As a result of campaigns carried out between 1951 and 1954, over half a million members would be expelled from the CCP for accepting bribes, being ‘tainted by the class enemies’, lacking commitment or not being up to the job.[34] The campaigns would begin by rooting out elements corrupted by the bourgeoisie but by their end, would be against the bourgeoisie as a class. Those foreign firms remaining in China after the US and UN embargoes would be subject to Three-Antis and Five-Antis Campaigns and, by early 1952, almost all foreign firms had ceased operations and withdrawn from China.[35]
11.4.1 The Three-Antis Campaign
Before the anti-counter revolutionary campaign was over, Mao had launched two new major campaigns. The first was at the end of 1951; the Three-Antis Campaign (anti-corruption, anti-waste, and anti-bureaucratism) was meant to identify corruption of urban cadres, particularly those in business administration dealing with private enterprise. This began as the Chinese advance in Korea was halted and the war settled down to a bloody slog. The CCP could no longer close its eyes to an extremely serious situation that was causing enormous financial and economic losses to the various state institutions and was arousing widespread discontent, especially amongst industrial workers in the ranks of the Party. Weeding out corruption and inefficiency in the government apparatus had become an urgent task.[36]
A news report in August 1950 had claimed that corrupt cadres had misappropriated 450,000 tons of grain and then flaunted their ill-gotten gains in shows of ‘arrogance and vanity’. A subsequent series of articles in the New China Press and Peoples’ Journal in early 1951, revealed that the level and extent of corruption was stupendous. In central government alone the corruption was valued at 73 billion yuan at a time when the annual salary of a civil servant could be as little as 1,000 yuan.[37] The situation in the regions was, apparently, much worse! If this level of corruption was attained within just two years, what did the future hold?
Corrupt cadres fattened themselves by pilfering state funds and spending public monies on luxurious lifestyles. They were selling state resources, such as raw materials at cut prices, rubber stamping increased production costs to assure additional profits to the capitalists. The capitalists, it appears, did not hesitate to repay the favours. Corruption, waste, and bureaucracy were becoming entrenched in the state apparatus, the army, mass organisations and, in particular, in the industrial and commercial sectors. A general malaise was appearing within the CCP. In some rural districts, CCP members had become the foci of commerce, land purchase, and usury to the extent that they were asking to be allowed to quit the Party to pursue careers as capitalist entrepreneurs. It was claimed that in some areas these same CCP members had bought up as much as 20% of the land allocated to poor peasants.[38]
The anti-corruption campaign began in the north east of China where CCP control over society was most established but also because in Manchuria the Korean War had provided the greatest opportunities for the generation of a new layer of capitalists and the brazen bribery of administrative officials. Capitalist influences undermined the behaviour of cadres and were amplified because those cadres were not freely elected, not subject to criticism from the workers and peasants, and not subject to democratic control and recall. Used to abusing their authority, receiving higher wages, special treatment and privileges, they considered it their right to surround themselves with ever greater luxury; they were easily corrupted and debased because the bureaucratic state apparatus already had a culture of privileges and perks.
For the millions of KMT bureaucrats with their sleazy practices, corruption had long been a way of life. These people were now well-placed to take advantage of the opportunist policy of class collaboration which feted and praised the national bourgeoisie as partners in the New Democratic economy, just as the shortages created by the Korean War generated ideal conditions for crooked dealings. What the Three-Antis Campaign demonstrated was that the protected capitalist sector had an effect out of all proportion to its size.
To effectively eliminate such practices required workers’ democracy. This was not possible under the Mao regime, but the CCP did have extensive experience of initiating and overseeing mass campaigns which used women’s and youth organisations, professional bodies, and trade unions to mobilise the population in support of issues the government deemed worthy. These techniques were used with the Three-Antis Campaign with the addition that public criticisms of local officials who had blatantly taken bribes or openly used their positions for personal aggrandisement, were encouraged. In this way the campaign had the beneficial effect of appeasing discontent in the Party ranks.
This campaign was not intended to change the bureaucratic nature of the CCP and so could not eliminate opportunism, corruption or waste as was demonstrated when the excesses of the party tops were left untouched.[39] The CCP leadership was obliged to expel obviously rotten cadres and to attack certain bourgeois elements because, embroiled in a war with US imperialism it could not tolerate incompetent and politically unreliable public officials and an inefficient, ill-disciplined, and unresponsive bureaucratic system.
The rapid corruption and moral degeneration of the CCP revealed the bankruptcy of the New Democracy. Representatives of a world system that was much more technologically advanced, the national bourgeoisie were much more corrosive than either their numbers or the value of their products would imply. The CCP simply failed to understand the nature of the national bourgeoisie, failed to understand why the national bourgeoisie turned their backs on what was so obviously the rational way forward for China. On 15 January 1952, the editorial of the Tientsin Journal plaintively pleaded: “The orientation of the popular democratic front has not changed … we still hope the bourgeoisie will conscientiously accomplish their own reform to conduct themselves peacefully in the new democracy.” The Maoist regime was increasingly being faced with having to end the New Democracy or move to the full restoration of the bourgeoisie.
