Movement for the Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries

The nationwide political campaign to purge and suppress counter-revolutionary elements at the early stage of the founding of the People's Republic of China was one of the three major campaigns in the early stage of the founding of New China, along with the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid the DPRK and the comprehensive land reform and was a major initiative to consolidate people's power. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, there were still 600,000 counterrevolutionaries of various kinds, including agents dispatched or lurking by the KMT, as well as about 600,000 cadres of the reactionary organizations lurking in various places. These counterrevolutionary elements carried out various sabotage activities, such as bombing industrial mines, railroads, and bridges, burning warehouses, looting supplies and killing cadres, in an attempt to subvert the new people's government.

Especially after the outbreak of the Korean War, these elements hoped that "the Third World War was about to break out" and "Chiang Kai-shek was planning to launch a counterattack the mainland", and their counterrevolutionary spirit became even more arrogant. According to statistics, in a period of more than half a year from the spring to autumn of 1950, more than 40,000 cadres and mass activists in the newly Liberated Areas were killed by counterrevolutionaries. In order to consolidate the new people's government and stabilize the order of social life, in March 1950, the CPC Central Committee issued the “Directive on Suppression of Counterrevolutionary Activities”, and then all localities began to investigate severely all kinds of counterrevolutionary elements engaged in counterrevolutionary and especially sabotage activities.

In October, the CPC Central Committee issued another “Directive on Suppression of Counterrevolutionary Activities”, stressing that the People Republic of China shall “suppress all counterrevolutionary activities and severely punish all KMT counterrevolutionary war criminals and other leading incorrigible counterrevolutionary elements who collaborate with imperialism, commit treason against the motherland, and oppose the cause of People’s Democracy”, and that all those who "continue to carry out counter-revolutionary activities" must be “severely punished”.

On December, a campaign to suppress the counterrevolutionary movement was launched throughout the country with great effort. The key targets of this campaign were bandits, secret agents, bullies, reactionary clique leaders and reactionary party cadres. The movement adopted a mass line approach, and under the leadership of the Party Committees, the whole Party members and the masses were mobilized, the public security and judicial organs vigorously cooperated with the masses of the people, and the support of all democratic parties and democratic personages were mobilized.

In order to strengthen the leadership of the movement, on February 21, 1951, the Central People's Government announced the “Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Punishment of Counterrevolutionaries”, which set forth the principles and methods for handling counterrevolutionary cases and provided legal instruments and sentencing standards for suppressing counterrevolutionary movements. In the movement, the mass line approach was adopted and adhered to the principles including insisting to punish evildoers, not questioning submissive people, and rewarding meritorious people. The policy of combining punishment with leniency and the spirit of "neither sparing a counterrevolutionary nor wronging a good man" were implemented, and the efforts were made to fight "steadily, accurately, and ruthlessly".

The nationwide campaign to suppress counterrevolutionary movements basically ended by October 1951. The counter-revolutionary suppression campaign, which lasted for more than a year, basically cleared out the remnants of counter-revolutionary forces left behind by the KMT on the mainland, removed a number of imperialist spies, and basically eradicated the once rampant scourge of banditry, bringing unprecedented stability to China's social order and providing an important guarantee for consolidating the new regime and ensuring land reform and the recovery of the national economy.