During the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Mao Zedong quoted the Zuo Zhuan idiom "If the skin is gone, what can the hair attach to," comparing intellectuals to hair clinging to the skin of the proletariat, and declared that intellectuals had lost the qualifications for independent survival.
Beginning in 1957, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was launched, resulting in the purge of numerous members of democratic parties and intra-party dissidents.
In the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Chinese Communist Party labeled some individuals as rightists because intellectuals had voiced their opinions, and the people involved and their families subsequently suffered long-term political and social consequences.
As General Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping was the frontline commander of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. He drafted documents and issued rigid quotas for the arrest of "rightists," leading to 550,000 intellectuals being labeled as such.
In 1957, the Chinese Communist Party shifted from encouraging free expression to launching the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Official statistics show that about 553,000 people were labelled as rightists, while declassified archival data put the figure at more than 3.17 million.
Through a series of political movements, the CCP has successfully established a totalitarian state devoid of any dissenting voices.