft and issue the “Directive on the reports of non-Party people's various criticism of Party and government works.” While mentioning the contribution of the non-Party elites through criticism of the CCP, the directive reminded Party bureaucrats of the need to expose the Rightists in the same way.Footnote 14 In other words, the Party Centre now wished their underlings to accumulate evidence so that they could soon incriminate any vocal non-Party critic.
On 16 May, the Central Secretariat instructed newspapers not to delete or revise the “malicious talk” of Rightists, or refute blasphemous speeches. However, Deng also stressed that newspapers should not publish reports on three issues, namely the price of commodities, foreign policy and the Sufan movement, lest it should lead to the collapse of security control.Footnote 15 The same day, with the assistance of the Central Secretariat, the Party Centre issued the “Directive on the countermeasures to the current criticisms from non-Party people” which asked Party cadres to allow the Rightists freedom to criticize at will to expose their reactionary faces to the masses, and reminded Party cadres not to rebut these speeches for several weeks.Footnote 16
Besides exposing “unreliable thought,” the Central Secretariat was also busy preparing its counterattack on the Rightists. On 20 May, the Party Centre issued the “Directive on strengthening leadership of the current campaign,” which ordered every provincial Party committee to instruct their propaganda department and Party newspapers to classify reactionary speeches by Rightists and other bourgeois perspectives. Furthermore, the Party Centre ordered the leadership to prepare a series of articles and editorials to rebut and criticize the reactionary speeches at a time to be determined.Footnote 17
The Central Secretariat held meetings on 21 and 25 May to discuss newspaper propaganda issues, and to design several topics and designate authors and reviewers to complete articles by a given date.Footnote 18 Hu Qiaomu probably played an important role in organizing and writing these articles. Deng used the metaphor “bazookas” to describe them.Footnote 19 The Central Secretariat planned to publish them once the counterattack formally began, and its leader had confidence in “beating back” the attacks of Rightist' speeches.
At this stage of the campaign, the work of the Central Secretariat was very tense. It needed to gather recent campaign information and arrange for the forthcoming Anti-Rightist struggle. On the afternoon of 23 May, Deng presented his report to the enlarging Politburo conference. Although the exact content of the report is not available, the comments of conference chairman Liu Shaoqi show that the Party Centre was satisfied with the performance of the Central Secretariat. When Liu made his concluding remarks to the conference, he said: “Comrade Xiaoping's report is very good; it has been approved by the PSC meeting held in the Chairman's place. We should lead the current campaign according to these guiding principles and programmes.”Footnote 20
It is worth noting the division of labour in the process of the campaign. While the PSC, led by Mao, decided the directions, guidelines and principles, the Central Secretariat, led by Deng, designed concrete manoeuvres and implementation strategies. Because Deng concurrently served as a member of the PSC, he was not only the main implementer of the campaign but also one of its key decision-makers. His role truly resembled a bridge between the PSC and the Central Secretariat. Therefore, it is unsurprising that Deng's involvement in the campaign was broader and deeper than that of Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai.Footnote 21
Guiding the Party cadres
On 27 May, the Party Centre held a meeting of provincial Party secretaries during which Deng made a speech on behalf of the Centre. In this speech Deng assessed the current situation and asserted that “obviously, some Rightists are trying to compete with us for the leadership,” and therefore “the Party Centre has no choice but to struggle with them.” To raise the audience's awareness of the dangers, Deng told them some Rightists had already come out, including Zhang Bojun, Zhang Naiqi, Long Yun and others. He also claimed that these Rightists were trying to expand their influence at the grassroots level and secretly organize their forces.Footnote 22 These people were specifically targeted because of their long-standing prominence among the few non-Communists ministers who were voicing scathing criticisms and their perceived eagerness to grasp more power than the CCP would have allowed.Footnote 23 Moreover, they were selected as the major scapegoats to prove conveniently that the Rightists did exist and that they did pose a serious threat to the Party's supremacy.
