APAD: Let a thousand flowers bloom

Meaning:

   Encourage many ideas from many sources.

 

Background:

   Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao

   Zedong's "Let a hundred flowers blossom". This slogan was used during the

   period of approximately six weeks in the summer of 1957 when the Chinese

   intelligentsia were invited to criticize the political system then obtaining

   in Communist China.

 

   The full quotation, taken from a speech of Mao's in Peking in February 1957,

   is:

     "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend

     is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a

     flourishing socialist culture in our land."

 

   It is sometimes suggested that the initiative was a deliberate attempt to

   flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of

   the regime. Whether or not it was a deliberate trap isn't clear but it is the

   case that many of those who put forward views that were unwelcome to Mao were

   executed.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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I'm often amazed at how much the West knows about China. But it's jaw-dropping

to learn that the legendary about-face is canonized as an English idiom.