The movement took place at the communist base at Yan'an, a remote and isolated mountainous area in northern Shaanxi, after the communists' Long March. The legacies of the Yan'an era included the consolidation of Mao Zedong's paramount role within the CCP, especially from 1942 to 1944, and the adoption of a party constitution that endorsed Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as guiding ideologies. This move formalised Mao's deviation from the Moscow party line and the importance of Mao's alleged 'adaptation of communism to the conditions of China'. The Rectification Campaign was successful in either convincing or coercing the other leaders of the CCP to support Mao. Because the CCP had overcome great odds to grow and develop during this period, the methods employed in Yan'an were looked upon in reverence during Mao's later years. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, Mao repeatedly used some of the tactics that had been successful in Yan'an whenever he felt the need to monopolize political power. To a large extent, the Yan'an Rectification Campaign began with the "systematic remoulding of human minds."

More than 10,000 were killed in the "rectification" process, as the CCP made efforts to attack intellectuals and replace the culture of the May Fourth Movement with that of Communist culture.