Mr. Chen Cheng (courtesy name Cixiu; alias Shisou) served as the commander of the KMT army, commander-in-chief of the group army, commander-in-chief of the theater of operations, and chief of the general staff of the KMT. After the defeat of the Kuomintang army in Taiwan, Chen Cheng served the Administrative Yuan as Vice President of the Kuomintang. The volumes associated with *Chen Cheng's Memoirs* were published by Taiwan's National Museum of History in 2005. The series is divided into six volumes: *The Northern Expedition and the Chaos* (one volume), *The War between the Nationalists and Communists* (one volume), *The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression* (two volumes), and ***The Construction of Taiwan*** (two volumes). The first volume, *The War between the Nationalists and Communists* includes three parts: *Suppressing the Communists - Memories of the Military*, *Summary of Mr. Chen's Words and Actions*, and *Correspondence and Telegrams*. The book has original historical materials related to the five sieges and the counter-insurgency. In particular, this is the first time that important historical materials regarding the correspondence between Chiang Chung-cheng (courtesy name of Chiang Kai-shek) and Cixiu have been made public.
According to official CCP statistics, some 550,000 people were directly labeled as rightists and persecuted during the Anti-Rightist campaign. These people, as well as others implicated in the campaign, are mostly unknown, except for a very few. The author, Shen Yuan, who was also labeled as a rightist when he was a university student in 1958, devoted himself to collecting and researching historical data on the anti-rightist campaign. He has compiled a book entitled Biographies of the 1957 Rightists, which attempts to present the truth about the Anti-Rightist campaign and its victims. The book is divided into four volumes of about 1.2 million words, containing the stories of about 600 rightists and about 240 historical photographs. 2016 marked the 60th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist campaign, and Shen Yuan used the original book as the basis for his New Biographies of the 1957 Rightists, expanding the number of people included to 1,588. Sha Yexin and Wu Yisan were both involved in the compilation of this book.
The Anti-Rightist Movement in China began in 1957 with the reorganization of intellectuals, followed by the Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune, and a series of calamities such as the Great Famine. The Hong Kong Five Sevens Society was founded in 2007 with the aim of collecting, organizing, and researching historical information about the Anti-Rightist Movement. It is headed by Wu Yisan, a writer who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China. The author of this book, Shen Yuan, who was also a Rightist at the time. He has systematically researched and organized the Anti-Rightist Movement that took place in 1957 and attempted to answer some of the unanswered questions.