As for the steps and focus of the campaign, Deng instructed the local leaders to encourage individuals in Party and government agencies and colleges to continue speaking bravely, but not to allow factories, high schools or primary schools to join in the campaign. Peng Zhen added that “there will be no big problem as long as no classes are suspended, no people go into the streets and no factories go on strike.”Footnote 24
Mao's ghost writer Chen Boda 陈伯达 said in the 1980s that Deng even told these local first secretaries: “Now, time is much more valuable than gold. You need to hurry back and collect Rightists' speeches, before it becomes too late.” Chen complained that Deng's radical language was responsible for the excesses of the campaign.Footnote 25
During this stage, the Central Secretariat interfered with the campaigns of individual units. Specifically, it closely monitored universities in the capital, especially Tsinghua University, which was a particular hotbed of criticism directed at the CCP. Peng Zhen conveyed a specific request from Mao to Jiang Nanxiang 蒋南翔, the president and Party secretary of Tsinghua University, asking that he endure the criticisms.Footnote 26 Peng even instructed a Party cadre to invite Qian Weichang 钱伟长, the non-Party vice-president of the University, to make a speech to students. Peng enjoined the cadre to tape-record and write down the whole of Qian's speech as evidence.Footnote 27 Predictably, Qian became one of the main targets of the Anti-Rightist struggle.
The Role of the Central Secretariat in the Counterattack
On 8 June, the Party Centre formally launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign by publishing the editorial “What is this for?” in the People's Daily, and issued the “Directive on organizing power to prepare for counterattacking Rightists' attacks.” Both of these documents emphasized the Rightists' evil ambitions in challenging the leadership of the CCP and working class, and stressed the importance of winning this battle for the survival of the CCP.Footnote 28 Since the Party Centre prioritized the hunting of Rightists above all else, the Anti-Rightist issue naturally occupied the highest position on the agenda of the Central Secretariat. The Central Secretariat took action carefully and patiently, and adopted a series of measures to ensure the effective enforcement of the campaign.
Instructing local campaigns
Several members of the Central Secretariat inspected various provinces to instruct and supervise local campaign development. For example, on 14 June, Deng conveyed the latest instructions from the Party Centre to the Guangdong provincial Party committee in Guangzhou. According to the recollection of the aged Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳, who worked there at that time, Deng told them “to use a longer fishing line to catch big fish.”Footnote 29 In other words, Deng asked them to be patient and continue encouraging more influential dissidents to appear. On 22 June, Deng also made a speech on the Rectification and the Anti-Rightist Campaign to Shandong provincial Party cadres in Ji'nan.
Peng Zhen concurrently served as the first Party secretary of Beijing, and therefore had to lead the campaign in the capital. Instructed by Mao, Peng then visited Jiangsu province in August to push first Party secretary Jiang Weiqing 江渭清 to intensify the campaign.
Besides inspections, the Central Secretariat also organized nationwide telephone conferences to instruct the provincial secretaries on implementing the campaign and hear their reports. The Central Secretariat also had to report local campaign conditions to the Party Centre. For example, Mao convened an enlarged Politburo meeting on the evening of 17 June to hear Deng's report on campaign conditions in several areas.Footnote 30
The Central Secretariat thus summarized instructions from the Party Centre and reports from local Party committees. To some extent, the Central Secretariat also controlled the flow of information in both top-down and bottom-up channels.
Making reports
By making speeches in Party cadre conferences, the Central Secretariat made Party subordinates aware of the Centre's latest assessments of the overall campaign situation and the countermeasures being adopted. For instance, Deng delivered an Anti-Rightist speech at a National United Front work conference on 12 July. He claimed in his speech that according to some local experiences, “the big fishes would emerge later,” and “the deeper the [campaign] struggle proceeds, the more [unreliable thought] could be exposed.” Thus it would become easier to identify the leftists, centrists and Rightists.
Because Deng recognized that daily newspapers were a convenient tool for leading the campaign, he also asked newspapers to denounce more Rightists by name. As for well-known Rightists, Deng provided specific instructions on how to struggle against them. He proposed holding a meeting of ten-thousand to criticize Qian Weichang, because “his speeches still have a market.” As for Zhang Bojun and the Minister of the Timber Industry Luo Longgji 罗隆基, who had become a major target of the campaign, Deng scornfully remarked that it was not necessary to hold a large meeting to criticize them, “because both of them have become notorious.”Footnote 31 Peng Zhen made a similar speech to Party, government, military high-ranking cadres and Beijing municipal leading cadres on 11 June.
