Mao

by Philip Short

  47. Shi Zhe, p. 385.

  48. Ibid., pp. 414 and 426; for a slightly different version, see Chen Jian, pp. 72–3.

  49. Shi Zhe, p. 433.

  50. George Kennan and others in the US State Department argued in the late 1940s that Mao, like Tito, would prove resistant to Soviet control, and that it was in the US interest to promote their differences. Mao himself later accused Stalin of having viewed him as ‘a second Tito’ in 1949 (Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, p. 36; CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 148–9 and 165).

  51. Detailed and conflicting accounts of Mao's stay in Moscow, may be found in: Chen Jian, pp. 78–85; Goncharov, Sergei N., Lewis, John W., and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 76–129; Shi Zhe, pp. 433 et seq.; Zhang, pp. 29–33. Mao's own recollection of the visit, in his conversation with Pavel Yudin in March 1956, is published in CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 165–6, as are the Russian minutes of Mao's meetings with Stalin on December 16 1949, and January 22 1950 (ibid., pp. 5–9).

  52. Shi Zhe, pp. 434–5.

  53. Mao had used an almost identical phrase to describe his living conditions in disgrace at Ruijin, 16 years earlier.

  54. Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 119–21, 128, 175, 216–18, 253, 263 & 265–8.

  55. ‘Speech to the Chengdu Conference’, March 10 1958, Mao Zedong sixiang wansui, Beijing, 1969, pp. 159–72.

  56. Shtykov to Zakharov, June 26 1950, in CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 38–9.

  57. Shtykov to Vyshinsky, May 12 1950, in ibid; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 145–6.

  58. Goncharov, Lews and Xue, p. 146. At a meeting with the North Korean Ambassador, Li Zhouyuan, in late March, Mao had treated the question of American intervention in characteristically elliptical fashion, stating that, on the one hand, the US ‘would not get into a Third World War for such a small territory [as Korea]’, but, on the other hand, if a world war did break out, North Korea would not escape it and should therefore begin to prepare itself (CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 38–9).

  59. Roshchin to Stalin, May 13, and Stalin to Mao, May 14 1950, in CWIHP, 4, p. 61.

  60. Chen Jian, pp. 106–9; Zhang, Shu Guang, Mao's Military Romanticism, University Press of Kansas, 1995, pp. 44–5.

  61. Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 152–4.

  62. Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 51–73. Mao wanted to invade Taiwan in the summer of 1950, but preparations took longer than expected and, at the beginning of June, the attack was postponed until mid-1951 (Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 148–9 and 152). On August 11 the CCP CC Military Commission directed that the invasion be delayed further, until 1952 or later, as a result of developments in Korea (Zhang and Chen, Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, pp. 155–8; Chen Jian, p. 132).

  63. US policy on Taiwan was in any case hardening in the spring and early summer of 1950 (Chen Jian, pp. 116–21). Even so, military action to support the Chinese nationalists would have been far more difficult for America to justify than the defence of South Korea.

  64. This account is based on documents from the Chinese archives, memoirs by Chinese participants and Russian materials declassified after the fall of the USSR in 1990. See, in particular Chen Jian, pp. 131–209; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 130–99; Hunt, Genesis of Communist Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 183–90; Zhang, Mao's Military Romanticism, pp. 55–94, and Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 90–100; Pantsov and Levine, pp. 376–85.

  65. Stalin to the Soviet Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Mikhail A. Silin, for Klement Gottwald, August 27 1950, in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, Moscow, Vol 5, pp. 96–7.

  66. A handwritten copy of Mao's unsent original draft is held in the Chinese Central Archives (oral sources; and Chen and Zhang, pp. 162–3). A copy of the second draft – reversing the decision in the first – which was sent via the Soviet Embassy in Beijing and received by Stalin on October 13, is held in the Russian Presidential Archive in Moscow. Mao recalled later having threatened not to send troops (discussion with Kim Il Sung, 1970, quoted in Chen Jian, p. 199). For Stalin's cables to Mao on October 1; to Kim on October 8; and the second version of Mao's October 12 cable to Stalin, see CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 114–17 and 106–7, n. 30.

  67. The best, and fullest, account of Chinese military strategy and tactics in Korea, and of Mao's pre-eminent role in defining them, is given by Shu Guang Zhang in Mao's Military Romanticism, pp. 95–244.

