Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang

  Mao did not mind seeing Stalin denounced, but not over these issues, which were at the core of his own rule. He tried to hold the line with the crude formulation that Stalin was 70 percent correct and only 30 percent mistaken. The 30 percent was not to do with murder, torture and economic misrule, but mostly with how Stalin had treated Mao Tse-tung.

  But Mao could not come out openly against Khrushchev, who carried the authority of the Soviet Union, the head of the Communist camp — and was giving Mao so many arms factories, plus the Bomb. What was more, Khrushchev’s sudden and drastic denunciation of Stalin had taken Mao by surprise and made him sit up and take notice of Khrushchev. As Mao observed, Khrushchev’s move had destabilized the whole Communist camp and “shaken the entire world.” It struck awe into Mao, and made him feel he was dealing with somebody unusually bold, unpredictable and not to be trifled with. He commented several times in a pensive mood: “Khrushchev really has guts, he dares to touch Stalin.” “This indeed needs courage.”

  Mao felt he had to be careful. In this situation, he could not rebut his colleagues when they cited Khrushchev to oppose his policies. Frustrated and angry, he left Peking to ponder a solution in the provinces. The provincial bosses (known as first secretaries) were a special group selected for their blind devotion. They had to be 100 percent yes-men, as they were the on-the-spot enforcers who made sure that every corner of the vast country did what Mao said.

  Sudden unscheduled departures were routine for Mao, but this time he left Peking in an unprecedented manner. He got on the phone himself to his trusted follower, air force chief Liu Ya-lou, out of the blue, in the deep of one night at the end of April, and told him to have planes standing by. Mao had never taken a plane, except in 1945, to Chongqing, under pressure from Stalin. Now he could not wait to be among his cronies.

  Because this was Mao’s first flight with his own air fleet, inordinate measures were taken in the way of both comfort and security. A large wooden bed was installed in his plane, and the crew were only told who their passenger was at the last minute. To them, Mao appeared somewhat distracted; sitting in silence, he let his cigarette burn into a long column of ash before he suddenly seemed to wake up, and ordered the plane to take off. Mao landed first at Wuhan, where he was met by the local chief, an arch-devotee, who had installed a big statue of Mao in the airport waiting room — perhaps one of the first in China. Mao showed annoyance, as this was just after Khrushchev’s denunciation of the cult of personality, and told the devotee to get rid of it; but the man could not tell whether Mao really meant it or not, and the statue stayed.

  Mao then flew on to the southern provincial capital of Canton, to be met by another major acolyte, as well as by Mme Mao. His vast estate here, “the Islet,” sat on the Pearl River, so river traffic was stopped and that stretch of the waterway was sealed off. Mao’s entourage was banned from receiving visitors or letters, or making telephone calls, much less going out. The weather was steamy, and even five giant barrels of ice in Mao’s room made little difference. The grounds, blooming with tropical shrubs, swarmed with mosquitoes and midges. DDT was bought from Hong Kong to kill them, without total success. Mao lost his temper with the servants, whom he blamed for doing too little swatting.

  What was really getting to Mao was events in Peking, where his colleagues, particularly his Nos. 2 and 3, Liu and Chou, continued to defy his wishes, and even pressed harder to cut back on military — industrial projects. In thwarted fury, Mao decided to flash them a unique warning signal. At the end of May, he left Canton for Wuhan to swim in the Yangtze, the biggest river in China. He wanted to demonstrate his resolve to take on his opponents, and his stamina to see the battle through.

  At Wuhan, the Yangtze spreads wide, and many of his entourage tried to dissuade him from plunging in. But Mao felt safe. As one of his chief guards remarked, he “would not do anything … that was risky.” Later, Mao wanted to swim in the Yangtze Gorges, but he dropped the idea the minute he learned that the water was seriously treacherous. In Wuhan, scores of officials, from the province chief downward, joined security men to test the eddies and undertows. When Mao actually got into the water, dozens of specially trained guards formed a cordon around him, followed by three boats.