Sometimes the lower officials asked the Central Secretariat to dispatch members to make reports to their units. Yang Shangkun recounted: “After the Anti-Rightist struggle began, I, as the Alternate Secretary of the Central Secretariat and Party Secretary of Institutions directly under the CCP Central Committee, was invited by some units to make several reports and elaborate the Party's policy. I certainly made some extreme statements.”Footnote 32
Convening meetings
The Central Secretariat frequently ordered responsible officials from individual Party or government departments to attend its meetings to learn about the latest campaign instructions from the Party Centre, or asked them to report their campaign progress. When Party subordinates requested instructions relating to the Anti-Rightist issue, the Central Secretariat frequently had the power and authority to instruct them directly, or to issue commands to them on behalf of the Party Centre.
For example, the Central Secretariat held a meeting to discuss the campaign at the Central Party School and Department of Sanitation on 19 June. Because of Mao's dissatisfaction with some of the speeches by the students of the Central Party School, the Central Secretariat decided that all courses being taught there should be halted and all lectures cancelled. Instead, the students were requested to stay in school to participate in Rectification via mass line and mass debates. The Central Secretariat even ordered the students to remain in the Party School until the issues raised in the campaign were successfully solved.Footnote 33
In July, the Central Secretariat became much busier. For example, on the afternoon of 3 July, Deng stated that “neither courage nor the measures are currently sufficient to deal with the Rightists. Every unit has to spend more time on campaign and more active struggle against the Rightists. Every unit must line up and work out its campaign plan.” The Central Secretariat probably wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and thus held a meeting the next day in which the campaign report of the General Secretary was delivered to lower officials. After this meeting, the lower officials quickly returned to their units to convey Deng's report, and discussed with their co-workers the development of concrete campaign plans that not only fitted the latest directive of the Central Secretariat but also suited the needs of their units.Footnote 34
A month or so after the Anti-Rightist struggle began, Deng and the Central Secretariat warned their Party subordinates against taking the campaign too far. For example, in a Central Secretariat meeting on 11 July, Deng stressed the need to guard against “oversimplified and extreme phenomena” and the trend of “labelling Rightists excessively.” He also reminded every region of these phenomena and trends.Footnote 35 In the same meeting, Wang Jiaxiang stressed that “different units should develop their campaigns differently” and warned that “some units have conducted the Anti-Rightist struggle excessively.”Footnote 36 However, the Central Secretariat did not take any serious measures to prevent Party subordinates from abusing their power in labelling the Rightists. Moreover, it assumed a critical role in driving the Anti-Rightist struggle temperature ever higher. This extremism can be primarily attributed to the desire of its leaders to emulate the attitude of the Supreme Leader, Mao.
Qingdao meeting and Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Central Committee
From 17 to 21 July, the Party Centre convened a meeting of provincial Party secretaries in Qingdao to discuss the Anti-Rightist struggle. During that meeting, Mao wrote an article entitled “Situation in the summer of 1957.” He stressed that the contradiction between the Rightists and the people is irreconcilable and life-and-death in nature. He also emphasized that “every social sector, including both the working class and the peasantry, needs to conduct Rectification and socialist education.”Footnote 37
Following Mao's latest instruction, Deng convened a Central Secretariat meeting on 23 July to produce concrete campaign deployments. This meeting expanded the campaign to every social sector, and furthermore stressed that villages and factories should conduct campaigns in different ways. Campaigns at the prefecture and county level criticized the Rightists first and then proceeded with Rectification, with an emphasis on thought education. Regarding the issue of how to handle the Rightists, the Central Secretariat asked concerned departments to make preparations and hand in concrete proposals in December.Footnote 38 The role of the Central Secretariat in managing and regulating the campaign progress and assigning missions to the Party bureaucracy is clearly shown.
