Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang

  When Mao met foreigners, he flaunted his cynical and dictatorial views. “Napoleon’s methods were the best,” he told France’s president Georges Pompidou: “He dissolved all the assemblies and simply appointed those who were to govern with him.” When former British prime minister Edward Heath expressed surprise that Stalin’s portrait was still hanging in Tiananmen Square and brought up the fact that Stalin had slaughtered millions of people, Mao gave a dismissive flip of the hand to signal how little he cared, and answered: “But he is there because he was a Marxist.” Mao even managed to infect Western leaders with his own jargon. After Australian premier Gough Whitlam showed some uncertainty about the right answer to a question about Darwin, he wrote Mao what he calls in his memoirs “a self-criticism.” As recently as 1997, when much more was known about Mao, Kissinger described him as a “philosopher,” and claimed that Mao’s goal was a “quest for egalitarian virtue.”

  Mao liked giving audiences to star-struck visitors, and continued to do so until his dying days, when oxygen tubing lay on his side table, concealed by a book or a newspaper. For him these audiences represented global glory.

  NIXON’S VISIT ALSO opened up for Mao the possibility of laying his hands on advanced Western military technology and equipment. “The only objective of these relations,” he told the North Korean dictator Kim, “is to obtain developed technology.” Mao knew that he could only achieve his goal if America considered him an ally. To offer a plausible explanation for this shift from his long-standing anti-American posture, Mao claimed that he lived in fear of a Russian attack and desperately needed protection. Having laid the groundwork from the time of Kissinger’s first visit, Mao spoke explicitly about a military alliance in February 1973. “The Soviet Union dominated our conversations,” Kissinger reported to Nixon; as he put it in his memoirs, he was given to understand that “China’s conflict with the Soviet Union was both ineradicable and beyond its capacity to manage by itself.” Mao then told Kissinger: “we should draw a horizontal line [sc., alliance] — the US, Japan, China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Europe.” All the places Mao cited except China were American allies.

  To make the idea more attractive, Mao and Chou said that China would like the alliance to be led by America. Kissinger recorded that Chou “called on us to take the lead in organising an anti-Soviet coalition.”

  Mao was not that frightened of a Soviet strike. Although he genuinely feared it, as he had shown in the 1969 scare, it had become obvious to him since then that the chances of such an event were extremely remote. The way he angled for American military secrets followed a pattern similar to his past approach with Moscow. Twice, in 1954 and 1958, he had exploited the fear of America using atom bombs in his staged confrontations with Taiwan to get Khrushchev to help him; in the first instance, to build his own Bomb, and in the second, to extract a deal that almost gave him an across-the-board modern arsenal. Now he was using the specter of war again to conjure a similar prize out of America.

  At one point in February 1973, Mao revealed a glimpse of what he really thought about the “Soviet threat.” When Kissinger promised that the US would come to China’s rescue “if the Soviet Union overruns China,” Mao, who had earlier evoked this scenario himself, replied, laughing: “How will that happen? How could that be?… do you think they would feel good if they were bogged down in China?” Seeing that Kissinger was a little nonplussed, Mao quickly checked this line of reasoning, and reverted to crying wolf.

  To persuade the US to think that he really wanted them as an ally, Mao hinted that he and Washington shared a mutual enemy: Hanoi. Kissinger came away feeling that “in Indochina, American and Chinese interests were nearly parallel. A united Communist Vietnam dominant in Indochina was a strategic nightmare for China …” Mao’s position not only double-crossed the Vietnamese, it was also a huge betrayal of the Chinese people, who had been starved of essentials for decades so as to aid the Vietnamese — against “US imperialism.”

  Mao added a personal touch to soften up Kissinger, by alluding to Kissinger’s success with women. “There were some rumours that said that you were about to collapse. (laughter),” the meeting record runs. “And women folk seated here were all dissatisfied with that. (laughter, especially pronounced among the women) They said if the Doctor [Kissinger] is going to collapse, we would be out of work.” “Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. (laughter, particularly among the women).”

