Mao

by Philip Short

  222. Talbott, Strobe (ed), Khrushchev Remembers, Little, Brown, Boston, 1974, p. 290.

  223. Ibid., p. 259.

  224. The following account is taken mainly from Zhang, Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 235–7 and 250–65; and from MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 92–100.

  225. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 132–5; Zagoria, pp. 99, 126.

  226. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 136–80 and 201.

  227. Miscellany, p. 157 (Feb. 2 1959).

  228. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 153.

  229. See Miscellany, 1, pp. 130–1 and 138 (Nov. 1958).

  230. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 187–92.

  231. The following account of Peng's visit to Niaoshi, the build-up to the Lushan conference and the conference itself draws on: Li Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu, Henan renmin chubanshe, 1995; Domes, Peng Dehuai; The Case of Peng Dehuai, 1959–1968, Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, 1968; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 384–440; MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 187–251.

  232. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 328–9; Dikötter, Famine, p. 41.

  233. Miscellany, 1, p. 176 (April 1959). Mao had first used this formulation a year earlier at the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress, when he criticised a speech by one of his more sycophantic followers (the Shanghai First Secretary, Ke Qingshi) who had urged the Party to follow him unconditionally. ‘We follow whoever has the truth in his hands,’ Mao told him. ‘Even if he should be a manure carrier or a street sweeper, as long as he has the truth he should be followed … Wherever truth is, we follow. Do not follow any particular individual … One must have independent thinking’ (Ibid., p. 107, May 17 1958).

  234. Case of Peng Dehuai, p. 12.

  235. Li Rui, p. 177.

  236. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 225–8. See also Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, ‘The Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune and the Sino-Soviet Split’, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol 20, No 72, November 2011, pp. 861–880.

  237. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 222 and 228–33.

  238. Li Rui, pp. 192–207.

  239. Case of Peng Dehuai, pp. 31–8.

  240. Ibid., pp. 39–44.

  241. Ibid., p. 30.

  242. Chinese Law and Government, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 58.

  243. Li Rui, pp. 73 and 181.

  244. Chinese Law and Government, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 58.

  245. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 428–36.

  246. MacFarquhar, 2, 298.

  247. Ibid., pp. 328–9.

  248. In Guangxi, in 1955, the provincial First Secretary was dismissed for failing to prevent widespread starvation. In Anhui, 500 people starved to death in one county even during the bumper harvest of 1958 (Ibid., 3, p. 210).

  249. According to Wu Lengxi (Shi nian lunzhan, pp. 236–47) the Politburo approved Mao's decision to go public in January 1960.

  250. The public recriminations, leading up to the split, are detailed in MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 255–92.

  251. Ibid.

  252. In his speech to the ‘7,000-cadre big conference’, Liu Shaoqi did not even mention the withdrawal of Soviet aid as a factor in the famine.

  253. Bernstein, Thomas P., ‘Mao Zedong and the famine of 1959–1960: A Study in Wilfulness’, CQ 186, 2006, pp. 442–3; Dikötter (Famine, pp. 105–7 & 112–14) and Yang (Tombstone, pp. 456–8). The Chinese Foreign Ministry archives do not give figures for 1961, so calculations of how much money was repaid during the three years from 1960 to 1962 are an estimate. The figures for Chinese foreign aid are likewise approximations.

  254. Yang Jisheng argues convincingly that weather conditions were not the essential factor at any point during the famine, and that was certainly the case in 1959 and 1961. However, in 1960, the combination of drought and floods – either of which on its own might have been manageable – was particularly deadly. This was notably the case in Sichuan. None the less, it was a contributory factor, not the prime cause of the tragedy (Tombstone, pp. 452–6; Chris Bramall, ‘Agency and Famine in China's Sichuan province’, CQ 208, 2011, pp. 990–1008).

  255. Interview with Yang Jisheng, December 8 2004. See also Tombstone, p. 429, and MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 1–8.

  256. Mao's speech to the Central Committee Work Conference, June 12 1961, cited in Yang, Tombstone, p. 393.

  257. Ibid., p. 483.

  258. Ibid., p. 486.

  259. Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine, pp. 314 & 319.

  260. Yang, Tombstone, p. 192.

  261. The true figure may have been even higher. Felix Wemheuer quotes a local Party historian with access to the provincial archives as saying that more than 2 million peasants were starved or beaten to death in Xinyang (CQ 201, 2010, p. 187).

