ABSTRACT
Mao gained tremendous prestige in China from the Korean War – Mao had fought the most powerful military country on the earth to a standstill. Within China, Mao ran three early campaigns to further consolidate his power. In the first – the thought reform campaign – the intellectuals were targeted. The second – the three-anti movement – targeted "corruption, waste, and the bureaucratic spirit." The third – the five-anti movement – was against tax evasion, bribery, fraud, and the stealing of state secrets and of government property. These campaigns, like most Mao campaigns, involved combinations of mass meetings, small-group "struggle sessions" in which people criticized themselves and others, forced written and oral confessions, and public humiliation. The phenomenon of Mao saying relatively little about what he saw as a need causing major shifts in policy and a major competition to be one of the first to implement the new policy continued throughout Mao's life.
