Two articles by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) chief last month evoked echoes of a particularly dark period in China’s history, leading to talk of a newly minted “Five-Anti Campaign.”
A China expert told The Epoch Times the campaign aims to further consolidate party leader Xi Jinping’s hold over the China Communist Party (CCP) and purge any remaining opposition to him and his policies.
Billed as an anti-corruption campaign, the original “Five-Anti Campaign” was a key part of the CCP’s effort to root out capitalism and private property. Launched in 1952, the purge ultimately ensnared hundreds of thousands of businesses and led to many deaths.
The new campaign, with its five pillars, will, among other things, target those Xi identifies as “spies, traitors or other ill-loyal individuals” among the ranks of the CCP and the Chinese military, according to Frank Lehberger, a Europe-based China analyst.
Mr. Lehberger has 30 years of experience working as a political analyst and consultant in Asia, including Tibet. He is a senior fellow at the Usanas Foundation, a public policy think tank focused on geopolitics and security.
“To pre-empt any further opposition and obstacles to his plans in the near future, Xi has now given the go ahead for a political campaign to rid the CCP top levels of stubborn forces that still manage to oppose or elude him,” Mr. Lehberger told The Epoch Times in an email.
“This is the main reason why the Chinese minister of State Security (MSS) Chen Yixin just announced the ‘New 5-Anti campaign’ (N5A 新五反运动).”
The original Five-Anti Campaign was launched in response to a call issued by CCP founder Mao Zedong in his opening address to the third session of the National Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC) in October 1951.
The campaign, which viciously cracked down on capitalism and private property, coincided with the Korean War. Mao said in his address to the PPCC: “We must continue to strengthen the work of resisting America and aiding Korea. We must increase production and enforce thrift in order to support the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea.”
The purge ultimately ensnared hundreds of thousands of businesses and led to many deaths.
Mr. Lehberger said that 15 years after the 1951 campaign, Mao used the Cultural Revolution to “spread fear and terror both among the privileged CCP cadres and the ordinary people alike, dividing them among themselves with the help of bloody pogroms that were initiated by fanaticized grass-roots activist who were loyal to Mao only (not the CCP).”
The political nature of the new campaign is actually much more like the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mr. Lehberger said.
Taking its cue from the Cultural Revolution, which consolidated Maoism’s control over Chinese society, the new campaign’s pillars are Anti-Coup, Anti-Hegemony, Anti-Separatism, Anti-Terror, and Anti-Spy.
Mr. Lehberger noted that it comes at a time when massive purges have rippled across the CCP. Those include the purge, starting last summer, of 200 high-level People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers from all branches of the military.
“Xi became painfully aware that even among his own entourage—which he had handpicked in October 2022—could still potentially lurk traitors who had secret intentions of using their PLA or Police connections toppling him or obliterating his plans for a speedy attack on Taiwan and for Xi’s total autocratic control of China,” Mr. Lehberger wrote.
This scenario resulted in the sacking of Chinese minister of justice Fu Zhenghua in September 2022 and vice minister for police Sun Lijun in September 2021. More recently, it led to the sacking of foreign and defense ministers who disappeared without any explanation and without a timely or orderly replacement.
Delayed Third Plenum
The crackdowns occurred ahead of the 20th Central Committee’s third plenum, a key CCP meeting that was scheduled to happen in the second half of 2023, but was delayed. The third plenum determines new national and party-wide reform agendas.Mr. Lehberger credited the unusual, months-long delay—the first of its kind since the early 1980s—to the high level purges.
“This can be regarded as a symptom of persisting severe disagreements on major policy issues among the CCP elites, and also as an indication of persisting severe political disagreements with Xi, as well as severe problems regarding political loyalty to Xi at the top echelons of the CCP and PLA,” he said. It wasn’t until late last month that rumors that the conclave would happen in July finally started circulating, he added.
It is now confirmed that the party’s third plenum will happen in July, according to Chinese state media Xinhua. Mr. Lehberger said this indicates that some kind of broader consensus at the highest levels of the CCP has finally been reached.
“It is therefore likely that Xi would in July officially end the original reform and opening up policy of Deng and revert back to more Maoism, [an] autocratic personality cult and to socialist planning economy,” he predicted.
The decision to hold the third plenum in July was made during a CCP Central Committee Political Bureau meeting presided over by Xi on April 30, according to Xinhua.
The same week, Mr. Chen published his article outlining the “five antis” in the Study Times.
“‘Deepening reform is essential to upholding and improving the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and modernizing China’s governance system and capacity,’ the meeting said,” according to the report.
Mr. Lehberger said “reform” is a code word for Xi’s “Maoist revisionism.” The word is used to fool outside observers, foreign investors and ordinary Chinese alike, he said.
