In this talk, Mao said that “rightists” had gone on a rampage attacking the Communist Party and China’s socialist system. He said these rightists made up between 1 percent and 10 percent of all intellectuals—and that they must be smashed. To simplify things, a figure of 5 percent, halfway between Mao’s two extremes, had been established as the quota for the number of rightists who had to be caught. To meet it, my mother was expected to find over a hundred rightists in the organizations under her.
