Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang

  One particular extravagance was swimming pools, as Mao loved swimming. Pools were rare in those years, in what was a very poor country. (In Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, when a pool was built for Mao, the attendants did not know how much chlorine to put in the water. As a result, the few who had the privilege of swimming in the pool had red eyes. Mao suspected poison.) The first pool built for him was in Jade Spring Hills, right in the middle of the Three-Antis campaign. By Mao’s own account, the pool cost 50,000 yuan, which was five times the amount that would condemn an embezzler to the execution ground as a “Big Tiger.” In Zhongnanhai, his official residence in Peking, well hidden behind a large sign saying “Serve the People,” an indoor pool was built for him shortly after the campaign, even though there was already an exclusive outdoor pool, which until Mao came to power had been open to the public.

  Keeping these pools warm for months on end, in case Mao should fancy a dip, cost a fortune. The water was heated by hot steam running through a pipe, and burned up large amounts of scarce fuel.

  MAO DID NOT stint on any side of life that he enjoyed. He was a gourmet, and had his favorite foods shipped in from all over the country. (Mao and the top leaders rarely went out to restaurants, whose numbers dwindled under the Communists.) A special fish from Wuhan that he liked had to be couriered alive 1,000 km in a plastic bag filled with water and kept oxygenated. With his rice, Mao demanded that the membrane between the husk and the kernel be kept for its taste, which meant the husking had to be done manually and with great care. Once, he complained he could not taste the membrane, and told his housekeeper he had developed beriberi as a result. The housekeeper raced to the special farm at Jade Spring Hills and had some rice carefully husked the way Mao wanted.

  This farm was specially set up to grow rice for Mao, as the water there was supposed to be the very best. In the olden days the spring had supplied drinking water for the imperial courts. Now it fed Mao’s rice paddies. The vegetables Mao liked, as well as poultry and milk, were produced in another special farm called Jushan. The tea Mao chose was the one renowned as the best in China, Dragon Well, and the very best leaves were picked for him, at the ideal time. All Mao’s food was put through a meticulous medical check, and the cooking was supervised by his housekeeper, who doubled as taster. Stir-fried dishes had to be served immediately, but as the kitchen was located at a distance, so that no smells would waft Mao’s way, servants would race all the way to his table with each dish.

  Mao did not like getting into baths, or showers, and did not have a bath for a quarter of a century. Instead, his servants rubbed him every day with a hot towel. He enjoyed daily massages. He never went to a hospital. The hospital facilities, along with the top specialists, came to him. If he was not in the mood to see them, they would be kept hanging around, sometimes for weeks.

  Mao never fancied smart clothes. What he loved was comfort. He wore the same shoes for years, because, as he said, old shoes were more comfortable; and he got bodyguards to wear in new shoes for him. His bathrobe, face towel and quilts were heavily patched — but no ordinary patching: they were taken specially to Shanghai and mended by the best craftsmen, costing immeasurably more than new ones. Far from being indications of asceticism, these were the quirks of the hedonistic super-powerful.

  It was perhaps not unreasonable for a leader to enjoy villas and other luxuries, but Mao was gratifying himself while he was executing others for taking a fraction of what he was burning up. And doing so while preaching and imposing abstinence and having himself portrayed as “Serving the People.” Mao’s double standards had a comprehensive cynicism that put him in a league of his own.

  In no area of life did these double standards cause more misery than in the sphere of sexuality. Mao required his people to endure ultra-puritanical constraints. Married couples posted to different parts of China were given only twelve days a year to be together, so tens of millions were condemned to almost year-round sexual abstinence. Efforts to relieve sexual frustration privately could lead to public humiliation. One patriotic Chinese who had returned to “the Motherland” was made to put a sign up over his dormitory bed criticizing himself for masturbating.

  And all the while, Mao was indulging in every sexual caprice in well-guarded secrecy. On 9 July 1953 the army was ordered to select young women from their entertainment groups to form a special troupe in the Praetorian Guard. Everyone involved knew that its major function was to provide bed mates for Mao. Army chief Peng De-huai termed this “selecting imperial concubines”—a complaint that would cost him dear in time to come. But his objection had no effect on Mao, and more army entertainment groups were turned into procurement agencies. Apart from singers and dancers, nurses and maids were handpicked for Mao’s villas to provide a pool of women from which he could choose whoever he wanted to have sex with.

