A Halt to the Hundred Flowers Campaign
On June 8, 1957, Chairman Mao called a halt to the Hundred Flowers Campaign. He announced that it was time to pluck the “poisonous weeds” from the bed of flowers. Hundreds of intellectuals and students were rounded up, including pro-democracy activists Luo Longqi and Zhang Bojun, and were forced to publicly confess that they had organized a secret conspiracy against socialism. The crackdown sent hundreds of leading Chinese thinkers to labor camps for “re-education” or to prison. The brief experiment with freedom of speech was over.
https://www.thoughtco.com/hundred-flowers-campaign-195610