  262. Yang, Tombstone, pp. 57–60.

  263. Comments on November 15 1960, in JYMZW, Vol. 9, pp. 349–50.

  264. Yang, Tombstone, p. 433.

  265. Wang Renzhong, speech to the Henan Standing Committee on December 6 1960, cited in ibid., p. 63.

  266. Ibid., pp. 60 and 64.

  267. Ibid., p. 406.

  268. Ibid., p. 430. In private, Yang has suggested that a figure of 38 million deaths may be realistic (interview, December 8 2005), the same total proposed by Jung Chang in Mao: The Unknown Story. Other estimates by Chinese researchers point to a death toll of between 35 and 37 million. Jasper Becker, in his book Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine (Free Press NY, 1996, pp. 271–2), cites an investigation ordered by Zhao Ziyang after he became Premier in 1980, which allegedly concluded that between 43 and 46 million died. Frank Dikötter (Famine, pp. 324–37) proposes ‘a minimum of 45 million’. However, his calculation supposes that the official figures his colleagues discovered in provincial archives were systematically underestimated, and while that may well be true, estimating by how much can only be guesswork. Both Becker and Dikötter raise the possibility that the actual death toll might even be as high as 60 million. But here we are in the realm of hearsay and speculation. Not only is there no archival evidence to support a figure of that magnitude, but demographic calculations appear to confirm a total closer to 30 million (see Judith Banister, China's Changing Population, Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 118–20).

  CHAPTER 14 MUSINGS ON IMMORTALITY

  1. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 443 and 678, n. 4.

  2. Ibid., pp. 455–7; MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 60–1.

  3. Cong Jin, Quzhe fazhande suiye (1949–1989 niande Zhongguo, vol. 2), Henan renmin chubanshe, Zhengzhou, 1989, p. 382.

  4. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 23–9 and 32–6.

  5. Ibid., pp. 43–4.

  6. Ibid., pp. 45–8.

  7. JYMZW, 9, pp. 467–70.

  8. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 49–55 and 66.

  9. Bao and Chelminski, Prisoner of Mao, p. 269.

  10. Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, Renmin chubanshe, 1985, p. 337; Mao Zedong wenji, 8, p. 273.

  11. Zhou Xun, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962, pp. 163–4.

  12. MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 69–71; Dong Bian, Mao Zedong he tade mishu Tian Jiaying, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1996, pp. 59–60 and 68–9; JYMZW, 9, pp. 565–73 and 580–3.

  13. Zhou Enlai, SW2, p. 345.

  14. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 62–3; Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1985, p. 337.

  15. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 209–26.

  16. Ibid., p. 65.

  17. Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, p. 355. Pantsov and Levine, p. 481.

  18. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 156–8; Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, pp. 1026–7.

  19. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 167 and 186.

  20. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 172–8.

  21. Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 386–7.

  22. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 163–4.

  23. Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 167; see also Li Zhisui, p. 386.

  24. Dong Bian, p. 62.

  25. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 63–5 and 74–5.

  26. Dong Bian, pp. 63–8; MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 226–33 and 263–8.

  27. Yang Jisheng (Tombstone, p. 231) gives an example of earlier use of Deng's pro
verb; in English, ‘yellow’ is often rendered as ‘white?.

  28. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, p. 1078. Tian Jiaying estimated it at 30 per cent, a figure which Mao also cited [MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 226–7 and 275].

  29. Dong Bian, pp. 65–6.

  30. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 281–3.

  31. Ibid., p. 267.

  32. Ibid., p. 276.

  33. This and the following section are drawn from ibid., pp. 269–81; and Yang, Tombstone, pp. 509–11. Mao attacked Wang Jiaxiang's initiative as ‘three appeasements and one reduction’ (appeasing India, the Soviet Union and the United States, and reducing support for liberation movements), and the proposals for economic adjustment as ‘three freedoms and one contract’ (more freedom for peasants to choose what crops to grow, more free markets and more self-management for enterprises, and the contracting out of land for household farming). Together they amounted to a ‘programme for capitalist restoration’. At Beidaihe Deng Zihou, who had clashed with Mao over collectivization in 1955, was removed as the Party's agricultural supremo, and the theme of the conference shifted to criticism of what were called the ‘Wind of gloom’ and the ‘Individual farming wind’.

