HundrHow far do you agree that the Hundred Flowers campaign was a trick designed by Mao to trap his opponents?

“Criticism of the bureaucracy is pushing the government towards the better.” Mao managed to convince the intellectual population of China that he genuinely thought that criticism was a necessary factor in the further development of China as a communist nation. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, many people criticized the party as well as Mao which led to Mao halting it. The communist party quickly reversed the movement and labelled all the critics as ‘rightists’. Historians still debate whether Mao designed the campaign to trick his opponents into revealing themselves or whether it was a social experiment that went wrong.
Firstly, the Hundred Flowers campaign was a trick designed by Mao due to many reasons. Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in The Secret Speech after the death of Stalin. This impacted Mao greatly and led him to believe that he would be similarly denounced upon his demise; therefore Mao wanted to identify and eliminate critics within China to prevent his legacy from being tainted. The Hundred flower Campaign can be considered a devious plan of Mao when he stated that he ‘flushed the snakes out of their caves’; this shows that Mao’s true purpose had always been to expose those who would dare to criticize him after his death, this he swiftly silenced them with the Anti-rightists Movement. The speed with which Mao reversed his policy is proof that the campaign had been a farce from the very beginning. Mao also had a strong loathing for the intelligentsia.
Like every authoritarian leader, Mao was fearful of the intelligentsia that pervaded every aspect of middle class Chinese society. Mao saw the educated intellectuals of the population such as students, teachers, scientists and artists as a threat to the stability to the communist rule.