  68. See Domes, Jurgen, Peng Dehuai: The Man and the Image, Hurst, London, 1985, pp. 65–70.

  69. SW5, pp. 115–20 (Sept. 12 1953).

  70. Chen Jian, p. 104; Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 253–4.

  71. Mao claimed in later years that Stalin came to trust the Chinese communists only after the Korean War (CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 148–9 and 156). On the other hand, Xu Xiangqian, in Moscow in 1951 to negotiate arms supplies for the war, concluded that the Russians were holding back military aid because they did not want China to become too strong (Zhang, Military Romanticism, p. 222). The two are not mutually exclusive. See also Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 217–25 and 348, n. 9.

  72. The official Chinese figures are 147,000 dead and 300,000 wounded. Other sources give much higher figures. See Zhang, Military Romanticism, p. 247; Pantsov and Levine, p. 387.

  73. Zhang, pp. 193–4; Liu Jiecheng, Mao Zedong yu Sidalin, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1996, pp. 645–7; Pantsov and Levine, p. 349. Quan Yanchi, quoting Mao's bodyguard, Li Yinqiao, says that Jiang Qing and Ye Zilong broke the news to Mao (Mao Zedong: Man not God, pp. 43 and 172). The two are not necessarily contradictory: Mao may have been informed by Jiang and Ye, but still reacted with intense emotion when the meeting with Peng confronted him with his loss again. See also Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 147–8.

  74. Quan Yanchi, pp. 168–72. For Anying's clash with Mao at Xibaipo, see Pantsov and Levine, pp. 350–1, quoting documents from Mao's personal file in the Russian archives (Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna, Vol 1, 26).

  75. Teiwes, Frederick C., ‘Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime’, CHOC, 14, p. 84.

  76. Yang Kuisong, ‘Reconsidering the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries’, CQ 193, pp. 102–21.

  77. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 97–103 (June 6 1950). Mao's statement that ‘[we must not] execute a single secret agent and not arrest the majority of them’, usually dated September 27 1950, was actually made seven years earlier. None the less, he had wanted the campaign kept within bounds.

  78. Chen Jian, pp. 139–40 and 193–4; and Teiwes, Frederick C., Elite Discipline in China: Coercive and Persuasive Approaches to Rectification, 1950–1953, Australian National University, Canberra, p. 54.

  79. Chen, Theodore, H. E., Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals, Hong Kong University Press, 1960, pp. 24–7; Lum, Peter, Peking, Robert Hale, 1958, p. 60.

  80. Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 201–2.

  81. Lum, pp. 33–9, 67–74 and 83–92.

  82. Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 181–6; Lum, pp. 177–84.

  83. Chen Jian, p. 194. See also Teiwes, Elite Discipline, p. 55, and CHOC, 14, pp. 88–92; and Yang Kuisong, supra.

  84. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 162–3 (Jan. 17); SW5, pp. 54–6 (March 30, May 8 and June 15 1951); Yang Kuisong, p. 108.

  85. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 83–8.

  86. SW5, p. 72 (Jan, 1 1952).

  87. For the ‘Three Antis’ and the ‘Five Antis’, see ibid., pp. 88–92; Teiwes, Elite Discipline, pp. 17–48 and 115–48; and Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 51–3.

  88. SW5, p. 77 (June 6 1952).

  89. Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 54–71.

  90. Chen Jian, pp. 215 and 220–23.

  91. This is a conservative figure. Nearly 150,000 died in Korea; 710,000 counter-revolutionaries had been executed by May 1951 (in a campaign which continued until 1953); at least a million landlords and family members died; and ‘several hundred thousand’ citizens perished in the ‘Antis’ campaigns.

  92. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande hu
igu, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1993, 1, p. 155.

  CHAPTER 13 THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

  1. ‘I am an outsider in the field of economics,’ he told businessmen in December 1956 (Kau and Leung, Writings of Mao, 2, p. 200).

  2. Thompson, Mao Zedong: Report from Xunwu, p. 64.

  3. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 976–7.

  4. SW5, pp. 73–6 (April 6 1952).

  5. Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War, pp. 77 and 84; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, p. 95.

