Central Telegram on the Necessity of Conducting the Three-Anti Campaign on a Large Scale (December 8, 1951) To the East China Bureau and the Fujian Provincial Party Committee, with copies to all Central Bureaus, branch bureaus, provincial, municipal, and district party committees, as well as to the party committees of the major military regions and the Chinese People’s Volunteers: The General Office of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee transmitted, at 3:00 p.m. on December 7, an inquiry asking whether the report of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee on the anti-corruption campaign, together with the Central Committee’s instructions thereto—both issued on December 4—could be circulated as top-secret documents down to the county party committees, so as to ensure unified implementation of the anti-corruption drive and uniform adherence to the reporting system to the Central Committee regarding anti-corruption matters. In reply: (1) Such documents should indeed be distributed to the county party committees; in the armed forces, they are to be sent to the regimental party committees. Moreover, these materials should be published in intra-party periodicals to reach as many comrades as possible, ensuring that all party members at or above the section chief level can take cognizance of them. This is a semi-public document, not a “top-secret” one. (2) The report of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee forwarded by the Central Committee on December 4 [1], the report of the Party Group of the Ministry of Trade forwarded on December 5 [2], the reports of the Party Groups of the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Light Industry, and the Ministry of Water Resources, also forwarded on December 7, as well as all subsequent reports on combating corruption, waste, and bureaucracy, are to be handled in accordance with the provisions set forth in the preceding paragraph. (3) All local party committees at or above the county level must submit reports to the Central Committee, while all units of the armed forces at or above the regimental level must report to the Military Commission. Failure to do so will be regarded as a violation of discipline, as clearly stated in the Central Committee’s directive of December 4. (4) The struggle against corruption, waste, and bureaucratic inertia should be regarded as being of equal importance to the suppression of counterrevolutionaries—equally requiring the broad mobilization of the masses, including democratic parties and representatives from all sectors of society; equally to be conducted with great fanfare; equally under the personal leadership of leading officials who must take direct charge; equally calling for confessions and denunciations; and equally prescribing measures ranging from criticism and education for minor offenses to dismissal, punishment, imprisonment (for re-education through labor), and even execution for the most egregious cases of corruption. It may be necessary to execute anywhere from ten thousand to several tens of thousands of corrupt officials nationwide before the problem can be effectively solved. While corrupt, wasteful, and bureaucratic elements are generally not counterrevolutionaries—though some may indeed be so—their crimes lie in corruption, waste, and bureaucratic practices. Nevertheless, given the extreme seriousness of this issue, it must be treated with the same urgency as the suppression of counterrevolutionary activities: mobilizing the masses on a large scale, applying capital punishment and imprisonment where warranted, and meticulously ascertaining the facts to gain a clear understanding of the situation—for example, what percentage of all cadres are involved in corruption, and how these individuals are distributed across categories of varying severity—in order to exercise precise control over this campaign. Please pay close attention to all of the above points. The Central Committee December 8, 1951 Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript. Abridged and included in Volume V of Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Notes [1] See note [1] on page 543 of this volume. [2] See page 5£´ of this volume.