  Mao swam across the river on three occasions. There were high winds and big waves, but he was unperturbed, flaunting his strength. Before his first swim, he stood and posed for photographs at the prow of the boat, looking to his entourage “like an unshakeable mountain.” On the last day that he swam, in drizzle, several tens of thousands of people were organized to watch him from a distance, shouting “Long Live Chairman Mao!” This rare public appearance was Mao’s way to get his message out to his colleagues. He further showed his determination in a poem about the swims. Part of it read:

  I don’t care — whether the winds thrash me or the waves pound me,

  I meet them all, more leisurely than strolling in the garden-court.

  Back in Peking, Mao’s colleagues stuck to their guns. On 4 June the Politburo endorsed further spending cuts, and canceled more industrial projects. Mao returned to Peking that afternoon, but his presence made no difference.

  On the 12th, Liu sent Mao a draft of an editorial he (Liu) had commissioned for People’s Daily. Its target, as its title stated, was “the mindset of impatience.” It criticized people who “plan actions beyond their means, and try to force things that cannot be achieved” and “want to achieve everything in one morning,” and “so create waste.” “This mindset of impatience,” it said, “exists first and foremost among the leading cadres,” who were “forcing” the country into it. As Mao was later to say, these strictures were plainly aimed at him. In a fury, he jotted three characters on it: “I won’t read.” But the editorial came out nonetheless.

  Mao’s problem was that this was a time of great uncertainty for him — in some ways even more uncertain than under Stalin, who had fundamentally been committed to Mao because Mao was a Stalinist. But Khrushchev had rejected Stalinism, and there was no telling if this bulldozer might not turn on Stalinist leaders — maybe even on Mao himself. Indeed, Khrushchev had just brought down the Stalinist Hungarian Party chief, Rákosi, the only European Communist leader Stalin had trusted to talk to the Chinese leader during Mao’s visit to Russia. Furthermore, in August, emboldened by Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, a move had been made to try to vote North Korea’s seemingly well-entrenched dictator Kim Il Sung out of power at a Party plenum.

  Mao, too, was facing a Party conclave: the first congress of his own Party since taking power, which was set for September. He could not delay it, as it had been widely publicized, and the new climate since Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin was very much one of abiding by the rules. Mao’s concern was that if his colleagues felt cornered they might try something at the congress, like kicking him upstairs, or even voting him out, by exposing the full implications of the Superpower Program. Only a few weeks before, Khrushchev’s delegate to Mao’s congress, Anastas Mikoyan, had supervised the dethronement of Rákosi in Hungary.

  Mao took a series of steps to make sure that the congress posed no threat. First he fired warning shots across his colleagues’ bows. A few days before the congress, on 10 September, he reminisced to them about how much opposition he had faced in the past, and how he had always prevailed. Most unusually, he volunteered that he had made “mistakes” in the past, mentioning the purge in the early 1930s, and the two biggest disasters on the Long March, Tucheng and Maotai, which he called “the real mistakes.” This was not, as it might seem, an apology, but a way of driving home the message: Nothing can topple me; none of these mistakes, however disastrous, made the slightest difference. So don’t even try.

  But Mao’s main tactic was to appear conciliatory and willing to compromise. He allowed his own cult to be played down by letting the phrase “Mao Tse-tung Thought” be dropped from the Party Charter — although he made up for this with other forms of self-promotion, like having himself portr
ayed as the wise leader who had always rejected the cult. In the end he managed to turn the anti-personality cult tide to his advantage by having portraits of his colleagues taken down, and by getting rid of slogans like “Long live Commander-in-Chief Zhu De!” making himself the sole focus of worship.

  Mao gave the impression that he was making other important concessions, not least by letting colleagues speak about the rule of law. Liu Shao-chi promised to stop massive killings and violence, and to set up a legal system: “We must … convince everyone … that as long as he does not violate the law, his citizen’s rights are guaranteed and he will not be violated …” Another report criticized “campaigns,” which were the essence of Mao’s rule. Mao had the last laugh, though. He let a criminal code be drafted, but then made sure it was never approved in his lifetime.

  Mao’s most important concession was to relax the timetable for the Superpower Program. In the main report to the congress, he deleted his own pet slogan “More and Faster …,” and allowed the deadline of fifteen years to be replaced with “in a rather long time.” The report reprised Liu’s criticisms of over-hasty industrialization that “places too much burden on the people … and causes waste.” Mao endorsed lower levels of food requisitioning. The result was that in 1956 the average food allowance was 205 kg of grain (equivalent) — the highest amount there was ever to be under Mao. He accepted a further cut of 21 percent in investment in arms industries for 1957. As a result, 1957 was, like 1956, a relatively better year for ordinary people.