  6. Saich, p. 1374 (June 30 1949); SW4, p. 423.

  7. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 92 and 96–7. Stalin, who was in no great hurry to help develop China's economy, urged Mao to modernise at a cautious pace and approved Russian aid for only 50 industrial projects (out of 147 the Chinese had proposed). Soon after his death, in May 1953, Malenkov and Khrushchev approved 91 more (Pantsov and Levine, pp. 390–1 & 401–2). In October 1954, after Khrushchev emerged as the dominant Soviet leader, Soviet aid was further increased.

  8. Talk at the Chengdu conference, March 10 1958, in Schram, Stuart R., Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974, p. 98.

  9. Kau and Leung, 1, p. 318 (Feb. 7 1953).

  10. Friedman, Edward, Pickowicz, Paul G. and Selden, Mark, Chinese Village; Socialist State, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991, pp. 112–84; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 110–11. For Mao's subsequent acknowledgement that in agriculture, China did not follow the Soviet lead, see Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 98.

  11. SW5, pp. 93–4 (June 15) and 102 (August 1953).

  12. Ibid., pp. 93, 101 (July 9) and 110 (Aug. 12 1953); Teiwes, Frederick C., and Sun, Warren (eds), The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization in China, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1993, p. 49.

  13. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 28–32 and 53–4; Teiwes, Frederick C., Politics at Mao's Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1990, pp. 42–3, 62–71 and 187–212; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 99–101. Mao's criticisms of Bo may be found in SW5, pp. 103–11 (Aug 12 1953).

  14. Paul Wingrove, in ‘Gao Gang and the Moscow connection: some evidence from Russian sources’ (Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol 16, No 4, 2000, pp. 88–106) states that Gao Gang had already clashed with Liu in July 1949 when the latter led a CCP delegation to Moscow.

  15. SW5, p. 92 (May 19 1953). Liu Shaoqi was criticised implicitly, because he was in charge of the day-to-day running of the Secretariat.

  16. The definitive account of the Gao Gang affair, from which the following is largely drawn, is Frederick Teiwes's study, Politics at Mao's Court. Teiwes concludes that Mao had no intention of replacing Liu and Zhou but leaves open the key question of how far the Chairman may have gone in encouraging Gao's ambitions. Oral sources, knowledgeable about the history of the period, insist that Mao did lead Gao on and that the latter's suicide was a mute protest against his betrayal. That ties in with the idea that Mao deliberately set a trap for the younger man. Paul Wingrove (supra), citing documents in the Russian archives and the recollections of Soviet officials, states that in the winter of 1949 Stalin gave Mao a dossier showing that Gao had sent unauthorised messages to Moscow discussing internal CCP matters. Wingrove speculates that Stalin did so in order to prove to Mao his good faith. A more plausible explanation is that Stalin was testing him: had Mao acted against Gao, the Soviet leader would have interpreted it as an unfriendly act, aimed at one of the most pro-Soviet elements in the Chinese Politburo. Instead, by ‘promoting’ Gao, Mao detached him from his regional power base. Then, after Stalin's death, his hands were free to deal with him as he thought fit.

  17. Ibid., p. 162 (March 21 1955).

  18. In the mid-1980s, Hu Yaobang, then CCP General Secretary, proposed to Deng Xiaoping that the case of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi be reopened. Deng was reportedly furious and forbade any further discussion. Key documents, including the minutes of the December 24, 1953, Politburo meeting, are still sealed, and published accounts within China remain silent about Mao's role. It is not clear whether Deng's reluctance to reexamine the case was a result of the post-Mao leadership's decision to treat the years prior to 1957 as a period when Mao made no major errors; or whether it was because of the light it might throw on Deng's own conduct during Gao's purge (see Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man not God, pp. 152–5).

  19. This section is based on documents contained in Teiwes and Sun, especially pp. 82–154; and Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 110–19.

  20. Teiwes and Sun, p. 42 (May 9 1955).

  21. Ibid., p. 107 (July 11 1955).

  22. Ibid., p. 136.

  23. SW5, p. 184 [translation amended] (July 31 1955).

  24. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 47–8 and 107–18.

  25. SW5, pp. 249–50 (December 1955).

  26. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, p. 113.

  27. SW5, p. 214 (Oct. 11 1955).

  28. Roderick MacFarquhar deserves the credit for spotting this revealing little fable, which is recounted in Karl Eskelund's The Red Mandarins (Alvin Redman, London, 1959, pp. 150–1). See MacFarquhar, Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 327, n. 51.

