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The Anti-Hu Feng Campaign and the 1955 Sufan (1955)

In 1955, the CCP turned a literary-theory dispute into the "Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique" case, implicating over 2,100 people; it then launched the Sufan movement to purge "hidden counterrevolutionaries" inside the Party, government and military — 214,000 arrested, 22,000 executed, 53,000 dead. It was the PRC's first large-scale political persecution targeting intellectuals and Party cadres themselves.

Time

January 1955–October 1957 (Anti-Hu Feng: Jan–Jun 1955; Sufan: Jul 1955–Oct 1957)

Place

Nationwide, focused on literary circles, Party and government organs, universities

Decision-makers

Mao Zedong (personally directed, wrote editorials); CCP Central Propaganda Department; Luo Ruiqing of the Ministry of Public Security (executed Sufan); Zhou Yang (led literary denunciations)

Background: Hu Feng and the 300,000-word report

Hu Feng (1902–1985), born Zhang Guangren in Qichun, Hubei, went to Japan in 1929, joined the Japanese Communist Party, and was deported by Japanese authorities in 1933. Back in China he threw himself into left-wing literature, founding the magazines July and Hope, nurturing young leftist writers, and becoming close to Lu Xun — widely seen as Lu Xun's heir in left-wing literary theory. After 1949 he served on the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Writers Association council, and the first National People's Congress.

Politically loyal to the CCP, Hu clashed for years with the literary establishment led by Zhou Yang. His core doctrine was "subjective fighting spirit": he opposed turning literature into illustrated policy and opposed dogmatic application of Mao's 1942 "Talks at the Yan'an Forum." His theories drew criticism from 1945 onward; from 1951 Literature and Art Gazette began publishing readers' letters demanding Hu be criticized again — the prelude was already underway.

In July 1954 Hu submitted to the Politburo a 300,000-character "Report on the Real Situation in Literature and Art Since Liberation" (the "300,000-word report"), systematically attacking sectarian domination of literary life, the stifling of creative freedom, and demanding reform of literary leadership. Written in Marxist language as an internal report, it was read by the leadership as a direct challenge to Party control over literature — the detonator.

Who decided

Mao Zedong was the supreme decision-maker. January 1955: Central Committee approved criticizing Hu Feng. April 13: Shu Wu betrayed Hu Feng's private letters in People's Daily. Early May: Mao read the letters, declared an "anti-party clique," ordered a dedicated case team. May 13–June 10: three batches of "Materials" with Mao's own editor's notes; June 15: Mao's preface. May 17: Hu Feng arrested. Mao elevated a literary disagreement into a "counterrevolutionary clique" — the springboard for the nationwide Sufan purge.

Who decided

Mao Zedong was the supreme decision-maker. Key decisions:

• January 1955: the Central Committee approved the Propaganda Department's report on criticizing Hu Feng's thought.
• April 13, 1955: Shu Wu, Hu Feng's old friend, published "The Anti-Party, Anti-People Essence of Hu Feng's Literary Thought" in People's Daily and handed over his 1940s private correspondence with Hu Feng.
• Early May 1955: Mao personally read the letters, concluded Hu Feng led an "anti-party clique," and ordered the Propaganda Department and Ministry of Public Security to form a dedicated case team.
• May 13–June 10, 1955: Mao ordered People's Daily to publish three batches of "Materials on the Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Clique," writing the editor's notes himself; on June 15 he wrote the preface for the book edition.
• May 17, 1955: Hu Feng arrested (some accounts say May 18, the same day the NPC approved the arrest — accounts differ).

Mao's logic: he treated Hu Feng's opposition to the "Talks at the Yan'an Forum" as a "counterrevolutionary clique" — a literary disagreement elevated into a criminal conspiracy; the case became the springboard for the nationwide Sufan (purge) campaign.

Detailed timeline

January 20, 1955: The Central Propaganda Department submitted its "Report on Launching Criticism of Hu Feng's Thought," arguing past criticism had been incomplete and "never solved the fundamental problem," demanding thorough criticism of Hu alongside the ongoing attacks on Hu Shi and Yu Pingbo. The Central Committee approved it, defining Hu's literary thought as "bourgeois idealist erroneous thought, cloaked in Marxism, waging long-term anti-Party, anti-people struggle," and ordering Party committees at all levels to treat it "as a major struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie."

