Linking the plot to Barrett helped whip up anti-American feeling, which was not as fervid as the regime wished. The trumped-up charge was also used to tarnish another major target of Mao’s — the Roman Catholic Church, whose leading foreign representative, an Italian Monsignor, was one of those arrested. China had about 3.3 million Catholics at the time. Mao was very interested in the Vatican, especially its ability to command allegiance beyond national boundaries, and his Italian visitors often found themselves being peppered with questions about the Pope’s authority. The tenacity and effectiveness of the Catholics perturbed the regime, which used the phony assassination case to accelerate the takeover of Catholic institutions, including schools, hospitals and orphanages. A high-decibel smear campaign accused Catholic priests and nuns of heinous actions ranging from plain murder to cannibalism and medical experiments on babies. Hundreds of Chinese Catholics were executed, and many foreign priests suffered physical abuse.
In general, religious and quasi-religious organizations were either branded reactionary and suppressed, or brought under tight control. Almost all foreign clergy were expelled, along with most foreign businessmen, virtually clearing China of non-Communist foreigners by about 1953. Non-Communist foreign press and radio were, it goes without saying, banned.
THE “CAMPAIGN to suppress counter-revolutionaries” lasted over a year though routine suppression continued unabated after that. Mao then focused his attention on securing watertight control of the state coffers, to make sure that the funds the state extracted from the people did not revert to private hands. In late 1951 he started a campaign known as “the Three-Antis,” targeting embezzlement, waste and “bureaucratism” (which meant slacking, not bureaucracy per se). The primary aim was to scare anyone with access to government money from pocketing it. Alleged embezzlers were called “tigers.” “Big Tigers,” involving cases over 10,000 yuan, qualified for death.
As corruption had been epidemic under the Nationalists, the campaign had genuine appeal. Many thought that the Communists were trying to root out corruption. What people did not realize was that while it was true that after this campaign few who had access to state money dared dip their hand in the till, the funds thus amassed in the state coffers were not going to be used for the interests of the people.
Mao was hands-on about what had now, in effect, become his money. He bombarded government ministers, and provincial and army leaders, with cables urging them to catch “Big Tigers,” and setting quotas: “We must probably execute 10,000 to several tens of thousands of embezzlers nationwide before we can solve our problem.” He whipped up a competition among the provinces, goading them on to higher targets, threatening: “Whoever disobeys is either a bureaucratist or an embezzler himself.”
The method for uncovering those deemed to be offenders was, as Mao enjoined, “confession and informing.” Using these techniques, some 3.83 million civilian officials were grilled and screened (and more in the army). Though torture was not encouraged as a public spectacle this time, it was nevertheless used in some places, and Mao was kept informed. Russians working on the railway in Manchuria reported hearing screams (“like from Japanese dungeons”) from nearby offices. These turned out to be coming from Chinese colleagues who were being “checked” by having their testicles crushed in bamboo pliers.
In the end, relatively few officials were found to have embezzled sums large enough to qualify them as “Big Tigers.” But Mao had achieved his goal, to instill fear. From now on, few dared to pilfer state funds.
As for its second target, waste, the campaign caused more loss than it prevented. By tying up skilled managers and technicians in sterile meetings for months on end, it deprived the economy of badly needed human assets. On 14 February 1952, Tianjin reported that wholesale trade was down by half, banks had stopped loans, and private businesses dared not buy goods. Industrial production was declining, tax income collapsing, and the economy was heading into recession. In Manchuria, production plummeted by half. In fact, the system of repression itself was a prime source of waste. One Belgian priest worked out that he was interrogated — to no effect — for more than 3,000 hours over three years, which involved at least three or four people full time (at least 10,000 man-hours), as well as vast amounts of scarce paper.