  A few weeks later, on 16 March, Nixon wrote Mao a secret letter, stating that the territorial integrity of China was a “fundamental element” of US foreign policy, in language which suggested a commitment to come to China’s defense militarily if it was attacked. The Chinese wanted to know exactly what this meant.

  Kissinger told the Chinese on 6 July that he had set up “a very secret group of four or five of the best officers I can find” to study what the US could do. Among scenarios considered was airlifting American nuclear artillery shells and battlefield nuclear missiles to Chinese forces in the event of war. The only practical option, the group recommended, was to ferry American tactical bombers into China loaded with nuclear weapons, and launch nuclear attacks on Soviet forces from Chinese airfields. This opened up the prospect of US nuclear weapons being stationed on Chinese soil.

  To his close circle on 19 July, Kissinger spelled out how the White House was thinking: “All this talk about 25 years of mutual estrangement was crap. What the Chinese wanted was support in a military contingency.” The memo reveals that Kissinger was well aware that he and Nixon were contemplating doing something almost unimaginable: “We might not be able to pull it off, but at least [Kissinger] and the President understood this. Alex Eckstein and other chowder-headed liberals loved China but if you asked them about military actions in a contingency they’d have 600 heart attacks.”

  Nixon and Kissinger knew that Mao had his eye on military know-how, and they agreed to fix substantial acquisitions for him. On 6 July, Kissinger told Mao’s envoy:

  I have talked to the French Foreign Minister about our interest in strengthening the PRC [Communist China]. We will do what we can to encourage our allies to speed up requests they receive from you on items for Chinese defense.

  In particular, you have asked for some Rolls-Royce [engine] technology. Under existing regulations we have to oppose this, but we have worked out a procedure with the British where they will go ahead anyway. We will take a formal position in opposition, but only that. Don’t be confused by what we do publicly …

  This decision was vital for China’s aircraft industry, which was entirely military-oriented — and decrepit. In April 1972 Chou had warned the Albanians not to try to fly their Chinese-made MiG-19s. Six months later, a plane supplied to another country exploded in mid-air, after which all shipments of arms overseas were halted. Chou told Third World heads of state that he could not satisfy their pressing requests for Chinese helicopters, as they were unsafe.

  Access to Western technology revolutionized China’s aircraft industry, and may also have boosted its flagging missile program, as rocket chiefs were deeply involved in the Rolls-Royce negotiations. In addition, Kissinger secretly encouraged Britain and France to sell strictly prohibited nuclear reactor technology to China. Mao had made a lot of headway towards getting what had always been his core objective.

  The Russians were alarmed by Mao’s overtures towards the Americans. In June 1973 Brezhnev warned Nixon and Kissinger that (as Kissinger paraphrased it to China’s liaison): “if military arrangements were made between the US and the PRC, this would have the most serious consequences and would lead the Soviets to take drastic measures.” This conversation with Brezhnev, which concerned US national security, was promptly related to Mao’s envoy, who was present at the Western White House during Nixon’s talks with Brezhnev, but not to America’s allies — or to the US government itself. “We have told no one in our government of this conversation,” Kissinger confided to Mao’s envoy. “It must be kept totally s
ecret.”

  One ostensible purpose of Nixon’s journey to Peking had been to lessen the danger of war with Russia. Thanks to Mao, this danger had if anything increased.

  The records of Kissinger’s 1971 visits were held back until 2002. In his memoirs Kissinger claimed Taiwan was “mentioned only briefly.” When confronted with the record in 2002, he said: “The way I expressed it was very unfortunate and I regret it.”

  Mao made doubly sure of controlling the record by not allowing an American interpreter to be present. Nixon caved in to this diktat without demur.

  This was not because the stifling repression was not visible. The political commentator William Buckley noticed how people had been cleared away everywhere they went. “Where are the people?” he asked a Chinese official. “What people?” the official replied. To which Buckley retorted: “The People, as in the People’s Republic of China!”

  In the published minutes in English, which had been supplied by the Chinese, there is no mention of “China,” but the word is in the Chinese record.

