Central Committee’s Comments Transmitting the Central-South Bureau’s Report on the Three-Anti Campaign

(December 18, 1951)

[I]
1. Honestly report the state of property level by level;
2. Those who report shall not have their property confiscated; those who do not report shall be deemed illegal;
3. Where the capital originates from misappropriated operational funds or transferred assets received during liberation, it shall, upon reporting and approval, be treated as state investment; where it is accumulated through frugal methods, it shall still be counted as investment by the respective units;
4. Implement a system of unified management by levels, gradually moving toward an investment-and-dividend system under unified operations.

118

To all departments of the Central Committee and the Military Commission, all leading Party groups of the Central People’s Government; all central bureaus, and please forward immediately to sub-bureaus and provincial, municipal, and district Party committees; all major military regions, and please forward immediately to all important subordinate units; and inform the Party Committee of the Chinese People’s Volunteers:
We have just received the Central-South Bureau’s report of December 14 and the supplementary information of December 16, and we are greatly pleased. We hold that this report from the Central-South Bureau is correct—it is analytical, resolute, and contains thorough and detailed measures, many of which can supplement the inadequacies of the Central Committee’s previous directives. Therefore, comrades in all localities are requested to study it and adopt those opinions and measures that they themselves had not previously considered. Please print and distribute this report from the Central-South Bureau to prefectural and county Party committees, and publish it in internal Party journals. All Party members at the section chief level and above must be able to read it, and those who have committed corruption or waste but have not yet been arrested or expelled from the Party must also be given the opportunity to read it.

Central Committee
December 18

119

--- Notes

Refers to the report submitted by the Central-South Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 14, 1951, to Mao Zedong and the Central Committee, regarding the Bureau’s convening of an emergency meeting to specifically discuss and deploy the issues of combating corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. The report analyzed the basic situation of corruption, waste, and bureaucracy, pointing out:
Work-related waste is most severe in financial, trade, enterprise, and institutional units, with urban areas surpassing rural areas; personal lifestyle waste is most serious among leading cadres responsible for a region or an independent unit, particularly among veteran cadres. Corrupt individuals are predominantly cadres in financial, trade, public security, administrative affairs departments, and production-related sectors, with former personnel being the majority.
The report held that this campaign is, in essence, the beginning of the movement to examine cadres and rectify the Party, as well as the continued deepening of the past efforts to "cleanse the middle ranks." On one hand, the campaign will encounter certain resistance forces within the Party, requiring the utmost determination and persistence to advance; on the other hand, the campaign itself will give rise to some extremely complex issues, necessitating calm, prudent, and serious guidance. The campaign is to proceed roughly in three steps: the first step, confession and denunciation; the second step, investigation and handling; the third step, education and construction. Throughout the campaign, efforts in two areas must be strengthened to ensure close and effective coordination. One is a vigorous and large-scale mass movement, featuring extensive confession, denunciation, and criticism and self-criticism; the other is investigation, research, handling, and interrogation work led by specialized organs. The campaign must be resolutely carried out while preventing blindness. Severe corrupt and wasteful elements must be punished, while model cadres and units must be protected, commended, and rewarded. In dealing with various types of errant individuals, attention must be paid to grasping policy boundaries and treating cases differently. The report also pointed out that, in addition to the necessity of formulating and implementing streamlined and frugal plans in tandem with the anti-corruption, anti-waste, and anti-bureaucracy campaign, the matter of clearing up the property of "small public treasuries" is of utmost importance. The principles for handling this are: