Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang

  Barely was this crisis over when another, far worse one came crashing down on Chou’s head. Kissinger returned to China in November (now as secretary of state), bringing a terminal blow to Mao’s ambitions. Nine months before, Kissinger had promised that Washington would move towards full diplomatic relations “after the 1974 [mid-term] elections.” Now he said that the US “domestic situation” precluded severing relations with Taiwan “immediately”—which Peking had insisted on as a prerequisite for diplomatic relations. Mao was never to rule in Taiwan, or to have diplomatic recognition from America.

  Worse still for Mao, his dreams of enjoying military might by courtesy of the USA came to nothing. All Kissinger could offer was an “early warning” system to detect Soviet missile launches. “I will have to study it,” Chou replied, but Kissinger heard no more. The proposal held no interest for Mao, as he did not really believe in a Russian attack. The Chinese stopped talking about a military alliance with America.

  Mao blamed these setbacks on the Watergate scandal, which was then threatening Nixon’s presidency, and made it impossible for Nixon to take any big risks. Mao spent some time talking to Kissinger about Watergate, saying that he was “not happy about it,” and could not understand what all the “farting” was about. And he railed tirelessly against Watergate to other foreign statesmen. To France’s president Pompidou he said he could not understand what all “the fuss” was about. “What’s wrong with having a tape recorder?” he asked Thailand’s prime minister. “Do rulers not have the right to rule?” he would demand. In May 1974, when Nixon was on the ropes, Mao asked former British prime minister Heath: “Can you lend him a hand to help him through?”

  Because of Watergate, Nixon was forced to resign on 9 August 1974. Less known is that Watergate also helped finish off Mao’s dreams of becoming a superpower.

  By now, Mao’s Superpower Program was in seriously bad shape, despite two decades spent consuming a huge proportion of the nation’s investment. The entire higher-tech end of the arsenal was producing defective and unusable equipment, and it desperately needed foreign input. With Russia now a lost cause, Mao had hoped that America would bestow the kiss of life. But Kissinger’s November 1973 trip, conducted under the shadow of Watergate, closed this door. Mao was unable to come up with any new strategy. Ace schemer though he was, even he had reached the bottom of the barrel.

  MAO WAS NOW EIGHTY, and very ill. He finally resigned himself to the reality that he could not become a superpower in his lifetime. He could not dominate the world, or any part of it other than China.

  Mao’s disenchantment immediately became apparent to the Americans. Meetings were canceled by the Chinese side, and cooperation sagged. Sino-US relations became “substantially frozen,” Kissinger noted, and his next trips to China “either were downright chilly or were holding actions.” He did not see Mao for two years, and, unbeknownst to Kissinger, Mao was constantly bad-mouthing him to his close circle, and even to ex-British prime minister Heath in 1974: “I think Henry Kissinger is just a funny little man. He is shuddering all over with nerves every time he comes to see me.” On 21 October 1975, when Kissinger saw Mao again, to negotiate a visit by Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, he offered American military assistance, clearly expecting that Mao was still interested. But Mao brushed the offer away: “As for military aspects, we should not discuss that now.” When Ford visited China later that year, Mao was amicable, but uninvolved.

  MAO’S FURY AND disappointment were mainly vented on Chou. During Kissinger’s watershed visit, in November 1973, the secretary of state noticed that Chou “seemed uncharacteristically tentative”; “the old bite and sparkle were missing.” As soon as Kissinger left, Chou’s subordinates in the Foreign Ministry, including close associates who had worked with him for decades, were forced to attack him to his face for weeks on end, for alleged failings in dealing with the Americans. Chou’s cancer had just returned, and he was passing large quantities of blood in the midst of these sessions. Mao kept himself informed about Chou’s miserable state through two young female upstarts in the Foreign Ministry who enjoyed an intimate relationship with him: one was his niece, the other his English-language interpreter, Nancy Tang.

  Mao also unleashed his wife, who accused Chou of “capitulating” to the Americans. When Chou tried to defend himself, she interrupted him: “You really are a blatherer!”

  During these weeks of torment, Chou kept working. On 9 December he was present when Mao met Nepal’s king and queen. After the royal couple left, Mao said to Chou with a smirk: “Premier, haven’t you been having a tough time being done in?” “The premier is really pitiful. Done in so sorrily by these few hussies.” When Chou left, the “hussies”—Mao’s niece and Nancy Tang — berated Mao: “How can you possibly say this about us?” Mao acted coquettish: “But it’s true, it’s all your doing!” He was having fun tormenting Chou.

  An official photograph was published of the meeting with the Nepalese, which shows Chou sitting on a hard chair normally reserved for a junior interpreter, on the edge of an arc of armchairs for the distinguished. This was more than petty humiliation. In the Communist world, placement was the most potent signal of a top leader’s rise or fall. People began to avoid Chou’s staff.

  Eventually, Mao passed the word that Chou was not to be hounded further. Having played with Chou’s dignity and energy, Mao still wanted to have his services on call. Chou’s last major contribution to Mao’s foreign policy was to supervise the seizure from South Vietnam in January 1974, of the strategic Paracel (aka Xisha) Islands in the South China Sea, before they fell into the hands of Peking’s Vietnamese “comrades.”