  A few of these women received subsidies from Mao, as did some of his staff and relatives. The sums involved were petty cash, but he made a point of authorizing each transaction personally. Mao was very aware of the value of money, and for years checked his household accounts with a peasant’s beady eye.

  Mao’s handouts came from a secret personal account, the Special Account. This was where he stashed the royalties from his writings, for on top of all his other privileges he cornered the book market by forcing the entire population to buy his own works, while preventing the vast majority of writers from being published. At its peak, this account held well over 2 million yuan, an astronomical sum. As a yardstick of what this was worth, Mao’s staff earned on average about 400 yuan a year. A peasant’s cash income, in a better year, could be a few yuan. Even privileged Chinese rarely had savings of more than a few hundred yuan.

  Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao’s China.

  Mao claimed that the total number executed was 700,000, but this did not include those beaten or tortured to death in the post-1949 land reform, which would at the very least be as many again. Then there were suicides, which, based on several local inquiries, were very probably about equal to the number of those killed.

  The number of people in detention in any one year under Mao has been calculated at roughly 10 million. It is reasonable to estimate that on average 10 percent of these were executed or died of other causes.

  †A Soviet diplomat who served ten years in both Nationalist and Red China, and witnessed Mao’s campaigns close up, later observed in a classified source that however cruel the Nationalists could be, it was never anything like as bad as under the Communists. He estimated that Mao killed more Chinese in these early campaigns alone than died in the civil war.

  PART FIVE. CHASING A SUPERPOWER DREAM

  32. RIVALRY WITH STALIN (1947–49 AGE 53–55)

  EVEN BEFORE he conquered China, Mao had set his sights on the wider world. He started to get active as soon as victory hove in sight in the civil war.

  Mao hoped to repeat the huge PR success he had had with Edgar Snow and Red Star Over China, a success which was unique for the Communist world. But Snow had meanwhile been banned by Moscow, and so Mao had to fall back on a second-rate American journalist called Anna Louise Strong, who had nothing like Snow’s influence globally, and was generally perceived as a lackey.

  In 1947, Mao sent Strong on a world tour to promote him. She was given documents that Mao told her to pass “to the world Communist parties.” He particularly wanted her to “show them to Party leaders in the United States and Eastern Europe,” adding pointedly that he “did not think it was necessary for her to take them to Moscow.”

  Strong duly churned out an article called “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung,” and a book called Dawn Out of China. They contained encomia like the claim that Mao’s “great work has been to change Marxism from a European to an Asiatic form … On every kind of problem … in ways of which neither Marx nor Lenin could dream”; that “all Asia will learn from [China] more than they will learn from the USSR”; and that Mao’s works “highly likely influenced the later fo
rms of government in parts of postwar Europe.” These claims trod hard on Stalin’s toes. Not surprisingly, publication of her book was stonewalled in Russia, and the US CP demanded that half the book be deleted. The full version came out in India and, more significantly, in several countries in Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia.

  To promote Mao internationally without Stalin’s endorsement, to suggest that Mao had improved on Stalin, and could offer more than Stalin, were red rags to the Kremlin. But Mao clearly understood that acquiring a sphere of influence needed elbow. And he now had real clout.

  There were also signs that Stalin was prepared to cede some turf. In September 1947 he set up a new organization called the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), which included only European parties. This left open the possibility of a separate Asian grouping. In November, within weeks of the Cominform being established, and while he was still wandering near Yenan, Mao had the name of his entourage changed to “Unit Asia.”

  STALIN REMAINED totally committed to backing Mao, but he now took steps to contain him, and to remind him who was master.