  34. Schram, pp. 189–90.

  35. Ibid., p. 194. See also Yang, pp. 508 and 509–11. Peng's case was still very much in Mao's mind at Beidaihe. In June, six weeks before the work conference opened, the disgraced marshal had written an 80,000 character memorial to Mao, asking for his case to be reopened. That prompted a movement against what was termed the ‘Verdict-reversing wind’. Although the campaign against right-opportunism had ‘for the most part targeted the wrong people’, Mao acknowledged, it was necessary to maintain the movement against Peng and his allies on the grounds that they had conspired with foreigners and attempted to usurp power. At the plenum afterwards, an investigation group was formed to seek out incriminating materials on Peng, Zhang Wentian and Huang Kecheng.

  36. Ibid., pp. 192–3.

  37. Cong Jin, p. 519.

  38. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 298–323 and 349–62.

  39. Garver, ‘Mao's Soviet Policies’, p. 200.

  40. Quoted in Sheridan, Mary, ‘The Emulation of Heroes’, CQ 33, 1969, pp. 52–3.

  41. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 334–48 and 399–415; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 493–600. See also Baum, Richard, and Teiwes, Frederick C., Ssu-Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968.

  42. Baum and Teiwes, p. 70.

  43. Siu, Helen F., Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989, pp. 201–2.

  44. Current Background, no. 891, US Consulate General, Hong Kong, pp. 71 and 75.

  45. Sunday Times, Oct. 15 1961.

  46. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 262–3.

  47. At an enlarged Standing Committee meeting on February 21 1962 (known afterwards as the Xilou conference), Liu said the 7,000-cadre conference ‘didn't disclose the difficulties thoroughly enough… We don't need routine measures but rather emergency measures to readjust the economy.’ On March 14, after further discussions by the Politburo, Mao accepted the readjustment programme and appointed Chen Yun to be in charge of financial work, while warning against painting the situation uniformly black. When a Central Committee work conference in May proposed additional measures, Mao dug in his heels and called a halt (Yang, Tombstone, pp. 505–6).

  48. Wang Guangmei and Liu Yuan, Nisuo bu zhidao de Liu Shaoqi, Henan renmin chubanshe, 2000, p. 90.

  49. In fact the idea did resurface 10 years later: in August 1973, on the eve of the 10th Party Congress, Mao himself proposed the creation of a Central Advisory Commission with himself as Chairman. But the rest of the Politburo demurred and he did not insist (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 100).

  50. Chinese Literature, no. 5, 1966.

  51. MacFarquhar, 3, ch. 17.

  52. From Jiang Qing's evidence at her trial, November 1980–January 1981.

  53. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 289–96; Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon.

  54. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 320; 3, pp. 435–7.

  55. There was one further straw in the wind, had any of Mao's colleagues cared to notice. From the early 1960s, Chinese military aid to North Vietnam was sharply increased and support for the Vietnamese struggle against the US-backed South became more prominent in the Chinese media. During both the Korean War and the Taiwan Straits crisis in 1958, Mao had used external conflict to promote the radicalization of policy at home. As would later become clear, the Vietnam War served the same purpose during the build-up to the Cultural Revolution (see Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2000).

  56. Huang Zheng, Liu Shaoqi yi sheng, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, p. 374.

  57. Evans, Deng Xiaoping, p. x.

  58. There can, of course, be no certainty as to Mao's innermost thoughts in the spring and early summer of 1964. What follows is an attempt to point to some of the factors that may have influenced him in reaching the conclusions set out in the CCP's letter to the Russians in July.

  59. Quoted in Wang Ruoshui, Mao Zedong wei shenme yao fadong wenge, privately circulated, Beijing, October 1996, pp. 12–14.

  60. Yang, Tombstone, p. 510.

  61. Ibid., p. 515.

  62. Wang Ruoshui, p. 10.

  63. The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965, pp. 477–8.

  64. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, Secret Speeches, pp. 270–1 (March 10 1957).