  29. Loh, Robert, and Evans, Humphrey, Escape from Red China, Michael Joseph, London, 1963, p. 136; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, p. 120.

  30. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 22–5; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 254.

  31. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 27; SW5, p. 240 (Dec. 27 1955); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 13 (Jan. 20 1956).

  32. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 27–9.

  33. Ibid., pp. 30–1; Teiwes and Sun, p. 49.

  34. Ph.D. thesis by Michael Schoenhals (University of Stockholm, 1987).

  35. Short, Philip, The Dragon and the Bear, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1982, pp. 265–76. A text of the Secret Speech was issued by the US State Department on June 4, 1956.

  36. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 43.

  37. Conversation with Yugoslav Communist Delegation, September 1956, CWIHP, 6–7, p. 151.

  38. Conversation with Pavel Yudin, March 31 1956, in ibid., pp. 164–7.

  39. Bowie, Robert and Fairbank, J. K. (eds), Communist China 1955–1959: Policy Documents with Analysis, Harvard University Press, 1962, pp. 144–51 (April 5 1956).

  40. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 194.

  41. Wu Lengxi, Shi nian lunzhan, 1956–1966, Zhong Su guanxi huiyilu, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1999; see also John Garver's review article, ‘Mao's Soviet policies’, CQ 173, 2003, pp. 197–213. In September 1956 Mao described Sino-Soviet relations as ‘more or less … brotherly, but the shadow of the father-and-son relationship is not completely removed (CWIHP, 6–7, p. 151). Two years later the shadow was omnipresent as Mao raged at the Soviet Ambassador about Moscow's paternalism and contempt for Chinese abilities (ibid., pp. 155–9).

  42. Zagoria, Donald, S., The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956–1961, Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 44.

  43. CWIHP, 10, pp. 152–5; MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 169–71.

  44. ‘More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, in Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 261 and 270 (Dec. 29 1956). See also ‘Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong’, CWIHP, 10, p. 153.

  45. SW5, pp. 341–2 (Nov. 15 1956). Mao had earlier used the ‘sword’ analogy at a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador, Pavel Yudin, on October 23 (CWIHP, 10, p. 154).

  46. Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 257–72 (Dec. 29 1956).

  47. CWIHP, 10, p. 154.

  48. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 114 (Aug. 30 1956). The same formula appears in the version of Mao's speech, ‘On the 10 Great Relationships’ (April 25 1956), published in SW5 (p. 304), but this appears to be a later addition, not in the original version.

  49. Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 257–9 (Dec. 29 1956).

  50. Ibid., p. 258 (Dec. 29 1956).

  51. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 176.

  52. CWIHP, 10, pp. 153–4.

  53. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 71 (April 1956); see also p. 114 (Aug. 30 1956).

  54. Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 37–50
and 80–5; see also Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 481–4 (Oct. 16 1954), on Yu Pingbo, and 506–8 (Dec. 1954), on Hu Shi.

  55. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 72 (March 1950), 196–201 (May 20 1951) and 496 (Oct. 1954).

  56. SW5, pp. 121–30 (Sept. 16–18 1953). See also Zhou Jingwen, Fengbao shinian, Shidai piping chubanshe, 1962, pp. 434–7.

  57. Goldman, Merle, Literary Dissent, pp. 129–57; Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 85–90.

  58. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 84.

  59. Kau and Leung, 2 pp. 66–75 (April 1956).

  60. Ibid., p. 255 (Jan. 27 1957).

  61. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 33–5; Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 104–16; Goldman, pp. 158–60.

  62. Guangming Ribao, May 7 1986; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu (eds), Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao, p. 43.

  63. MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 37–8 and 75–7.

  64. Ibid., p. 47. The People's Daily specifically affirmed that ‘leaders play a big role in history’ and said it was ‘utterly wrong’ to deny this (Bowie and Fairbank, p. 147). See also CWIHP, 6–7, p. 149.

  65. Liu Shaoqi, whom Mao had delegated to take charge of the Congress proceedings, sent him the amended text of the constitution for approval. However, he received it in the early hours of the morning – after he had already taken his nightly sleeping pill – and evidently did not notice the deletion (Oral sources, Beijing, 1997). Mao had himself on several occasions called for the suppression of references to his ‘thought’, but proposing it and having others taking him at his word were not necessarily quite the same thing. During the Cultural Revolution, this became a key charge against Liu.