  On 30 November 1947, when Mao became confident that he would win the civil war soon, he proposed to Stalin that he should visit Russia. Stalin decided that the visit was the ideal vehicle to make Mao sweat. Stalin’s office cabled back a welcome on 16 December. Dr. Orlov, the recipient of the cable, was clearly under orders from Stalin to report in detail on Mao’s reactions. Next day he informed Stalin that Mao was “extremely pleased,” “rather animated” in fact, and “said immediately: ‘Very good, I can go there [in] 3 months …’ ”

  Three months passed, with no sign of an invitation from Stalin. Mao brought it up again on 22 April 1948, the day after the CCP retook Yenan; he told Orlov he planned to depart on 4–5 May. This time Stalin said “Yes.” Mao asked to take both Russian doctors with him, on health grounds — but really to prevent any of his colleagues communicating with the Russians during his absence. Stalin agreed. Mao also wanted to visit Eastern Europe, a proposal Stalin pointedly did not endorse.

  On 10 May, days after Mao’s self-appointed departure date, Stalin suddenly postponed the visit. And as spring slid into summer, there was no sign of him reviving his invitation. Mao was anxious to get going. He was with his colleagues at Party HQ at Xibaipo at the time, and they all knew he was going to Moscow to see Stalin. The impression was that he was leaving any minute. One sign was that nothing was done to the frogs that were disturbing Mao’s sleep. Ordinarily, any noisy animals like chickens and dogs were brought “under control” wherever Mao stayed. His bodyguards proposed using dynamite to silence the frogs, which were croaking away happily in a reedy pond. The plan was not carried out, because it was assumed that Mao’s stay at Xibaipo was going to be short. Mao felt the need to head off any negative impact of the delay, and arranged for his bête noire, Wang Ming, to suffer another medical “accident.” On 25 June Wang Ming was given the urinal cleaner Lysol as an enema, which wrecked his intestines.

  On 4 July, Mao cabled Stalin: “I have decided to visit you in the near future.” He set his departure date for ten days ahead: “we shall leave anyway about the 15th of this month,” and told Stalin “it is necessary to send two transport (passenger) airplanes.”

  On the 14th, the eve of the date he had told Stalin he would be leaving, instead of a plane, what came from Stalin was a cable to Dr. Orlov, putting off the visit until the winter:

  Tell Mao Tse-tung the following: In view of the start of the grain harvest, top Party officials are leaving for the provinces in August, and will remain there until November. Therefore, the Central Committee requests Comrade Mao Tse-tung to delay his visit to Moscow until the end of November in order to have the opportunity to meet with all the top Party comrades.

  This pretext was openly derisive. Orlov reported back that Mao “listened with a slight smile,” saying “fine, fine.” But he asked Orlov: “ ‘Can it be … that in the USSR they attach such great importance to the grain harvest that leading members of the Party … go off for it?’ ” “I have known Mao Tse-tung for more than six years,” Orlov reported, “and if I understand him right, his smile and the words hao, hao (fine, fine) … in no way indicate he was pleased …” “Melnikov [the other Russian doctor] told me that on July 15 Mao Tse-tung asked him a similar question about the harvest.” “He [Mao] was confident he would be leaving just now.” “Evidently, the visit has become necessary to him …” “[His] suitcases had already been packed, plus leather shoes had been bought … and a woolen coat made …”

  It was clear to Mao that Stalin was annoyed with him, and was yo-yoing him over his trip. He scrambled to make amends, starting with his own personality cult. On 15 August, Mao vetoed the new North China University’s program “mainly to study Mao Tse-tung-ism,” saying: “There is no benefit, only harm.” He also changed the term “Mao Tse-tung Thought” to “Marxism-Leninism” in documents. Promoting his own formulations to a “Thought” had not gone down well with Stalin: Soviet media never mentioned Mao’s “Thought,” and red-penciled the expression when they published CCP documents containing it.

  Finally, with autumn setting in, Mao sent an unusually ingratiating telegram on 28 September, in which he addressed Stalin by the sobriquet “the Master,” and begged: “it is essential to report personally to … the Master … I hope sincerely that they [the Soviet Party and Stalin] would give instructions to us.”

  Stalin had shown who was boss. Mao had groveled. Having made his point, Stalin replied on 17 October, aloof yet reassuring, confirming Mao’s trip for “the end of November.” Mao was now confident enough to respond by requesting a brief postponement. The first round of Stalin’s punishment of Mao for harboring ambitions beyond China was over.