  65. Cong Jin, p. 602.

  66. JYMZW, 11, pp. 265–9.

  67. Miscellany, 2, pp. 408–26.

  68. Ibid., pp. 429–32; MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 419–28.

  69. Mao told Edgar Snow in 1970 that it was during the discussions on the ‘Four Clean-Ups’ in January 1965 that he decided Liu would have to be purged (Snow, Long Revolution, p. 17). Wang Guangmei wrote that he was enraged when Liu started treating him as an equal, and quoted him as telling the younger man: ‘All I have to do is lift a finger and you are finished’ (Nisuo bu zhidao de Liu Shaoqi, p. 118). Frank Dikötter ignores these accounts and speculates – without any basis, in my view – that ‘the defining moment’ when Mao decided to get rid of Liu was in July 1962, when they argued over Liu's attempts to get the economy back on track after the Great Leap (Famine, p. 377).

  CHAPTER 15 CATACLYSM

  1. MacFarquhar, Origins of the Cultural Revolution, 3, p. 440.

  2. Ibid., 2, pp. 207–12 and 3, pp. 252–3.

  3. Barnouin, Barbara, and Yu Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Kegan Paul, London, 1993, p. 52.

  4. See Mazur, Mary G., Wu Han, Historian: Son of China's Times, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2009. On the parallels and differences between Mao and Zhu Yuanzhang, see Stuart Schram's review of Autocracy and China's Rebel Founding Emperors: Comparing Chairman Mao and Ming Taizu, by Anita M. Andrew and John A. Rapp (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2000) in CQ 167, 2001, pp. 768–70.

  5. MacFarquhar, 3, p. 645, n. 67.

  6. Ibid., p. 441; Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1996, p. 27.

  7. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, p. 17.

  8. Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, 2, p. 383 (April 28 1966). See also Cong Jin, Quzhe fazhande suiye, p. 611; and Milton, David and Nancy, and Schurmann, Franz (eds), People's China, Random House, New York, 1974, p. 262.

  9. Shuai Dongbing, ‘Peng Zhen zai baofengyu qianye’, in Mingren zhuanyi, nos. 11–12, 1988, p. 11. See also Zheng Derong (ed.), Xin Zhongguo lishi (1949–1984), Changchun, 1986, p. 381.

  10. Liao Gailong (ed.), Xin Zhongguo biannianshi (1949–1989), Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 267; Ma Qibin (ed.), Zhongguo gongchandang zhizheng sishinian, Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 264. See also Mac
Farquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 19–20 & 36–7.

  11. Cong Jin, pp. 631–4; Ma Qibin, p. 265; Teiwes, Frederick C., and Sun, Warren, The Tragedy of Lin Biao, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1996, pp. 24–32; Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 435–6.

  12. Ye Yonglie, Chen Boda qiren, Shidai wenyi chubanshe, Changchun, 1990, pp. 222–3.

  13. Cong Jin, p. 613; Hao Mengbi and Duan Haoran (eds), Zhongguo gongchandang liushi nian, Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1984, p. 561. See also Ye Yonglie, pp. 228–30.

  14. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 451 and 453.

  15. Ibid., p. 388. The other members were Kang Sheng and Lu Dingyi, both then alternate members of the Politburo; the editor of the People's Daily, Wu Lengxi; and the literary commissar, Zhou Yang.

  16. Kuo, Warren (ed.), Classified Chinese Communist Documents, National Chengchi University, Taibei, 1978, pp. 225–9.

  17. Cong Jin, p. 616; Wu Lengxi, Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinshen jinglide ruogan zhongda lishi shijian pianduan, Xinhua chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, pp. 150–1.

  18. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 26–7; Cong Jin, pp. 633–4.

  19. Li Ping, Kaiguo zongli Zhou Enlai, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1994, p. 436; MacFarquhar, 3, p. 56.

  20. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 30–31; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 320–1; Peking Review, June 2 1967.

  21. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 32. He had raised some of these issues at a Standing Committee meeting in Hangzhou ten days earlier. See also Cong Jin, p. 625; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 320–1.

  22. Cong Jin, pp. 623–5.

  23. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 34–5; Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, Henan renmin chubanshe, Zhengzhou, 1988, pp. 18–19.

  24. Wang Nianyi, pp. 9–11.

  25. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 459–60.

  26. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 646–61.

  27. This point is discussed in MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 48–51.

  28. Ibid., pp. 230–6; Renmin ribao, May 17 1966.

  29. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 230; Yan and Gao, p. 38; Schoenhals, Michael, The CCP Central Case Examination Group (1966–1979), Centre for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, 1995.