February 1955: An expanded meeting of the Chinese Writers Association presidium decided on comprehensive criticism of Hu Feng's literary thought, printing parts two and four of his report as a pamphlet distributed with Literature and Art Gazette issues 1–2, 1955, "for open discussion among literary circles and readers." Mao instructed that Hu's "bourgeois idealist, anti-Party, anti-people literary thought be thoroughly criticized." A nationwide criticism campaign unfolded.

April 1, 1955: People's Daily published Guo Moruo's long article "The Anti-Socialist Hu Feng Program," refuting the 300,000-word report point by point.

April 13, 1955: Hu's old friend Shu Wu published "The Anti-Party, Anti-People Essence of Hu Feng's Literary Thought" in People's Daily and handed over private correspondence with Hu from the 1940s. Literature and Art Gazette then published Shu's letters together with Hu's self-criticism "My Self-Criticism." Those involved were ordered to surrender all correspondence; the "nature" of the matter escalated from thought to "crime." In his later years Shu denied ever "handing over letters," insisting "it never happened" — too late.

May 13–June 10, 1955: People's Daily published three batches of "Materials Regarding the Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique," with Mao personally writing editorials and annotations. During this period the paper devoted over two-fifths of page three daily — sometimes the entire page — to denunciations, readers' letters and cartoons. The materials were later bound into a volume printing over 7 million copies, studied nationwide as "negative teaching material."

Evening of May 16, 1955: As the Hu family ate plain noodles, public security officers broke in, seizing every scrap of paper, not sparing even the children's notebooks. Hu was arrested as ringleader of the "counter-revolutionary clique" and sent to Qincheng Prison. His wife Mei Zhi was also imprisoned as an accomplice.

July 1, 1955: The Central Committee issued the "Directive on Launching the Struggle to Cleanse Hidden Counter-Revolutionaries," formally launching the Sufan movement nationwide (see below).

1965: After ten years in detention, Hu was formally sentenced to 14 years; during the Cultural Revolution the term was raised to life imprisonment. Held in Beijing's Qincheng and later Sichuan prisons, he suffered severe physical and mental devastation and developed mental illness.

January 1979: Hu was released; September 1980: the Central Organization Department and Ministry of Public Security partially rehabilitated the case; June 8, 1985: Hu died of cancer in Beijing at 83; 1986 and 1988: the Center moved to full rehabilitation of all those implicated.

The three batches of materials and the "clique"

From May 13 to June 10, 1955, People's Daily published three batches of "Materials Regarding the Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique," with Mao personally writing the annotations — the PRC's first literary inquisition stage-managed by the supreme leader himself. Private letters were quoted out of context; disagreements over literary theory were elevated into "counter-revolutionary conspiracy."

Official statistics later showed the case implicated over 2,100 people: 92 arrested, 62 held in solitary confinement, 73 suspended for investigation; 78 were formally designated "Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique members," 23 of them key members. The implicated spanned nearly every major city; countless families were destroyed. As scholars note: merely having read Hu's articles or exchanged a few letters with him sufficed to be branded a "Hu Feng element" and imprisoned — with parents and relatives implicated too.

Notably, Hu always considered himself a Marxist and a loyal Party soldier. Even the 1980 rehabilitation had to concede: his 1927–28 employment in KMT organs was a "political-history issue, not to be treated as historical counter-revolution"; the alleged "anti-communist propaganda outline" rested on a single accuser, which Hu always denied — evidence insufficient.

Who executed

Chain: Mao → the case team (headed by Lu Dingyi) → People's Daily propaganda (20 days of page-3 denunciations; 15 pages over a month) → public-security interrogations → nationwide screening. Ba Jin's "crush the clique" as the model; a Propaganda Department group screened all correspondence; all books by "Hu Feng elements" banned — even their translations of Engels and Gorky. The case flowed into the nationwide Sufan in July 1955.

Who executed

Execution chain: Mao's verdict → the dedicated case team → the People's Daily propaganda machine → public-security interrogations → nationwide screening.

• The case team (early May 1955, Propaganda Department + Ministry of Public Security): headed by Lu Dingyi (Propaganda chief); members included Zhou Yang, Qian Ying, Yang Qiqing; on July 1 expanded with Luo Ruiqing (Public Security minister), Liang Guobin, Gao Kelin, Xiao Hua, Liu Lantao.
• The propaganda machine: for 20 days (May 18–June 8), People's Daily devoted more than two-fifths — sometimes the whole — of page 3 to denunciations, readers' letters and cartoons under "Raise Vigilance, Expose Hu Feng"; after the third batch, about 15 pages over a month under "Resolutely Smash the Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Clique."
• Literary circles drew the line: Ba Jin's "We Must Thoroughly Crush the Hu Feng Anti-Party Clique" (May 26) as the model; criticism meetings everywhere.
• Letter-review group: the Propaganda Department sent Lin Mohan, Liu Baiyu, He Qifang and others to screen the "Hu Feng elements'" correspondence; Public Security handled interrogations.
• Publication ban: all books by Hu Feng and core members pulled; even translations of Engels and Gorky were banned from sale and library circulation if rendered by a "Hu Feng element."
• Into the Sufan: a five-person team became the Central Sufan ten-person group in July — the case flowed into the nationwide purge.