From 20 September to 9 October, the Party Centre convened the Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Central Committee. According to the Party's usual practice of the person or group in charge presenting a report to the whole Party, Deng presented the “Report regarding the Rectification campaign” to the plenum on 23 September. The report claimed that the campaign had achieved “a decisive victory” after struggling for three months. It also stressed that the campaign “was going to expand into an all people Rectification campaign,” and the “current mission is to conduct the Anti-Rightist struggle to the end.”Footnote 39
Deng's report had to be submitted to Mao before being presented publicly. After reviewing it, Mao commented that it was excellent.Footnote 40 This comment demonstrates that this report, written by the “collective wisdom” of the Central Secretariat, not only accurately reflected the view of the Party Centre and Mao regarding the campaign, but also successfully represented the official instructions of the Party Centre for all aspects of the follow-up campaign. The report was finally published in the People's Daily on 19 October as an official statement, and provided inspiration to campaign supporters. Meanwhile, the Rightists were greatly discouraged after reading it.Footnote 41
The Central Secretariat and the Excesses of the Campaign
When the Party Centre decided to extend the Rectification a bit longer with the aim of luring out “enemies” from mid-May to early June, Party bureaucrats such as Jiang Nanxiang, the superintendent of Tsinghua University, had, as indicated above, been eager to rebut criticisms and restore the Party control weakened by the Hundred Flowers experiment. Once the Anti-Rightist Campaign began, many Party cadres like Jiang rushed to be the first. However, the belligerence and readiness of the Party bureaucrats was not the sole factor, though an important one, that kept the Anti-Rightist Campaign going with great severity and damage. The Central Secretariat played a crucial role in terms of the bureaucratic workings of the campaign. It placed Party bureaucrats under great pressure (including active campaigners such as Jiang) to pursue the Rightists relentlessly on behalf of the Party Centre. The Central Secretariat constantly monitored Party members' performance, frequently issued campaign directives and imposed strict Party discipline. Bowing to the pressure, bureaucrats naturally feared to lag behind and strove to be the vanguard for witch-hunting.
Case I: Central Party School
As mentioned above, the Central Secretariat tightly regulated and supervised the campaign progress of every Party and governmental department. It put heavy pressure on Party bureaucrats, and not only organized the campaign's progress but also interfered in the number of Rightists. Some leaders of Party and government departments faced a difficult situation: they thought they had tried their best to hunt the Rightists in their own departments, but the Central Secretariat remained dissatisfied with their performance. That is, the number of Rightists they hunted continued to fall short of the number required by the Central Secretariat.
The case of the Central Party School demonstrates how the Central Secretariat radicalized the Anti-Rightist struggle in a single official department. It has long been argued that the main leaders of the Central Secretariat, such as Deng and Peng, were Anti-Rightist activists, but the case presented here demonstrates this in even greater detail.
On 22 July, the first and second Party secretaries of the Central Party School delivered their campaign report to the Central Secretariat. The report indicated that the Party School contained two Rightists and two individuals with incorrect thinking. Deng replied directly: “There must be more than two Rightists among the high ranking students in your Party School. The Anti-Rightist struggle is just beginning, and you cannot have right-leaning thoughts!” The General Secretary thus instructed the Party School leaders to return to dig out more Rightists.
One month later, the Party School leaders presented their new campaign report to the Central Secretariat meeting on 23 August. This time they identified nine students as Rightists. To their surprise, their new report won harsher criticism instead of praise. Deng criticized their hesitation in identifying Xiao Lu 萧鲁, a cadre of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions who was studying in the Party School, as a Rightist. Deng impatiently said: “If such people cannot be labelled as Rightists, there would be no Rightists within the Party … These people would not even know what a Communist Party member should do to avoid expulsion.” Deng's deputy Peng Zhen even warned the two Party School leaders, saying: “Now, the question is not whether this guy is a Rightist. The question is whether you two are middle-Rightists.” The Party School leaders clearly learned their lesson, identifying 67 students in the Party School as Rightists by early December.Footnote 42 The Central Party School thus became one of the units hit hardest by the campaign.
Case II: Chinese Writers Association
The active involvement of the Central Secretariat in the campaign of the Chinese Writers Association (CWA) (Zhongguo zuojia xiehui 中国作家协会), affiliated with the CC Propaganda Department (CCPD), is another case that strongly suggests the Central Secretariat contributed to escalating the campaign in individual units.