  For Mao, however, these concessions were intolerable; they slowed down his Program. Within a year he found ways to roll them back and reassert his old master plan.

  38. UNDERMINING KHRUSHCHEV (1956–59 AGE 62–65)

  WITHIN MONTHS of denouncing Stalin, Khrushchev had run into trouble. In June 1956, protests erupted in Poland at a factory suitably named “the Stalin Works” in the city of Poznan, and more than fifty workers were killed. Wladyslaw Gomulka, a former Party leader who had been imprisoned under Stalin, returned to power, espousing a more independent relationship with Moscow. On 19 October the Russians told Mao that anti-Soviet feelings were running high in Poland, and that they were thinking of using force to keep control.

  Mao saw this as an ideal opening to undermine Khrushchev by presenting himself as the champion of the Poles and the opponent of “Soviet military intervention.” As this might involve a clash with Khrushchev, Mao weighed the pros and cons long and carefully, lying in bed. He convened the Politburo on the afternoon of the 20th. None counseled caution. Then, clad in a toweling robe, he summoned Russian ambassador Yudin and told him: If the Soviet army uses force in Poland, we will condemn you publicly. He asked Yudin to phone Khrushchev straight away. By now, Mao had concluded that Khrushchev was something of a “blunderer,” who was “disaster-prone.” The awe he had felt for Khrushchev at the time when the Soviet leader denounced Stalin was rapidly fading, replaced by a confidence that he could turn Khrushchev’s vulnerability to his own advantage.

  Before Yudin’s message reached the Kremlin, Khrushchev had already made the decision not to use troops. On the 21st he invited the CCP and four other ruling parties to Moscow to discuss the crisis. Mao sent Liu Shao-chi, with instructions to criticize Russia for its “great-power chauvinism” and for envisaging “military intervention.” In Moscow, Liu proposed that the Soviet leadership make “self-criticisms.” Mao was aiming to cut Khrushchev down to size as leader of the Communist bloc, and make his own bid for the leadership, which had been his dream since Stalin’s death. Now an opportunity had come.

  At this juncture, another satellite, Hungary, exploded. The Hungarian Uprising was to be the biggest crisis to date for the Communist world — an attempt not just to gain more independence from Moscow (which was the aim in Poland), but to overthrow the Communist regime and break away completely from the bloc. On 29 October the Russians decided to withdraw their troops from Hungary, and informed Peking. Up till this point, Mao had been urging a pull-back of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, but he now realized that the regime in Hungary would collapse if the Russians left. So the next day he strongly recommended that the Soviet army stay on in Hungary and crush the uprising. Keeping Eastern Europe under communism took priority over weakening Khrushchev. Mao’s bid to become the head of the Communist camp would be worthless if the camp ceased to exist.

  On 1 November, Moscow reversed itself. Its army remained in Hungary, and put down the Uprising with much bloodshed. The realisation that Russian troops were essential to keep the European satellites under Communist rule was a blow to Mao’s designs to ease these countries out of Moscow’s clutches. But he did not give up. On 4 November, as Russian tanks were rolling into Budapest, he told his Politburo: The Hungarians have to find a new way to control their country — and we must help. What he meant was that Eastern European regimes should adopt his method of rule and do their own brutal repression: that way, they would not have to rely on Russian tanks. Back in 1954, Mao had dispensed his ideas on statecraft to the man who was to be Hungary’s prime minister when the Uprising started, András Hegedüs. Hegedüs told us that Mao had urged him to keep a total grip on the army, and all but told him that the Hungarian regime should make its power unchallengeable through killing. When Mao heard about the Yugoslav dictator Tito arresting his liberal opponent Milovan Djilas, he showed “such delight,” army chief Peng noticed, “that his face lit up.” Mao was to continue advocating his Stalinist ways to Eastern European countries, hoping they would emulate his model of repression and embrace his leadership.