  At this time, Chou was losing so much blood that he needed twice-weekly transfusions. The blood often clogged his urethra so that he could not pass urine, and his doctors saw him jumping up and down and rolling from side to side in agony, trying to loosen the coagulated blood. Even in this state, he was still pursued. During one transfusion, a message came summoning him to a Politburo meeting at once. His physician asked for twenty minutes’ grace to finish the transfusion. Minutes later, another note appeared under the door, this time from Chou’s wife, saying: Please tell the premier to go. Chou showed only a flicker of anger as he said: Pull the needle out! As the doctors learned later, there was nothing urgent.

  The doctors’ entreaty to Mao for proper surgery met with a brutal reply on 9 May 1974: “Operations are ruled out for now. Absolutely no room for argument.” Mao intended to let the tumor eat Chou to death unimpeded. Chou himself then practically begged, via the four top leaders designated by Mao to supervise his medical “care.” At this point, Mao reluctantly gave his consent: “Let him see Tun Razak and then we’ll talk about it.” Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, was due at the end of the month, and Chou went into the hospital on 1 June — after he had signed the communiqué establishing diplomatic relations with Malaysia. It was only now that he was allowed his first proper operation, two years after his cancer had been diagnosed. This delay made sure that he died nineteen months later, and before Mao.

  Mao only finally granted Chou surgery because he was feeling highly vulnerable himself, as a result of a deterioration in his own physical condition. He was nearly blind, and, of more concern to him, was beginning to lose control over parts of his body. In this state, he did not want to drive Chou into a corner and make him feel he had nothing to lose and might as well take extreme measures.

  Just over a month after his operation, Chou received a startling piece of news: Mao was suffering from a rare and incurable disease, and had only two years to live. Chou decided not to pass on the information to Mao.

  This knowledge transformed the Chou — Mao relationship. Chou now became a much bolder man.

  Kissinger later said (to the Russian ambassador in Washington) that he “had been wrong in basing his concepts on the inevitability of a Soviet attack against China.”

  Mao could see that the whole process of technology transfer from the We
st was far too slow for him. The Rolls-Royce engine deal encouraged by Kissinger was not signed for another two years, and the first engines were not produced in China until well after Mao’s death. The first significant high-technology agreement with the US, for fast computers, was only signed in October 1976, after Mao was dead. Mao could not impose his own timetable on democratic countries, or on modern industry.

  56. MME MAO IN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION (1966–75 AGE 72–81)

  MAO’S LAST WIFE, Jiang Qing, is often thought of as the evil woman who manipulated Mao. Evil she was, but she never originated policy, and she was always Mao’s obedient servant, from the time of their marriage in 1938. Their relationship was aptly described by herself after Mao died: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. Whoever Chairman Mao asked me to bite, I bit.” In the first few years of the Great Purge, she headed the Small Group, Mao’s office that dealt with the Purge, and afterwards she was a member of the Politburo. In these posts, she played a big part in ruining the lives of tens of millions of people. She also helped Mao to destroy Chinese culture and keep China a cultural desert.

  The only individual initiative that she took in the Purge was to use her position to engage in personal vendettas. One was against an actress called Wang Ying, who decades before had won a theatrical role Mme Mao herself had coveted, and who then spent glamorous years in America, even performing in the White House for the Roosevelts. Wang Ying died in prison.

  Mme Mao had one vulnerable spot, her Shanghai past. She lived in constant dread that her scandals, and her behavior in prison under the Nationalists, would be exposed. So former colleagues, friends, a lover, lovers’ friends, and even a maid who had been devoted to her, were thrown into prison, many of them never to emerge alive.

  Another obsession was to retrieve a letter she had once written after a row with Mao, back in 1958. In a fit of frenzy she had dashed off a letter to an old friend, a film director, asking for the address of a former husband, Tang Na, who was living in Paris. The potentially fatal consequences of this rash act had been nagging at her ever since. Eight years later, as soon as she had the power, she had the hapless film director and several other former mutual friends arrested and their houses ransacked. The director died from torture, pleading in vain that he had destroyed her letter.

  With so much blood on her hands, Mme Mao was haunted by the specter of assassins. At the peak of her power, she developed an intense fear of strangers coming near her, as well as of unexpected sounds, just as Mao had on the eve of conquering China. When a new secretary joined her staff in 1967, his predecessor greeted him by saying: “Comrade Jiang Qing is not very well … She is particularly afraid of sounds, and of strangers. As soon as she hears a noise or sees a stranger, she … starts to sweat and flies into a temper. Whatever we do in this building — talking, walking, opening and closing windows and doors — we must take special care to be noiseless. Please do be very, very careful. Don’t see her for a while, and try your best to stay out of her way. If the worst comes to the worst and you can’t hide, don’t try to run …”