  Kissinger had made a sounding about how much the Chinese really wanted an alliance by suggesting “Chinese military help” against India during the Bangladesh crisis in December 1971.

  55. THE BOSS DENIES CHOU CANCER TREATMENT (1972–74 AGE 78–80)

  IN MID-MAY 1972, shortly after Nixon’s visit, it was discovered that Chou En-lai had cancer of the bladder. Under Mao, even a life-threatening illness was not just a medical matter. Mao controlled when and how his Politburo members could receive treatment. The doctors had to report first to Mao. They requested immediate surgery for Chou, stressing that the cancer was at an early stage, and that prompt action could cure it.

  On 31 May, Mao decreed: “First: keep it secret, and don’t tell the premier or [his wife]. Second: no examination. Third: no surgery …”

  Mao’s pretexts for vetoing treatment were that Chou was “old” (he was seventy-four), had “heart trouble,” and that surgery was “useless.” But Mao himself was seventy-eight, and had worse heart problems, yet surgeons and anesthetists were on stand-by for him.

  One reason Mao did not want Chou to go to a hospital and be treated was in order for Chou to be available to work around the clock to deal with foreign statesmen, who were queuing at the gate after Nixon’s visit. Ever since the early 1940s, Chou had been Mao’s essential diplomat. During the war against Japan he was stationed for years in Chiang Kai-shek’s capital Chongqing, and, with his combination of charm, skill and attention to detail, had won the Communists many sympathizers among foreigners. When civil war started after the Japanese surrender, he ran rings around President Truman’s envoy George Marshall, whose decisions contributed significantly to Mao’s conquest of China. After the founding of Red China, Chou was the executor of Mao’s foreign policy, and his greatest diplomatic asset. After his first three days of talks in 1971, Kissinger gushed about Chou’s “heroic stature” in his report to Nixon:

  my extensive discussions with Chou in particular, had all the flavor, texture, variety and delicacy of a Chinese banquet. Prepared from the long sweep of tradition and culture, meticulously cooked by hands of experience, and served in splendidly simple surroundings, our feast consisted of many courses, some sweet and some sour [etc., etc.] … and one went away, as after all good Chinese meals, very satisfied but not at all satiated.

  Yet, though a star, Chou deferred slavishly to Mao in front of foreigners. In Mao’s presence, Kissinger commented, Chou “seemed a secondary figure.” Japan’s premier Tanaka went even further. “Chou is a nobody before Mao,” he said on returning from China in September 1972, when diplomatic relations were established (and Mao grandly waived all claims to war compensation). Chou’s motto in dealing with Mao was: “Always act as if treading on thin ice.”

  But entertaining visiting statesmen was not the sole, or even the principal reason why Mao vetoed surgery for Chou. Mao wanted Chou around in the short term, but he did not want him cured, as he did not want Chou, four years his junior, to outlive him. This was miserable reward for decades of service, which had involved a care for his master’s health that reached far beyond the call of any duty. Chou had even tested some of Mao’s medicines on himself, and tried out Mao’s eye-drops—“to see whether this stings,” as he put it.

  ALTHOUGH DOCTORS WERE under orders not to tell Chou that he had cancer, he sensed it from the frequent urine tests they asked him to take, and the evasive way they behaved. He resorted to reading medical books himself. Mao knew that Chou was extremely anxious to have treatment, and seized the chance to exercise a bit of blackmail. Ever since Lin Biao had fled to his death the previous September, Mao had been wary about the amount of power Chou held in his hands, as Chou was running everything — Party, government and army. Mao decided to exploit Chou’s anxiety to get him to do something that would weaken him to the maximum. He demanded that Chou make a detailed self-denunciation about his past “errors” in front of 300 top officials.

  In addition, Mao ordered Chou to circulate to these 300 officials a highly self-incriminating document. Back in 1932, just after Chou had superseded Mao as Party boss of the Red state, Ruijin, a “recantation notice” had mysteriously appeared in the Shanghai press, bearing Chou’s then pseudonym, and averring that its author condemned the Communist Party and was renouncing it. Chou had taken fright at this smear, in particular fearing that it might have been planted by Mao, and had cozied up to Mao. From then on Mao knew that he had an effective blackmail weapon. When the Cultural Revolution started, more than three decades later, Mao dangled it over Chou’s head. Now, Mao dragged it out again.