  IN JANUARY 1957, Mao sent Chou En-lai to Poland to try to pull Gomulka into his fold. “The key to all questions,” Chou told Gomulka, was “to attack right-wing forces and hidden counter-revolutionaries … targeting one particular group at a time.” This advice held no appeal for Gomulka, who had spent years in Stalin’s prisons. Chou’s résumé to Mao afterwards revealed both Peking’s patronizing designs and its failure: “Polish leadership is correct … but still has not grasped the key question.” Later that year, in Moscow, Mao tried again by repeatedly offering Gomulka advice on how to hang on to power, referring to Gomulka’s government as “your court” (our italics). Mao did not get very far. Gomulka did not aspire to be a tyrant.

  Mao hoped to prod the Poles into proposing him as head of the Communist camp. His convoluted way of doing this was to keep telling Gomulka that the Communist camp had to be “headed by the Soviet Union.” By saying that the camp must have a head, Mao was trying to broach the issue of who that head should be, hoping the Poles would look his way. Gomulka simply frowned each time Chou used the formula.

  What the Poles wanted was more freedom, not more Stalinism, or more poverty. A vivid illustration of the yawning gap between Mao’s vision and Polish reality came when a group of Polish visitors told Mao that their fellow countrymen were unhappy with their low living standards, and that their Party felt it had to do something to meet its people’s wishes. Mao replied: “I do not believe the standard of living in Poland is too low. On the contrary, I feel that it is relatively very high: the Poles are eating more than two or three thousand calories every day, while [about 1,500] could be sufficient. If the people feel that there are too few consumer goods available, the [regime] should increase their propaganda efforts.” After Mao’s “monologue,” a Polish diplomat wrote, the Poles “realized that Chinese assistance could not be substantial or long-lasting because their program was even more ‘anti-people’ than the Soviet one.”

  When Chou En-lai saw that it was unlikely he could line up the Poles to propose Mao as the head of the Communist camp, Mao turned at once to the other most anti-Moscow Communist country, Yugoslavia. An envoy already there in January 1957 was instantly instructed to request an ultra-private meeting with Tito, at which he asked the Yugoslav president to co-sponsor a world Communist summit with Peking, using the argument that the Soviet Party was in such disrepute that no one would listen to it. At that very moment, Mao was tra
shing Tito to his inner circle as an enemy — just as he trashed Gomulka. Mao’s cultivation of these two Communist countries was completely opportunistic, based solely on the fact that they were the most anti-Soviet. After listening to Mao’s pitch, Tito not only declined to co-sponsor such a conference, but would not even commit to attend it.

  At the same time, Mao was trying again to weaken the Kremlin by getting the Russians to humiliate themselves. In Moscow in January 1957 Chou demanded that the Soviet leaders make groveling “open self-criticisms” and re-evaluate Stalin along Mao’s lines. The Russians bristled, and rebuffed him on both scores. Mao’s reaction was a rant to Chou, as he told his provincial chiefs: “I told Comrade En-lai on the phone that these people have been turned into cretins by their material gains, and the best way to deal with them is to give them a good round of stinking curses. What do they actually have? No more than 50 million tons of steel, 400 million tons of coal, and 80 million tons of oil … Big deal!” Mao was blaming his failure to supplant Khrushchev on China’s lack of economic muscle.

  MAO HAD OTHER sources of frustration. One was the Middle East, where a major crisis erupted at the same time as Hungary, over the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized in July 1956. On 29 October Israel attacked Egypt, as the spearhead of a secretly coordinated Israeli-Anglo-French invasion.

  Mao was itching to act as Egypt’s protector and teacher. He staged mammoth demonstrations against the British and the French, involving nearly 100 million people. To a visitor from Franco’s Spain attending one in Peking, it was: “Worse than fascist meeting. There are leaders in all stands who start to cheer and everybody shout when they shout. These are not true demonstrators … very boring.” Mao dispensed advice to Egypt’s ambassador, General Hassan Ragab, on everything from how to handle the exiled King Farouk to how Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser could avoid assassination, urging the ambassador to “study the experience of China,” which was “very much worth studying.” Voicing barely veiled rivalry with Russia, Mao pressed aid on Ragab: “The Soviet Union will be doing all it can to help Egypt. China also would like to do our best to help Egypt, and our help does not have any strings attached. Whatever you need, just name it … Our aid to you does not have to be paid back … if you insist on paying back … then pay back in a hundred years.” China gave Nasser 20 million Swiss francs in cash, and rigged the bilateral trade balance heavily in Egypt’s favor.