As the CWA struggled against its major targets, such as Ding Ling 丁玲, an influential female writer, and Chen Qixia 陈企霞, a former chief editor of Wenyibao 文艺报 (Literary Gazette), on 26 July the Central Secretariat criticized the development of the campaign in literary circles for being too slow. Against the backdrop of the pressure from the Central Secretariat, the concerned Party authorities hurried to continue the struggle and finally completed their work. In early August, Deng urged Lu Dingyi 陆定一, Minister of the CCPD, to prepare a news report announcing the breakthrough of the campaign in literary circles. Lu and his following rapidly produced the article “Great progress of the Anti-Rightist Struggle in literary circles – breaching the anti-Party group of Ding Ling and Chen Qixia” published on the front page of the People's Daily on 7 August.Footnote 43
Following instructions from the Central Secretariat, the struggle in literary circles continued. Deng and Zhou Enlai met the Party cadres responsible for literary circles on 9 August, and asserted that the “Anti-Rightist struggle has been expanding, but its firepower remains insufficient, and needs to be upgraded. Therefore, do not be lenient. Do not assume the struggle has gone too far.”Footnote 44 Deng and Zhou pointed out that the “struggle has been spreading, and numerous big sharks are emerging.” Deng and Zhou instructed the immediate launch of the struggle against Feng Xuefeng 冯雪峰, an essayist and poet who was a senior Party cadre.Footnote 45 Feng was soon under fierce criticism, and was labelled a “participant of the Ding–Chen group” and “an Anti-Party element in literary circles.”
Based on the case studies of the Central Party School and Chinese Writers Association, this study further analyses why certain work units like theirs were particularly hard hit. During the campaign, CCP leaders apparently tended to pay attention first to more sensitive and important work units. The Central Party School was the organization in charge of training and indoctrinating, among others, provincial cadres. The CWA not only consisted of the most famous and influential writers in China, but also was regarded as the most important organization in literary circles. Understandably, they would receive particular attention during the campaign.
In addition, a more important factor in the special attention certain work units received was their performance during the earlier Hundred Flowers campaign and their potential negative influence. During the Hundred Flowers period, some students of the Central Party School aired much of what the Party Centre considered to be erroneous and dangerous views. The Central Secretariat was wary that if students returned to their local work units carrying the wrong doctrine, they might spread erroneous ideas and cause local unrest. Therefore, the Central Party School was hit hard. In the case of the CWA, during the Hundred Flowers period, Ding Ling and Chen Qixia demanded a re-examination of their case which was harshly handled in 1954–55 by the literary Tsar, Zhou Yang 周扬. Their demand was supported by many younger writers. As far as the Party Centre was concerned, if Ding and Chen successfully reversed their verdicts, it could seriously weaken the Party's control of the arts and literary circles. Mao thus resolved to stop their effort. The Central Secretariat entrusted the propaganda chief, Lu Dingyi, and Zhou Yang, to conduct struggle against Ding, Chen and their followers and dub them the “anti-Party group.”Footnote 46
These hardest-hit units suffered such after-effects as relentless purges and punishments, reorganization of their leadership, deterioration of the political atmosphere, and so on. However, the most profound after-effect was that they were put under the Party's strict supervision, and thus they lost much of their vitality.
Rightist criteria and quotas
While Mao and the Central Secretariat repeatedly stressed the existence of Rightists and the destruction they had caused and might continue to cause, no criteria were provided for Party officials to identify Rightists until October 1957.
On 19 June, the revised version of Mao's speech “Regarding the correct handling of contradictions among the people” was published in the People's Daily. This gave Party cadres six criteria for judging whether or not the criticisms were correct, but these were merely guidelines. On 15 October, the Party Centre finally issued the “Notification concerning the criteria for identifying the Rightists” drafted and discussed by the Central Secretariat.Footnote 47 By that time, the Anti-Rightist struggle was already four months old. Bo Yibo 薄一波 later stated that the slow announcement of the criteria was one of the factors to blame for the excess of the Anti-Rightist struggle.Footnote 48
The criteria provided in the Notification were more concrete than the six in Mao's “contradictions” speech. For instance, compared with the fifth criterion in Mao's speech, the reference to “strengthen, not cast off or weaken the leadership of the Communist Party” is now given more content: “to oppose the leadership of the Communist Party over economic and cultural undertakings; to maliciously attack the Communist Party and government institutions, to smear cadres of workers and peasants and revolutionary activists, and to slander the revolutionary activities and organizational principles of the Communist Party in order to oppose Socialism and the Communist Party.”Footnote 49 Nevertheless, the criteria provided by the Notification still left considerable room for Party cadres' own interpretation and manipulation. In fact, “Rightist” was a very vague political concept in itself. It was impossible to give a clear definition of what a Rightist was. Party cadres therefore played a critical role in deciding whether or not the suspects in their work units should be treated as Rightists.
