It's a reference to the Maoist Hundred Flowers Campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Ca

It's a reference to the Maoist Hundred Flowers Campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign The short version is that Mao encouraged people to openly express non-communist political philosophies and then killed or imprisoned those who had done so.