Anti-Rightist Struggle in 1957

The struggle launched and led by the CPC in 1957 against the attacks of bourgeois rightists on the Party and the new socialist system. In April 1957, the Central Committee of the Party officially issued the “Instruction on the Rectification Campaign”, deciding to conduct a general and in-depth open-door Rectification Campaign against bureaucracy, sectarianism, and subjectivism in the whole Party. Following the announcement of the instruction on the Rectification Movement, the leading Party and government organs at all levels and the Party organizations in colleges and universities, research institutions and cultural and artistic units held various kinds of forums and group meetings to listen to the opinions of the masses inside and outside the Party, calling everyone to "speak out their views" and "debate". The cadres and the masses inside and outside the Party responded positively to the Party's call and put forward numerous criticisms and suggestions on the work of the Party and the government as well as the ideological style of the Party and government cadres. The Party also sincerely welcomed well-intentioned criticisms and suggestions from both the people inside and outside the Party. However, during the Rectification process, certain degree of complications and problems aroused.

A few bourgeois rightists took the opportunity to advocate the so-called "great voice", "great freedom" and "great democracy", and attacked the leadership of the Communist Party in the country's political life as "Party governing the whole country" and demanded "be in power in turns"; tried to erase the achievements of socialist transformation and construction and denied the superiority of socialism at all; described the people's democratic dictatorship system as the root cause of subjectivism, bureaucracy, and sectarianism, and launched unrestrained attacks on the Party and the new socialist system. This situation aroused the great vigilance of the Central Committee of the Party and Mao Zedong.

On May 15, Mao Zedong wrote the article "Things Are Beginning to Change", which marked the beginning of the changes in the guiding ideology of the Central Committee of the Party and Mao Zedong, and the theme of the movement began to shift from the correct handling of internal contradictions among the people to the struggle against the enemy, and from the Rectification within the Party to the fight against the rightists.

On June 8, the Central Committee of the Party issued an inner-Party instruction entitled “Instruction on Organizing Forces to Fight the Rightists’ Wild Attack”, and on the same day, the People's Daily published the editorial "This is Why", and a stormy nationwide mass campaign against the rightists in the form of "big mind opening”, “big speaking out”, “big character posters”, and “big debate” was violently launched. By the summer of 1958, the Rectification Campaign and the struggle against the rightist were over. The struggle against the rightists was correct and necessary. It clarified the fundamental rights and wrongs and stabilized the newly established socialist system. Failure to have a clear attitude on the issue of right and wrong concerning major political principles would result in ideological and political confusion.

The experience gained by the Party in this respect was valuable and had a long-term significance. However, the situation of the class struggle and the rightist attacks had been overestimated and the anti-rightist struggle was seriously expanded. A total of 550,000 people were classified as rightists throughout the country, most of whom were misclassified, resulting in serious consequences.

The serious expansion of the anti-rightist struggle not only frustrated the Party's good start in exploring the road of building socialism suitable for China's situation, but also changed the judgment of the First Session of the Eighth National Congress on the main social contradictions of China through the Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee and the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress, which became the theoretical root of the subsequent expansion of the class struggle.