The setting of Rightist quotas (youpai zhibiao 右派指标) for every unit was the most pernicious organizational policy associated with the Anti-Rightist Campaign. There is no evidence showing the Central Secretariat's role in the origin and development of the Rightist quota system. However, in early June in 1957, Mao asserted that at least 1 per cent of campaign participants should be labelled Rightists; this varied from 1 per cent to 10 per cent in different units.Footnote 50 Mao's assertion actually had set an informal Rightist quota. The leaders of the Central Secretariat must have known this, and followed Mao's view. As shown by the above cases, the Central Secretariat spared no effort to push Party bureaucrats to fulfil the expectations of the Supreme Leader regarding the Rightist-hunt.
The prevalence of the Rightist quota system during the campaign implies that the Central Secretariat tacitly embraced the system. Wang Li 王力, who worked in the International Liaison Department and witnessed the CCPD excessively labelling people as Rightists, commented: “[The CCPD] had its quotas for hunting down Rightists. Even though the Central Secretariat did not set formal quotas of Rightists, it agreed with the general spirit [of the method].”Footnote 51
Granting approval and proposing punishments
Besides continuously radicalizing the campaign and driving it forward, another controversial role played by the Central Secretariat was using its decisive power to approve the results. After desperately hunting Rightists possibly hiding in their own jurisdictions, individual Party and government departments had to report the final results of their campaign to the Central Secretariat, and ask it to sanction their “harvests” in the Anti-Rightist struggle. In other words, the Central Secretariat enjoyed the final say in who would ultimately be labelled a Rightist. Huang Kecheng regretfully admitted in 1980:
The Anti-Rightist struggle was necessary, but excessive. It wrongly persecuted numerous people. [We] cannot ask Chairman Mao to take sole responsibility for what happened. I was a member of Secretariat at that time. When discussing whether some people should be labelled Rightists, we made decisions hastily and without careful and adequate consideration. How can we ask Chairman Mao to be responsible for the mistakes that we committed?Footnote 52
First, Huang's remark shows that although Mao tightly controlled the main direction of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, he designated its micromanagement to the Central Secretariat. The latter managed and controlled the campaign with excessive attention to detail. Issues of who should be labelled Rightists and whether lists of Rightists should be ratified were handled by the Central Secretariat. Mao only monitored high-ranking Party cadres and non-Party celebrities. In reality, the number of Rightists identified and sanctioned by the Central Secretariat significantly exceeded the number identified by Mao and other CCP leaders. Second, the Central Secretariat simply approved lists of Rightists presented by lower officials, except when the number of Rightists listed fell below expectations, as in the case of the Central Party School. The Central Secretariat thus cared more about the timely fulfilment of campaign plans than accurately targeting real Rightists.
The Central Secretariat served as a “brain trust” for the Party's important projects, and contributed policy initiatives to the Anti-Rightist Campaign. One initiative involved how to punish individuals labelled as Rightists. The daughter of Zhang Bojun noted that Deng personally developed and implemented principles and tactics to deal with Rightists.Footnote 53 The idea of sending Rightists to remote rural areas to do heavy labour might have originated with Deng.Footnote 54 The Central Secretariat also occasionally interfered in concrete cases. For example, on 16 October 1957, Zhou Yang announced that the primary Rightists in literary circles would be expelled from the Party and sent down to the countryside only after requesting instructions from the General Secretary.Footnote 55
Continuous Rightist hunt
Even as Mao gradually switched his attention from the Anti-Rightist Campaign to economic development, and as the Central Secretariat began punishing identified Rightists, the Rightist hunt did not slow down. The campaign had spread throughout society by autumn 1957, but the Central Secretariat added more fuel to the fire in early 1958. For example, in February 1958, Peng Zhen urged lower officials to hunt down Rightists among teachers of high and primary schools.Footnote 56 Over 100,000 teachers of high and primary schools were labelled Rightists during the spring of 1958. In this environment, the number of Rightists identified nationally continued to increase rapidly in the first half of 1958.
Over half a million people were eventually labelled as the Rightists as a result of the campaign. Mao and the Central Secretariat may not have anticipated such a large amount, because they only estimated there would be several thousand Rightists nationwide at the beginning of the campaign. In any case, for perpetuating the dictatorship of the Party they clearly deemed such a “cost” worth bearing.
