Three Antis & Five Antis Campaigns: Defeating Opposition (Edexcel A Level History: Route E: Communist states in the twentieth century): Revision Note

Summary

• The early 1950s saw the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) try to consolidate its position in power

• The Three and Five Antis movements attacked what the CCP saw as 'counter-revolutionaries' whilst criminal gangs were ruthlessly pursued by the People's Liberation Army (PLA)

• The CCP also moved to consolidate China's borders and established firm control of Nepal, Xinjiang and Guangdong

• All of these initiatives were underpinned by the vast Laogai network of forced labour prison camps

  • These were used to hold, punish and 'reform' anyone identified as an opponent, member of the bourgeoisie or criminal.

Three Antis and Five Antis movements: Targeting class enemies and corruption

The Three Antis Movement

• The movement was launched in 1951 and referred to:

  • Anti-corruption

  • Anti-waste

  • Anti-bureaucracy

• Some of the people identified as opponents of Chinese Communism were swiftly and silently arrested and never heard from again

  • Other people were denounced as being 'counter-revolutionaries' by colleagues and acquaintances

  • Many of the accused were then forced to admit their guilt in front of large, angry crowds

The Five Antis Movement

• Launched in 1952, this targeted:

  • Anti-bribery

  • Anti-tax evasion

  • Anti-cheating on government contracts

  • Anti-theft of state property,

  • Anti-stealing of state economic intelligence

• The social group most affected were business owners, often referred to as the bourgeoisie or capitalist tigers

  • The employees of these business owners were often ordered to gather incriminating evidence that proved the guilt of their bosses

  • The accused were often tortured until they confessed

  • Many committed suicide before this could take place

Terror and repression: Suppressing opposition to communist rule

• Opposition to Communist Party rule also came from organised criminal gangs

  • Groups such as the Triads had run profitable criminal enterprises for generations

  • They did not want the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to interrupt their activities

• The CCP used the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to stop these gangs

  • Thousands of criminals were executed

  • Those who survived were intimidated into ending their criminal activities

CCP reunification campaigns: Tibet, Xinjiang and Guangdong

Tibet

• After the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1912, Tibet proclaimed its independence as an independent nation

  • This was never accepted by any of the governments in China, and was not accepted by Mao when he came to power

• Tibet followed a Buddhist belief system and was loyal to the Dalai Lama

  • Mao was eager to remove all rival ideologies inside China

  • He also saw the potential of Tibet coming under foreign influence

• For these reasons, Mao ordered the PLA to invade Tibet in 1950

  • The Dalai Lama was forced to flee, and Tibet's Buddhist traditions were banned

Xinjiang

• Much of the population in Xinjiang was Muslim and had close cultural and ethnic ties to people across the border in the Soviet Union

  • A desire to remove a rival belief system and fears about Soviet influence in Xinjiang led Mao to focus on removing opposition and resistance in the region

  • A combination of intimidation by the PLA and hard negotiating by the CCP saw all opposition and resistance in Xinjiang come to an end by 1950

Guangdong

• This economically important province in the south had remained loyal to the Nationalists until the very end of the Civil War

  • To ensure it was fully under Communist control, Mao ordered it to be cleared of Nationalists

  • It is believed that around 28,000 people were executed in Guangdong

The Laogai: China's forced labour camp system

• Laogai literally means 'reform through labour'

  • It was the name given to the enormous network of prison camps created by the Communist Party

  • Over 1.3 million people were held captive in the Laogai camps by 1955

    • Many were political opponents

    • Others were wealthy or educated, which caused the CCP to be suspicious of them

    • Others were members of criminal gangs

• The prisoners were kept in filthy and insanitary conditions and were forced to do hard physical labour

  • Death from disease and exhaustion was common

  • Prisoners were also exposed to relentless Communist Party propaganda

How effectively did the CCP use the Three Antis and Five Antis campaigns to consolidate Communist rule?

• There are differing views on the effectiveness of the Three and Five Antis campaigns in helping the CCP consolidate their rule

  • Some historians argue that the Three Antis and the Five Antis were very effective in removing CCP opponents, enabling the CCP to consolidate its hold and intimidating any potential opponents into cooperating with them

  • They also argue that the Three Antis and the Five Antis were very popular with large numbers of the Chinese people

• Others argue that the campaigns were not targeted and spread suspicion and paranoia

The Three and Five Antis campaigns were Effective

• The policies were popular with the people and helped to establish CCP control

Key historians

In the ‘Three’ and ‘Five Antis’, workers denounced their bosses; cadres exposed each other; children were encouraged to inform on their parents; wives turned against their husbands. Activists set up ‘tiger-hunting teams’, to drag out actual and presumed offenders for humiliation before mass meetings.A climate of raw terror developed. Minor offenders, Mao declared, should be criticised and reformed, or sent to labour camps, while ‘the worst among them should be shot’. For many, the psychological pressure became unbearable. The two campaigns together took several hundred thousand more lives, the great majority by suicide, while an estimated 2 billion US dollars, a staggering sum at that time, was collected from private companies in fines for illicit activities. Surviving cadres, private businessmen and the urban population as a whole, had received a memorable lesson in the limits of communist kindness.

Philip Short, Mao: The Man Who Made China, 2016

The Campaigns were Untargeted and Caused Death and Disruption

• The campaigns' successes were only superficial and represented mass persecution driven by paranoia rather than targeting any particular groups

Key historians

The early years of the People’s Republic of China were nevertheless not free from conflict and strife. The Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries campaign inflicted violence on the former KMT leaders, the heads of secret societies, religious, and religious authorities. The Three-Antis campaign decimated the communists who had been perceived as fraternising too closely with the nation’s capitalists. The capitalists themselves were subjected to The Five-Antis campaign, which compelled obedience to the CCP via charges of tax evasion, bribery, theft of state property and dishonesty when entering into contractual obligations with the government contracts. University professors were not spared either. Mao had benefited from access to the Western liberal tradition, but the new generation would be exposed only to Soviet intellectual discourse.

 

Mao Zedong: A Captivating Guide to the Life of a Chairman of the Communist Party of China, the Cultural Revolution and the Political Theory of Maoism, 2018