The Sufan: from literary circles to the whole country

The Anti-Hu Feng campaign directly spawned the 1955 Sufan movement ("purge to eradicate hidden counterrevolutionaries"). Unlike the 1950–53 Zhenfan campaign, which mainly struck KMT remnants outside the system, Sufan aimed inside the Party, government and military — Mao believed hidden counterrevolutionaries had infiltrated state organs after victory and had to be cleansed by campaign.

July 1, 1955: the Central Committee issued the "Directive on Launching the Struggle to Cleanse Hidden Counter-Revolutionaries," formally opening the movement; August 25 brought the "Directive on Thoroughly Purging Hidden Counterrevolutionaries." The directives set a roughly 5% screening quota; People's Daily even claimed "ten percent of Party members are hidden traitors," which became local arrest targets. With no judicial process, people were purged by administrative fiat; torture to extract confessions was rampant.

Early Sufan targets included top technocrats Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. The public-security apparatus itself was a key target — the leadership wanted absolute Party control over the security forces. By September 1955, 2.2 million people had been investigated and 110,000 "exposed" as counterrevolutionaries, but Mao believed 50,000 more "big fish" remained; the campaign ran two more years until October 1957. By the end, over 18 million people had been targeted, with another 11–12 million "still queued for investigation."

Many were released in 1956 with apologies for false accusation, but the stain in their political dossiers lasted a lifetime. Sufan also weakened the State Planning Commission and industrial managers, tightening the Party's grip on the security apparatus.

Scale & Methodology

Who opposed

At the time: no open opposition. Three post-hoc forms: (1) a suppressed exoneration — Luo Ruiqing and Lu Dingyi buried evidence clearing the framed teachers (unverified); (2) rehabilitation in three waves — 1980 (Document No. 76, Hu Feng refused to sign), 1986 (conclusions revoked), 1988 (full exoneration, three years after his death); (3) history's irony — Zhou Yang jailed in the Cultural Revolution; Shu Wu labeled a rightist in 1957. Sentencing: 14 years (1965); life imprisonment in 1970 for poems in newspaper margins; released late 1978.

Who opposed

At the time: no open, organized opposition. Stating that plainly is more honest than inventing an opponent. "Opposition" appeared afterward in three forms:

• Suppressed exoneration: Public Security found the frame-ups (e.g., the Hubei Qichun teachers) "fully clarified" and reported to the Sufan ten-person group; Luo Ruiqing and Lu Dingyi decided to "bury it, not report to Mao" — reporting it, they feared, would change nothing and might violate Mao's "strategic" plan. (Scholar's account — unverified.)
• Rehabilitation in three waves (1980→1986→1988): On September 29, 1980, Central Document No. 76 declared the case "a wrong case of confusing two types of contradictions" and ordered rehabilitation — but kept the charges of literary errors, sectarian activity, and 1920s "political-historical problems." Hu Feng refused to sign. In January 1986 the political-historical conclusions were publicly revoked; at the January 15 Babaoshan memorial, the Culture Minister eulogized Hu Feng as "a modern revolutionary literary fighter." On June 18, 1988, a supplementary notice completed the exoneration — three years after Hu Feng's death on June 8, 1985.
• History's irony: in the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Yang — one of the two chief engineers of Hu Feng's destruction — was himself jailed, and Shu Wu, who had handed over the letters, was labeled a rightist in 1957 and suffered through the following decades.
• Sentencing and escalation: after a ten-year delay, Hu Feng was sentenced on November 26, 1965 to 14 years with six years' deprivation of political rights; A Long and Jia Zhifang received 12 years each in 1966. During the Cultural Revolution, in January 1970, Hu Feng was sentenced to life imprisonment, with no right of appeal, for writing poems in the margins of a newspaper — construed as "writing reactionary poems on Chairman Mao's portrait." The life sentence was revoked in late 1978 and he was released.

