Mao Zedong, 1956: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend"

That now infamous Mao slogan and its encouragement of freer expression led Chinese intellectuals to publicly criticize Communist Party policy. After things got a bit too close to the bone for comfort, those who'd spoken up were silenced with a harshness typical of Mao's reign. Faced with the apparent contradiction of both sparking the 100 Flowers movement and then crushing it, Mao later explained that it had all along been a ruse meant to lure bad elements out of hiding.

Few, if any, would draw parallels between 1956 and today. But an item carried by the state Xinhua news wire yesterday had language that was strikingly similar. Reporting a speech by President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People, Xinhua said that: 

"In his speech, the president called on Chinese writers and artists to persist in the principles of 'Serve the People and Serve Socialism,' 'Let All Flowers Bloom Together' and 'Let Hundreds of Schools Contend.' 

He advised them to get close to the realities and lives of the masses, uphold the spiritual torch of the Chinese nationality, and produce a greater number of excellent works that live up to the history, the times and the people."

(The full text of the article, which I learned of via a Tweet by Danish correspondent and friend Kim Rathcke Jensen, can be found by clicking here.)

After recent talk at the highest levels of the Communist Party about the importance of culture, and rising political star Bo Xilai's emphasis on "red culture", the speech by Hu had a certain resonance. Of course, there are questions about how much of the current rhetoric reflects a serious ideological thrust, versus more shallow political maneuvering.

With all of this in mind, I refreshed my memory of the 100 Flowers movement by looking through a couple of history books. One of them, the Penguin History of Modern China, had a line about the crackdown that followed 100 Flowers and the reasons for it.

As much as anything else I read this evening about China's recent history and the politics of today, I thought it offered a sound explanation: "The rock of the regime -- the Party -- had to be preserved..."