11.4.2 The Five-Antis Campaign
During 1951, it became clear that the output in many sectors of the economy would soon reach the pre-1949 peak. This gave the Chinese bourgeoisie greater confidence and they became bolder in defending their interests against the state and in intervening in the state machine through bribery and corruption. As the economy began to expand, private business based in the light industries expanded most rapidly and attempted to acquire a larger share of scarce raw materials, legally (by paying up to 40% more than the state) or through the black market (bribery). Skilled labour moved from the state sector to private firms able to pay more because of their high profits. These boom conditions for the private sector undermined government control of the economy.
No sooner was the Three-Antis Campaign underway than Mao launched the Five-Antis Campaign (anti-bribery, anti-tax evasion, anti-fraud, anti-embezzlement, and anti-leakage of state secrets) in January 1952. This programme complemented the Three-Antis Campaign and was aimed at eliminating corrupt practices by businessmen and industrialists. In reality, the Mao regime could not allow a class whose objective interests lay in the victory of the US to retain control over light industry and much of agriculture. Wholesale expropriation – in whatever form it took – would be an inevitable result of the Korean War.
In Shanghai alone, 15,000 inspectors were trained to investigate their employers’ business affairs for tax evasion and other corrupt practices. The CCP encouraged business people to confess or denounce one another (some big companies made thousands of voluntary confessions to try to protect themselves); citizens were invited to write letters denouncing businesses (about 200,000 letters a month were received); friends and family were encouraged to join in. The campaign had loudspeakers on every street corner broadcasting denunciations of local recalcitrants, wall newspapers carried reports of the misconduct and offences of businessmen, in the streets there were demonstrations by the employees of companies denouncing the crimes of their employers, and factory owners would be continuously besieged in their offices by workers demanding they admit and recant their crimes.
The intention was that the business leaders identified by the Five-Antis Campaign should be humiliated and intimidated, should go through public criticism sessions, be made to confess their crimes, and forced to pay large fines (the owner of Dahua copper company confessed to having illegally obtained 50 million yuan but his employees continued to criticise him until he re-confessed to having obtained 2 billion yuan). Fines were heavy and some offenders were sent to labour camps.
In its early stages, the campaign was limited to an assertion of CCP control of society from bottom to the top. To save face, official statements presented the struggle as being against individual ‘mangy sheep’ of the bourgeoisie. However, in the course of this campaign the Party uncovered well-organised attempts by important businessmen and industrialists to corrupt Party and government officials. Before it ended the Five-Antis Campaign would become an all-out war against the bourgeoisie as a whole.[40]
The People’s China editorial of 15 March 1952 complained: “as (the capitalist) enterprises have developed and begun to flourish the bourgeoisie has become less inclined to conform to the Common Programme and obey governmental regulations.” Capitalists were reported as having set up secret monopolies to control supplies to the state or to state enterprises; the Chinese bourgeoisie were using “the same lamentable methods as are habitually used by big capitalists in the capitalist states.” It was becoming clear that the national capitalists collaborated with the New Democracy only out of immediate necessity and not out of idealism or belief in the Common Programme. The greater the success of Mao’s policy of stabilising and enriching private enterprise, the bolder and more determined it became in defence of its own interests against those of the state. The regime was having its eyes opened by the Korean War and realising that the national bourgeoisie were not willing allies in the New Democracy, and could become a fifth column.
Chen Po-ta (CC member) presented an in-depth analysis of the situation in Pravda (23 April 1952):
Spurred by their hunger for profit … (the capitalists) placed their agents in our state institutions and our public organizations … hired employees of the state and public bodies as their agents … did not give up their hope of conquering power bit by bit in the PRC … the bourgeoisie is striving to push China onto the road to capitalism.[41]
During 1952 the CC, in its majority, became convinced of the need to push the private sector into mixed public-private enterprises with the government having the determining role. Private operations had accounted for three quarters of wholesale trade in 1950, but by 1953 their share had shrunk to less than a third. As a result of the Five-Antis Campaign there was a considerable state presence in the remaining private sector through joint companies.[42]
Once the civil war was over the New Democracy was supposed to provide a peaceful (even if slow) transition to socialism. The reality, as found in the Five-Antis Campaign was that the national bourgeoisie were sabotaging the regime and the use of force was widely used to compel the largest private corporations to convert into joint private-state enterprises, and the smallest factory owners and merchants to give up their capital assets. Many were grateful to have escaped with their lives, some did not.[43]
It has long been accepted by Marxists that the destruction of capitalism, e.g. the ending of private property in the means of production and the introduction of state-owned property, can take place only as a result of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses. Here the mass mobilisations deviated markedly from the ideal norms and occurred under the watchful eye of the PLA, under the guidance of a Stalinist Party. The similarities with Eastern Europe are obvious.[44] In China, to maintain technical continuity, and to gain a degree of assent, the previous owners were often offered managerial positions in the joint private-state enterprises so they could continue to contribute to the state economy, and previous shareholders were compensated with a pension guaranteed for seven years at 5% per annum of their share of the business. Such arrangements are matters of convenience not of principle, but the net effect was a dramatic contraction in the private sector.
