# The Five-Anti Campaign is launched against the urban bourgeoisie

Date: 1952

## The fact

On 26 January 1952 the CCP issued the directive launching the Five-Anti Campaign against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on contracts, and stealing economic information, aimed at remaining private businessmen. It followed the Three-Anti (corruption, waste, bureaucracy) inside the party and state. Mao’s comments set the political temperature. Struggle sessions and coerced self-denunciations were the method. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

## Context

The new state still used private firms. Some bribery was real. The campaigns also transferred urban capital and terrified owners into joint state-private forms. Bo Yibo and municipal leaders ran much of the machinery. Suicide in Shanghai is reported in independent histories and is not turned into a Factrail census. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## Evidence and sources

Mao’s comments on the Three-Anti and Five-Anti are in Selected Works. Britannica independently names the campaigns and their 1951–52 dates. Municipal archives cited in later scholarship are not reproduced here as original scans. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Official or archival record: Mao, On the Struggle Against the ‘Three Evils’ and the ‘Five Evils’ (1951–52 comments) (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_17.htm; Marxists Internet Archive).

## Significance

Worsening [institutional-corruption](/drivers/institutional-corruption) path: politicized accusation as a governance tool. Complex. Medium confidence on welfare sign because some graft was punished; the method still trained arbitrary extraction. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

## What is established and what is not

Established: central directives in 1951–52, with Mao’s comments, ran the Three-Anti and Five-Anti. Not established: a unique suicide total or that every target was innocent. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

The attached driver is institutional-corruption. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Do not treat this as a World Bank integrity index. Do not merge it with 1957 rightists. Mixed effects of The Five-Anti Campaign is launched against the urban bourgeoisie are separate paths.

Shared responsibility is part of The Five-Anti Campaign is launched against the urban bourgeoisie. Naming Mao Zedong does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1952-01-26 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

## People

- Mao Zedong: https://factrail.ai/people/mao-zedong

## Drivers

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/event/Three-Anti-Five-Anti-campaigns
- https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_17.htm

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mao-three-anti-five-anti-1952