Sufan movement


The Sufan movement was a political campaign against political opponents in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. The term "sufan" is short for "肅清暗藏的反革命分子", and can roughly be taken as referring to a 'purge' of hidden counterrevolutionaries. Mao directed 5 percent of counter-revolutionaries to be eliminated. The Sufan movement lasted from July 1955 to late 1957, during which 214,000 people were arrested and approximately 53,000 died.
On 1 July 1955, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee issued a "Directive on launching a struggle to cleanse out hidden counter-revolutionary elements". On 25 August 1955, it issued "The directive on the thorough purge and cleansing of hidden counter revolutionaries". The targets of directives like these were individuals inside the communist party, the government bureaucracy, and military personnel. This was in contrast to the earlier Zhen Fan movement that had mainly targeted former Kuomintang personnel.

The targets of Sufan

Historically, the earliest Chinese communist Sufan had been initiated by Zhang Guotao in 1932.
The People's Daily, in an attempt to provide justification for the purge, reported that ten percent of Communist Party members were secret traitors and needed to be purged. This number appears to have been taken as a quota for the number of arrests that needed to occur.
There were three categories of Sufan targets:
  1. Ex-Kuomintang personnel, regardless of war captive or surrender.
  2. Anyone with landlord or wealthy families.
  3. Non-Communist intellectuals.
The Sufan movement was a sequel to the campaign of criticizing Hu Feng, and finally ended in late 1957.

Death toll

Chinese scholars have pointed out that during the Sufan movement, over 1.4 million intellectuals and officials were persecuted, 214,000 people were arrested, 22,000 were executed and a total of 53,000 died.
Jean-Louis Margolin writes in The Black Book of Communism that one source indicates 81,000 arrests during the campaign, while another gives 770,000 deaths. He concludes that there is no way to determine which is accurate.

External sources

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