The presentation of these events was a problem for Mao and the CCP. Officially the New Democracy was a lengthy preparatory stage during which Chinese society would be made ready for launching socialism. In true Orwellian manner, the texts were re-written to match actual events; this is why so many of Mao’s works were re-published in 1951. Now, New Democracy was presented as a rapid transition to socialism. Cohen gives an interesting but disturbing picture of the public self-rectification that had to be undertaken by many, particularly academics and students, who had studied On New Democracy, thought they had understood it well, had even been given responsibility for lecturing on it, but now found they had not understood it at all.[45]
It is to be expected that the CCP presents the Third Chinese Revolution as having followed the course outlined by Mao. The expectation was that the New Democracy would last for scores of years, but the laws of historic development meant there were only two years between October 1949 and the first moves against the national bourgeoisie in the Three-Antis and Five-Antis Campaigns. In reality it would have been difficult to move against the national bourgeoisie any sooner. Being a bureaucracy, the CCP over-reacted and even small retailers were herded into co-operatives under Party control. Lenin, of course, had argued that such small enterprises should be taken over by the state only when the individual retailers themselves wanted it.
11.4.3 Agricultural Policy and the Korean War
With the outbreak of the Korean War the activities of all reactionary elements revived, and anti-communist guerrillas re-appeared across southern China. These successfully incited not only landlords but also many poor peasants and landless labourers (angry at receiving little or nothing from the land reforms) to acts of open rebellion such as refusal to pay taxes, forming groups to plunder public food banks, harassing local officials, etc. So bad did the situation become in some counties that the Yangtze Daily (published in Hankou) concluded there was a danger of the peasants following KMT agents and country autocrats rather than the CCP and the People’s Government. Mandel claimed that in many counties in the south a veritable civil war was raging between thousands of bandits mobilised by KMT agents and supported by local landlords against poor peasant associations organised by the CCP.[46]
The CCP was forced to adopt a more conciliatory line towards the poor peasants and a less conciliatory attitude towards the remaining landlords who were – of course – closely inter-linked with the national bourgeoisie. The “Aid Korea, Resist America” campaign (1951-52) won considerable support from the peasant masses because re-distribution of landlords’ excess lands was accelerated and extended southwards and throughout China, until by the end of 1952 it had been largely completed. In parallel with Party policy in the urban areas, there was increased emphasis on the mobilisation of poor peasants and landless labourers to root out landlordism and right-opportunist deviations in the land reform movement. These activities were meant to be closely supervised by Party cadres but the poor peasants and landless labourers often took the law into their own hands to effect a fuller and fairer distribution. In the face of the Korean War, the CCP leadership generally acquiesced to, and even allowed cadres to lead a number of these actions but without formally changing regime policy.[47]
The CCP skilfully used this situation to initiate the first step towards co-operativisation, and towards the state taking greater control of agriculture to provide the necessary resources for industrialisation. But the requirement not to disturb food production imposed a major constraint on the rate of rural change. In December 1951, the CC of the CCP, in a move that was justified as helping poor peasants and improving production, proposed voluntary mutual-aid teams. This was a form of basic co-operation where individual farmers worked together on the separate land holdings and then shared the produce according to the amount of labour and farming tools they contributed. This meant the rich peasants who possessed tools such as hoes and carts got the larger portion of the crops, but the scheme increased overall production so everyone benefited. Such teams had been tested in the liberated areas during and after the Sino-Japanese War and found to significantly increase production. The intention was to have 80-90% of all peasants organised in mutual aid teams by 1955.[48]
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Twitchett and Fairbank, Op. cit. p94.
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Thompson, Op. cit.
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Fairbank, J. The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985, Harper Perennial, 1987, p277 et seq.
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Kwong, J. The Political Economy of Corruption in China, 1997, Sharpe, p6.
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Peng Shuzi, The Causes of the Victory of the Chinese Communist Party over Chiang Kai-Shek, Feb., 1952, w.m.org.
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Ibid.
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Peng Shuzi, Report … Op. cit.
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Mandel, E. Report to 11th Plenum IEC of the FI, May 1952, w.m.org.
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Harris, Op. cit.
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Cohen, A. The Communism of Mao Tse-tung. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966, p113.
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Hansen, J. The Problem of Eastern Europe, w.m.org.
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Cohen, Op. cit.
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Mandel, Report to 11th Plenum … Op. cit.
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Chatham House, From Land Reform to Communes in China, The World Today, 1959, 15(3)124-133.
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Li, H. Village China Under Socialism and Reform, Stanford U.P., 2009, p24.