The announcement of the new campaign and the CCP’s third plenum were accompanied by hints about the launch of a “great denunciation movement” (GDM 大举报), Mr. Lehberger said.
The original denunciation movement started in 1951 and was aimed at getting rid of foreign influence in the Chinese Church.
Along with this, the CCP last year called for reviving the “Maple Bridge experience,” which became a blueprint for all the bloody excesses of the Cultural Revolution, said Mr. Lehberger.
Last year marked the sixtieth anniversary of Mao’s promotion of the Maple Bridge, a campaign aimed at mobilizing the masses against so-called “class enemies.”
The article, written as a part of a series called “Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium” noted that Xi has shown an enthusiasm for the Maple Bridge for decades, on a par with his fixation with Jiao Yulu (焦裕祿). Jiao Yulu was canonized a “revolutionary martyr” after his death from liver cancer at age 42 in 1964. He became a symbol of the honest party cadre, devoting himself to the communist state, and is frequently cited by Xi.
Mr. Lehberger said all these developments predict an ominous future within China and will have larger geo-political repercussions.
“N5A among the elites, and GDM among the impoverished Chinese masses (this movement being based on the revived Fengqiao experience of 1963) are to be the cornerstones of [Xi’s] plan to turn China back into the murderous dystopia of the times when entire China was starving and poor,” he said.
For China’s neighbors, this spells trouble, he said, remembering that “the dictator could easily order brainwashed Chinese soldiers to invade India at a moment’s notice by overrunning Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.”
Understanding the New Five-Anti Campaign
The “five antis” of the new campaign are Anti-Coup, Anti-Hegemony, Anti-Separatism, Anti-Terror, and Anti-Spy. The literal meaning of the terms masks their tactical goal, Mr. Lehberger said.“The official explanation given for these five is not always equivalent to their actual meaning due to the tacit goals that the CCP tries to obfuscate from public view,” he said.
Among the five, “Anti-Coup” literally means anti-subversion, and it targets all treasonous members of CCP-elite clans, according to the sinologist.
It takes aim at “CCP insiders among the red nobility that are trying to topple Xi,” he said, adding, “This is not so much directed against broad popular uprisings or subversion attempts.”
Mr. Chen made it clear in his Study Times article that the campaign will target anyone within the CCP who might be potentially plotting a couple against Xi, Mr. Lehberger said.
The new campaign aims to “pull out nails [from wood] and remove internal traitors(挖釘子, 除內奸),” wrote Mr. Chen.
The second anti—Anti-Hegemony—targets liberal pro-U.S. elites within the CCP, according to Mr. Lehberger.
“The Chinese word for ‘hegemony’ is actually a CCP code-word denoting anything related to the US government. At the same time this also signals that the MSS takes control over Chinese foreign policy with the U.S. and her allies in the UK, EU, Japan, Australia, Canada etc, meaning the Chinese Foreign ministers will be subject to more stringent MSS supervision,” he said.
The MSS, China’s powerful spy agency, is home to China’s intelligence, security, and secret police forces.
The Chinese regime has yet to provide any “coherent and verifiable” reasons behind last year’s sacking or disappearance of many members of the PLA’s elite Rocket Force—generals and affiliated civilians in charge of technology in the military-industrial complex, Mr. Lehberger said.
“Yet the reasons are thought to include treason, selling secrets/spying for the U.S. or Taiwan, corruption and other forms of politically disloyal conduct including plain insubordination,” he said.
The third campaign pillar, “Anti-Separatism,” aims to control Taiwan, he said. Its goal is to better infiltrate Taiwan society and politics and prepare for a Chinese takeover of Taiwan by military or non-military means.
“Here again the word ‘Separatism’ is the usual CCP code word for everything relating to the independent and democratically ruled nation of Taiwan,” he said.
The fourth anti, “Anti-Terrorism,” aims to create a climate of distrust and fear among ethnic communities in Tibet and Xinjiang. Ordinary Tibetans will be forced to denounce each other, as well Xinjiang’s Uyghurs.
The fifth, “Anti-Spy” hopes to uncover top officials, CCP elites and PLA generals who are selling secrets to anyone outside China.
“It also dovetails with a political campaign among the Chinese populace since last year that is hysterically hunting for ‘foreign spies’ and thus forcing mutual denunciations among ordinary Chinese,” said Mr. Lehberger.
While corruption is endemic in China and is widely cited as the reason behind the purge of elite CCP officials, he said, notably, it is nowhere mentioned explicitly among the “five-antis.”
The current campaign aims to sow internal division, he said. Its primary goal is not to scare investors and entrepreneurs away, but to more effectively divide PLA and CCP elites, “so that Xi and his underlings can conveniently purge a large number among them.”
They will be replaced with “numb and idiotic Xi loyalists,” he said.