Impact

The PRC's first nationwide literary inquisition against intellectuals. The Anti-Hu Feng campaign set the precedent of criminalizing thought: literary disagreements and private letters could become "counter-revolutionary" evidence. "Conviction by speech" became standard in every later campaign — the Anti-Rightist Campaign and Cultural Revolution both followed the script.

Established the "inner-Party purge" model. Unlike Zhenfan, which struck enemies outside the system, Sufan turned the gun inward on the Party, government and military — pioneering the purge of "our own people." Every later campaign (Anti-Rightist, Four Cleanups, Cultural Revolution) used "enemies within the Party" as mobilizing logic; the 1966 Cultural Revolution aimed directly at "capitalist roaders inside the Party."

Destroyed the independent character of literary circles. After the Hu Feng case, writers learned lesson one: never write what you really think. Ba Jin recalled the scene years later: "It reminded me of the Qing dynasty's literary inquisitions." A whole generation of intellectuals learned self-censorship in fear; telling lies became a survival skill.

Inflicted unhealable social trauma. Hu Feng spent 24 years in detention, emerging an old man; thousands of families were implicated. The 1980 rehabilitation admitted a "wrong case," but "full rehabilitation" waited until 1988 — three years after Hu's death. Belated justice means nothing to the dead.

What happened to the "clique" members. The 23 designated key members met different fates. The writer Jia Zhifang spent years in prison, was jailed again during the Cultural Revolution after his release, and only resumed writing in the 1980s. The poets Lü Yuan and Niu Han, both listed as key members, passed years in detention, labor reform and supervised labor. Lu Ling, the young novelist Hu Feng valued most, was 32 when arrested; he broke down mentally in prison and remained in a confused state long after his release, recovering only partially in old age. Hu Feng's wife Mei Zhi was imprisoned in the same case; after her release she cared for her mentally ill husband and, after his death, edited and published the Hu Feng Memoirs, leaving a participant's record of the affair. Others never lived to see rehabilitation: they died of illness or by suicide in custody, their names surviving only in fellow victims' recollections.

The difference between the two rehabilitations. The September 1980 rehabilitation kept its tail: Central Document No. 76 withdrew the "counter-revolutionary clique" verdict but retained the conclusions on Hu Feng's literary thought, sectarian activity and "political-historical problems" — in effect, the case had been mishandled but the man was still guilty. Hu Feng refused to sign it. Only the supplementary notice of June 18, 1988 revoked every remaining charge — individualism, sectarianism, idealism — completing his exoneration, 33 years after his arrest and three years after his death. That the two steps came eight years apart shows how such cases were loosened: each step waited on a change in the political climate, not on the merits.

A template for literary purges. The Hu Feng case left behind a replicable procedure: first a press campaign of criticism, then publication of edited "materials," then the supreme leader's editor's notes fixing the verdict, and finally the conversion of a thought case into a criminal case and of an individual case into a "clique" case. The handling of the "Zhang–Luo alliance" in the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution's exposures of "traitors, spies and renegades" all ran on this procedure. Private letters became dangerous objects: a generation of intellectuals formed the habit of not writing letters, not keeping diaries, or burning what they wrote — genuine thought withdrew from the written word, leaving only declarations of loyalty.

The record since. Hu Feng spent his last years in Beijing, mentally scarred and largely silent, working when he could on the memoirs he had begun drafting in his head during confinement. After his death, Mei Zhi edited the text, and the Hu Feng Memoirs were published in 1989 — a first-person record of the case by its central victim, including his prison years and his account of the literary battles of the 1930s and 1940s. Scholarship on the case has grown steadily since, drawing on the memoirs, on surviving correspondence and on the recollections gathered in the 2009 documentary Storm under the Sun, whose makers interviewed 26 surviving "Hu Feng elements." What has not appeared is any official reassessment beyond the 1988 notice: the case is closed on paper, its template intact in practice.

Videos

Storm under the Sun (2009): directed by Peng Xiaolian and Louisa Wei — the first independent documentary systematically recording the Hu Feng case, filmed over six years, interviewing 26 surviving "Hu Feng elements" and 40+ families.

Forbidden History on the Hu Feng case: soon after the PRC's founding, the left-wing literary master Hu Feng became the first prominent victim of "conviction by speech" over differing views on literature.

Related images (external links)

• Hu Feng image category — Wikimedia Commons (includes 1954 photo of Hu Feng and the 1955 arrest warrant)
• English Wikipedia: Hu Feng — biography and case timeline