  MAO HAD BLINKED first. But he also stood firm vis-à-vis Stalin when his fundamental interests were involved. In the last stage of the civil war, before Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, Nanjing sued for a ceasefire and peace on 9 January 1949. Stalin told Mao to respond and say the CCP “supports negotiations.” Mao was furious (“spoke more sharply,” Orlov reported to Stalin). Stalin most uncharacteristically sent another telegram the next day, attempting to reposition himself, and claiming that his proposal had been purely tactical, to make it seem that it was the Nationalists who were responsible for continuing the war: “our draft of your response … is designed to undermine the peace negotiations.”

  Mao’s attitude was that the Nationalists should not be allowed a day’s peace, even for appearances’ sake. He told Stalin he wanted “the unconditional surrender of the Nanjing government … we no longer need to undertake any more political detours.” For the first time ever, Mao told Stalin what to say, telling the Master: “We think you should give the following answer …” to the Nationalists, who had requested Russian mediation. Mao had gained a definite edge over Stalin, which was noticed in the Kremlin: one of Stalin’s top China advisers confirmed to us that Stalin’s staff felt the Master had been “told off” by Mao in no uncertain terms.

  Stalin fired back next day, 14 January, with a lengthy lecture, telling Mao that turning down talks was bad PR, and raising the specter of foreign intervention. Mao did not believe that this was likely, but he found a way to stick to his guns while also satisfying Stalin, by publishing a list of conditions for peace talks that were tantamount to demanding unconditional surrender. He then artfully quoted back to Stalin the latter’s own expressed position: “With regard to the basic line (to undermine the peace talks with the Nationalists, to continue the revolutionary war up to the end), we are absolutely unanimous with you.” Stalin folded the following day: “we have reached complete agreement … Hence, the issue is now closed.”

  Stalin seems to have been impressed. It was just after this that he commented to Yugoslav and Bulgarian leaders that Mao was insubordinate, but successful. Mao had fought his corner fiercely — and effectively. So when on 14 January Stalin “insisted” that Mao postpone his trip to Moscowyet again, it seems t
hat he genuinely meant it when he said “because your presence in China is essential.” Instead, Stalin offered to send an “authoritative” member of the Politburo to see Mao “immediately.”

  Mao’s first reaction to this further postponement was irritation. His secretary remembered him throwing the telegram on the table, saying: “So be it!” But on second thoughts, he saw that Stalin was actually conveying an accolade. Stalin had never sent a member of his Politburo into a war zone to visit a Communist party involved in a civil war — and, moreover, a civil war against a government with which Moscow had diplomatic relations. On 17 January Mao responded “very much welcoming” a visit by Stalin’s envoy.

  The envoy was Stalin’s old confidant, Anastas Mikoyan. He arrived at Mao’s HQ at Xibaipo on 30 January, bringing two specialists in neutralizing delayed-action bombs and bugging equipment. Mao “was extremely pleased,” Mikoyan reported, “and thanked comrade Stalin for his good care.” With Mikoyan came former railways minister Ivan Kovalev, who had been fixing the railroads in Manchuria, and who was now to be Stalin’s personal liaison with Mao.

  Mao showed his self-confidence straightaway. The day after Mikoyan arrived, the Nationalist government moved from Nanjing to Canton. The only ambassador to accompany the Nationalists was the Soviet ambassador, Roshchin. On 1 and 2 February, Mao absented himself from meeting Mikoyan in a show of pique, and Chou En-lai was deputized to ask for an explanation. Describing it as “quite natural,” Mikoyan said it “would not at all cause detriment to our common cause, but on the contrary, would facilitate it.” Mao was not assuaged and Stalin knew it. Soon afterwards Stalin tried to explain to Mao’s No. 2, Liu Shao-chi, that the move had been made in order to gather intelligence. But Mao remained displeased, and took his displeasure out on Roshchin when Stalin sent him back to China as Russia’s first ambassador to Mao’s government. When Roshchin threw his first dinner for the Chinese Politburo, Mao sat through it without saying a word all evening, displaying what one Russian diplomat described as “a mocking-indifferent attitude.”