When the campaign approached its end, on 20 May 1958, Mao triumphantly declared that “to have 300,000 Rightists is a good thing, because they have awakened 600 million people.”Footnote 57 Deng also commented on 16 July 1958 that “[the Anti-Rightist struggle has] solved many problems. Whatever happens, the leftists and the centrists are on the rise, and things continue to move in the right direction.”Footnote 58 Apparently the CCP leaders did not take into account, nor did they care about, the human cost of the campaign which they considered a big success.
The CCP leaders began to reflect on the side-effects of the Anti-Rightist Campaign only after the calamity of the Great Leap Forward which was marked by political opportunism and fear of telling the truth. In April 1962, Mao could not refrain from saying that: “When the Rightists savagely attacked [us], we had no choice but to counterattack … but the downside is that people did not dare to speak.”Footnote 59
One thing worth mentioning is that an 11-month series of political purges in a dozen provinces began from December 1957, conducted in the name of “Opposing undue leniency (fanwenqing zhuyi 反温情主义).” The alleged sins of the victims of these purges extended beyond their support for various policies echoed by the bourgeois Rightists. Additionally, their organizational reliability was questioned at a time when the Party Centre started to advocate the Great Leap programme, and more administrative authority was being devolved to the provincial level.Footnote 60
The PSC members decided and approved the appointment or removal of the top leader of a provincial Party committee. However, the Central Secretariat was empowered to appoint and remove lower-ranking secretaries of a provincial Party committee. With the exception of Henan, the local political purges that took place at the time of the Anti-Rightist Campaign did not involve the first Party secretary, but rather deputy secretaries. Therefore, the Central Secretariat had the opportunity to play a direct role in these political purges, such as in Liaoning.
Even in the Henan case, which related to a severe factional battle between first Party secretary Pan Fusheng 潘复生 and governor Wu Zhipu 吴芝圃, the Central Secretariat dispatched Tan Zhenlin to supervise and direct the local political struggle. Deng demonstrated firm support for Wu on behalf of the Party Centre by telling him that “The truth stands on your side.”Footnote 61
Conclusion
The Central Secretariat was undoubtedly the largest beneficiary of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. The Party Centre was extremely satisfied with its performance during this campaign. The Party Centre directed the Anti-Rightist Campaign with the assistance of the Central Secretariat, and all campaign policies were implemented by this body. The Central Secretariat met the expectations of the Party Centre throughout the campaign, and rigorously mobilized all Party bureaucrats to ensure that the campaign policies deeply penetrated every level of the Party bureaucracy and every social sector. Furthermore, the Central Secretariat helped the Party Centre accomplish its goal, namely terrorizing thousands of people by labelling a few of them Rightists.
As Mao's dissatisfaction with the moderate economic planning of State Council leaders gradually emerged from late 1957 to early 1958, it was no coincidence that he asked the Central Secretariat to replace the State Council and manage the Great Leap Forward launched in 1958. The efficiency and effectiveness of the Central Secretariat in the Anti-Rightist Campaign made Mao see it as an organization he could rely on to carry out his ambitious economic ideas.
The Central Secretariat was only formed in 1956 and the Anti-Rightist Campaign was the first political campaign it was involved with, which it effectively managed and strongly regulated. In this respect, a study of the roles and activities of the Central Secretariat in the Anti-Rightist Campaign, however superficial, offers a glimpse into the operations and functioning of the Central Secretariat during future events in the Mao era.
The prominent members of the Central Secretariat during the pre-Cultural Revolution period came to power in the post-Mao era, especially Deng, who acted as paramount leader. In the early 1980s, the CCP started to reassess certain controversial historical events. Unbiased investigations had demonstrated that the Anti-Rightist Campaign represented a disproportionate reaction to a tiny number of outspoken critics, and over 99.99 per cent of accusations of Rightists were false. However, ridiculously but unsurprisingly, Deng and those working in the Central Secretariat, all of whom were deeply involved in this campaign, continued to insist on the legitimacy of the struggle. Deng and the senior leadership thus controlled the assessment of this controversial political event. Unfortunately, the subsequent two generations of CCP leaders have so far not dared to disagree with their predecessors on this issue.
