The Three-Anti and Five-Anti Campaigns: How the CCP Destroyed the Urban Business Class
Between 1951 and 1952, the Chinese Communist Party’s launch of the “Three-Anti” and “Five-Anti” campaigns in urban areas marked the deep intervention of state power into the city’s economic and social structure. This series of campaigns initially aimed to rectify corruption, waste, and bureaucratic tendencies within Party and government organs, then rapidly expanded into the private business sector. By establishing strict financial audit systems and mass supervision mechanisms, the government elevated what were originally economic violations into political stance issues, thereby weakening the independence of the urban bourgeoisie at the institutional level.
During the implementation of these campaigns, the verification measures against private enterprises grew increasingly severe. The government required businesses to open their books to joint review by worker representatives and tax officials. Any unclear accounting or abnormal profits could be classified as “Five Evil” behaviors: bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, substandard materials and workmanship, and theft of state economic intelligence. This scrutiny extended beyond the financial realm into a tool of political pressure. Business owners were forced to conduct public self-criticism, confessing to the so-called “exploitative” nature of their work, and undergoing dual moral and legal judgment under the watch of neighbors and colleagues.
The core mechanism of the campaign relied on confession, denunciation, and fines. Many business owners, under immense psychological pressure, chose to voluntarily disclose past business details, even exaggerating facts in hopes of lenient treatment. This mechanism led to the breakdown of trust relationships within urban commercial networks, with mutual surveillance among peers becoming the norm. This was followed by heavy fines and property confiscation; many medium-sized private enterprises fell into financial crisis and were forced to merge or close. This economic devastation directly stripped the business class of the material foundation needed to maintain its social status and economic autonomy.
As the campaigns deepened, internal management control of private enterprises gradually came under state agents. Worker supervision teams entered enterprises, participating in daily decision-making and profit distribution, while the original management hierarchy was dismantled. Although owners retained nominal ownership, they lost substantive control over personnel appointments, production planning, and fund allocation. This process not completed the initial transformation of urban private economy, but also paved the way for the comprehensive socialist public ownership transformation that followed, fundamentally changing the social power structure of Chinese cities.
Verifiable Sources
- Airiti Library: Research on the Three-anti Campaign: https://www.airitilibrary.com/Article/Detail/U0031-0412201512045172
- Wikipedia: Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-anti_and_Five-anti_Campaigns
- Resolution on CPC History, 1981: https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm