Could you please explain what it means ?

It refers to the Hundred Flowers Campaign in China.

Excerpt from the wikipedia article [1]:

> The first part of the phrase is often remembered as "let a hundred flowers bloom". It is used to refer to an orchestrated campaign to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, and then subsequently imprison them. This view is supported by authors Clive James and Jung Chang, who posit that the campaign was, from the start, a ruse intended to expose rightists and counter-revolutionaries, and that Mao Zedong persecuted those whose views were different from the party's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign from the 1950s. Citizens actively encouraged to share their opinion on their regime in order to help improve their country and "let a hundred flowers bloom" with different schools of thought.

Many who expressed critical opinions ended up under investigation and in prison labour camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

It's a reference to the Maoist 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.

First google result, and it certainly has similarities to the situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

It's a reference to the Chinese cultural revolution. Use your internet machine for more details.

This Hundred Flowers campaign actually started 1956, about 10 years before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966) though it of course was a part of the development leading to the latter.

Just as an (offtopic) add-on, Guy Kawasaki uses the term "Let a Thousand Flowers Blossom" in a positive way to describe letting people use your product however they see fit, instead of trying to corner and limit it to a specific use, "let a thousand flowers blossom" and let people discover new uses for your product

It's frustrating when a nice symbol or metaphor is co-opted, like someone spitting in your beer.

As a former student of Chinese history, this comment is right on target.

"Let a hundred schools of thought contend"

Ah, how history repeats itself.

We still have a lot to `learn ` from the great chairman.