"In that case, take my family's house it's too big for only three people," my father said instantly, in spite of the fact that the three people were his mother, his sister Jun-ying, and a brother who was retarded, and that they all adored the beautiful house with its enchanted garden. The school was delighted; his family less so, although he found them a small house in the middle of town. His mother was not too pleased, but being a gracious and understanding woman, she said nothing.

Not every official was as incorruptible as my father.

Quite soon after taking power, the Communists found themselves facing a crisis. They had attracted the support of millions of people by promising clean government, but some officials began taking bribes or bestowing favors on their families and friends. Others threw extravagant banquets, which is a traditional Chinese indulgence, almost a disease, and a way of both entertaining and showing of fall at the expense, and in the name, of the state, at a time when the government was extremely short of funds; it was trying to reconstruct the shattered economy and also fight a major war in Korea, which was eating up about 50 percent of the budget.

Some officials started embezzling on a large scale. The regime was worried. It sensed that the goodwill which had swept it into power and the discipline and dedication which had ensured its success were eroding. In late 1951 it decided to launch a movement against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. It was called the "Three Antis Campaign." The government executed some corrupt officials, imprisoned quite a number, and dismissed many others.

Even some veterans of the Communist army who had been involved in large-scale bribery or embezzlement were executed, to set an example. Henceforth, corruption was severely punished, and it became rare among officials for the next couple of decades.

My father was in charge of the campaign in his region.

There were no corrupt senior officials in his area, but he felt it was important to demonstrate that the Communists were keeping their promise to provide clean government.

Every official had to make a self-criticism about any infraction, however minor: for example, if they had used an office telephone to make a personal call, or a piece of official notepaper to write a private letter. Officials became so scrupulous about using state property that most of them would not even use the ink in their office to write anything except official communications. When they switched from official business to something personal they changed pens.

There was a puritanical zeal about sticking to these prescriptions. My father felt that through these minutiae they were creating a new attitude among the Chinese: public property would, for the first time, be strictly separate from private; officials would no longer treat the people's money as their own, or abuse their positions. Most of the people who worked with my father took this position, and genuinely believed that their painstaking efforts were directly linked to the noble cause of creating a new China.

The Three Antis Campaign was aimed at people in the Party. But it takes two to make a corrupt transaction, and the corrupters were often outside the Party, especially 'capitalists," factory owners and merchants, who had still hardly been touched. Old habits were deeply entrenched.

In spring 1952, soon after the Three Antis Campaign got go' rag another, overlapping campaign was started. This was called the "Five Antis' and was aimed at capitalists.

The five targets were bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of state property, and obtaining economic information through corruption. Most capitalists were found to have committed one or more of these offenses, and the punishment was usually a fine. The Communists used this campaign to coax and (more often) cow the capitalists, but in such a way as to maximize their usefulness to the economy.

Not many were imprisoned.

These two linked campaigns consolidated mechanisms of control, originally developed in the early days of communism, which were unique to China. The most important was the 'mass campaign' (qiun-zhongyun-dong), which was conducted by bodies known as 'work teams' (gong-zuo-zu).

Work teams were ad hoc bodies, made up mainly of employees from government offices and headed by senior Party officials. The central government in Peking would send teams to the provinces to vet the provincial officials and employees. These, in turn, formed teams which checked up on the next level, where the process was repeated, all the way down to the grass roots. Normally, no one could become a member of a work team who had not already been vetted in that particular campaign.

Teams were sent to all organizations where the campaign was to be conducted 'to mobilize the people." There were compulsory meefngs most evenings to study instructions issued by the top authorities. Team members would talk, lecture, and try to persuade people to stand up and expose suspects. People were encouraged to place anonymous complaints in boxes provided for the purpose. The work team would investigate each case. If the investigation confirmed the charge, or revealed grounds for suspicion, the team would formulate a verdict which was sent up to the next level of authority for approval.

There was no genuine appeal system, although a person who came under suspicion could ask to see the evidence and would usually be allowed to make some sort of defense.

Work teams could impose a range of sentences including public criticism, dismissal from one's job, and various forms of surveillance; the maximum sentence they could give was to send a person to the countryside to do physical labor. Only the most serious cases went to the formal judicial system, which was under the Party's control. For each of the campaigns, a set of guidelines was issued from the very top, and the work teams had to abide strictly by these. But when it came down to individual cases, the judgment and even the temperament- of the specific work team could also be important.

In each campaign everyone in the category which had been designated as the target by Peking came under some degree of scrufny, mostly from their work mates and neighbors rather than the police. This was a key invention of Mao's to involve the entire population in the machinery of control. Few wrongdoers, according to the regime's criteria, could escape the watchful eyes of the people, especially in a society with an age-old concierge mentality-.

But the 'efficiency' was acquired at a tremendous price: because the campaigns operated on very vague criteria, and because of personal vendettas, and even gossip, many innocent people were condemned.

Aunt Jun-ying had been working as a weaver to help support her mother, her retarded brother, and herself.

Every night she worked into the small hours, and her eyes became quite badly damaged from the dim light. By 1952 she had saved and borrowed enough money to buy two more weaving machines, and had two friends working with her. Although they divided the income, in theory my aunt was paying them because she owned the machines. In the Five Antis Campaign anyone employing other people fell under some sort of suspicion. Even very small businesses like Aunt Jun-ying's, which were in effect cooperatives, came under investigation. She wanted to ask her friends to leave, but did not want them to feel she was giving them the sack. But then the two friends told her it would be best if they left. They were worried that if someone else threw mud at her, she might think it was them.

By the middle of 1953 the Three Antis and Five Antis campaigns had wound down; the capitalists had been brought to heel, and the Kuomintang had been eradicated.

Mass meetings were coming to an end, as officials had come to recognize that much of the information which emerged at them was unreliable. Cases were being examined on an individual basis.