  Chou spent many days and nights composing the humiliating speech, which was so long that it took him three evenings to deliver. He was so harsh on himself, and so pathetic, that some of his listeners cringed with pain and embarrassment. At the end, he announced: “I have always thought, and will always think that I cannot be at the helm, and can only be an assistant.” This was a desperate attempt to pledge that he had no ambition to supplant Mao, and was no threat.

  In this period, Chou lived an extraordinary double life, unique in the annals of modern politics. Hidden from outside eyes both in China and abroad, he was a blackmailed slave, living in dread of untreated cancer and of being purged; for the world at large, he was a virtuoso who dazzled visiting statesmen, many of whom regarded him as the most impressive political figure they had dealt with and the most attractive man they had ever met.

  Yet even after Chou did what was required of him, Mao still refused him treatment. At the beginning of 1973, Chou’s urine contained a lot of blood, a sign that the tumor had worsened critically. It was only now that he was officially informed he had cancer. But when doctors pleaded to be allowed to conduct a full examination and give him treatment, Mao told them off through his chamberlain on 7 February, using words to the effect that Chou was quite old enough to die; adding: “What the hell do you want an examination for?”

  Then, a week later, Chou performed a sterling service for Mao, which put the boss in a good mood. When Kissinger was in Peking that February and Mao pretended he wanted an alliance, Chou did an excellent job of making Mao’s pretense plausible. Mao finally agreed to let him have treatment, after Chou had humbly requested it. But Mao set conditions: he ordered it done “in two stages,” authorizing only an examination, and specifying that the surgeons must leave the removal of any tumor to a “second stage.” When it came to keeping Chou from being cured, Mao’s ingenuity and resourcefulness were infinite.

  The chief surgeon realized that “there won’t be a second stage,” and decided to risk Mao’s displeasure and remove the cancer during the examination, which took place on 10 March.

  Just beforehand, Mrs. Chou reminded the surgeons: “You do know that you must do it in two stages, don’t you?” The chief surgeon asked: “But if I see a little lump during the examination … should I leave it there …?” and she agreed he could remove it. When Chou regained consciousness and learne
d that the tumor had been removed, he adroitly performed a bit of Maoist theater and berated the doctors: “Weren’t you told to do it in two stages?” But he was visibly delighted, and invited the medical team to a Peking duck dinner.

  The doctors had been nervous about how Mao would react to what they had done, and were relieved to receive a telephone message saying: “It’s good that the doctors combined two stages into one.” Though the praise was hypocritical, it signaled that Mao had accepted their fait accompli. But it was not a full-scale operation.

  MAO’S BENIGN MOOD did not last long. On 22 June 1973, Brezhnev and Nixon signed an Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War. When Mao read a Foreign Ministry analysis which concluded that this showed that “the world is more than ever dominated by the two powers, the US and the USSR,” he flew into a monumental rage. Nixon’s visit to Peking had raised Mao’s hopes that (in Kissinger’s words) “The bipolarity of the postwar period was over.” But Mao saw that it was not, and that he had not tipped the scales of world power after all. And in the meantime his dalliance with America had cost him his international image. “My reputation has gone bad in the last couple of years,” Mao told acolytes. “The only Marx in the world, the only beacon, is now in Europe. Over there [he meant Albania, which had come down hard on him over Nixon’s visit], even their farts are considered fragrant and are treated as imperial edicts … And I have come to be regarded as a right-wing opportunist.”

  Mao took it out on Chou. He had bottled up much resentment against Chou over the whole business with America. Though Mao had masterminded the US president’s visit and the end to Peking’s diplomatic isolation, it was mostly Chou who seemed to get the credit. (There are some parallels with Nixon’s jealousy towards Kissinger.) On 4 July, Mao sent word to the Politburo that Chou was a “revisionist,” and Chou was condemned to one more round of self-abasement.