  Her nurse also advised the new secretary that “she is particularly frightened of seeing strangers. If she sets eyes on you now, there will be big trouble.” For more than three months, the secretary lurked in his office. Then his predecessor left — in fact for prison. Next day, the new man was summoned: “I went into her office trembling with fear. I saw her reclining on a sofa, with her feet on a soft footstool, reading some documents in a languid manner.” After a few exchanges, “She raised her head, opened her eyes, and fixed me with a peevish, dissatisfied stare. She said: ‘You can’t talk to me standing. When you talk to me, your head can’t be higher than mine. I am sitting, so you should crouch down and talk to me. Didn’t they even tell you this rule?’ … So I crouched down …”

  After the secretary answered one or two of her questions, Mme Mao snapped: “ ‘… You speak so loud, so fast, it’s like firing a machine-gun. It gives me a headache, and makes me sweat. If I fall ill because of your carelessness about the volume and rate of your speech, your responsibility will be too gigantic.’ She pointed at her forehead and said in a loud voice: ‘Look, you look, I’m sweating!’

  “I lowered my voice and said: ‘Please forgive me. I will take care with my voice and speed.’

  “Jiang Qing knitted her eyebrows … and shrieked loudly and impatiently: ‘What are you saying? I can’t hear you. Now your voice is too low. If I can’t hear you clearly, I will also become tense, and will also sweat …’ ” The secretary was waved away.

  Life at close quarters with Mme Mao was a nightmare, as everyone around her whom we interviewed testified. She would send servants to jail at the drop of a hat for phantom crimes. When Chou En-lai went to her place, his entourage preferred to sit in their cars and freeze rather than go into her villa, in case they bumped into her, which could land them in disaster. Chou’s chief bodyguard, Cheng Yuan-gong, was in charge of security at a meeting she was coming to in 1968. Her staff asked him to have some food ready, so he invited her to eat first. He described what happened next: “She burst in on the premier and said: ‘Cheng Yuan-gong wanted to stop me from coming in. What’s going on here? What sort of meeting are you having?’ She yelled and screamed at the premier.” Chou had to spend hours straightening things out. Two days later she told Chou: “Cheng Yuan-gong is a scoundrel. He had a shady past. And he has always been trying to prevent me from seeing the premier …” The bodyguard had been with Chou for twenty-three years, but Chou had to get rid of him, and the man was packed off to detention, and then to a camp.

  Mao knew what a monumental, time-consuming pain his wife was, as some people occasionally grumbled to him; and he knew that her behavior interfered with the smooth functioning of his regime. But for him it was worth it to keep everybody off balance and maintain a climate of insecurity and capriciousness, and to keep things on the paranoid track. With Mao himself, of course, she was as meek and quiet as a mouse. She feared him. Only he could do her harm.

  IN 1969, WHEN Mao’s reconstructed regime was set up, Mao wound up the Small Group, keeping Mme Mao on as his attack dog. She had no administrative role. While on standby for Mao, she spent a lot of time playing cards, amusing herself with her pets, including a monkey (when pets were banned for everyone else), and riding in Beihai Park in the center of Peking, formerly a public park, now closed to the public. She watched foreign films practically every night — all, naturally, prohibited for ordinary Chinese.

  Her lifestyle was the acme of extravagance. One of her hobbies was photography. For this she would get warships to cruise up and down, and anti-aircraft guns to fire salvos. Her swimming pools had to be kept permanently heated, and for one of them built exclusively for her, in Canton, mineral water was channeled from dozens of kilometers away. Roads were built specially for her to scenic mountain spots, often requiring extraordinary means. In one case, because her villa was nearby, the army engineers building the road were forbidden to use dynamite in case the explosions alarmed her, and they had to break the rocks manually. Planes were kept on tap for her every whim, even to fly a particular jacket that she suddenly felt like wearing from Peking to Canton, or a favorite chaise longue. Her special train, like Mao’s, would stop at will, snarling up the transport system. Far from feeling ashamed, she would say: “In order for me to have a good rest, and a good time, it is worth sacrificing some other people’s interests.”

  One such sacrifice was blood. Always on the lookout for methods to improve her health and looks, she learned about an unusual technique: blood transfusions from healthy young men. So scores of Praetorian Guards were put through a rigorous health check, and from a short list of four, blood was taken from two of them for her. Afterwards, she gave the two a dinner, telling them what a “glorious” deed they had done to “donate” their blood to her. “When you know your blood is circulating inside me … you must feel very proud,” she added — before warning them to keep their mouths shut. The transfusions did not
become a routine, as she got so excited that she told Mao about them, and he advised against them on health grounds.

  In spite of her constant complaining, Mme Mao was in fact in very good health. But she was a nervous wreck. She had to down three lots of sleeping pills before she could drop off, which was usually about 4:00 AM, and she also took tranquillizers twice a day. When she was indoors in daytime, she had natural light shut out, just as Mao did, by three layers of curtains, and read by a lamp, with a black cloth draped over the shade, producing an atmosphere her secretary described as spooky.

  Noise bothered her to an absurd degree. In her main residence in Peking, the Imperial Fishing Villa, staff were ordered to drive away birds and cicadas — and even, at times, not to wear shoes, and to walk with their arms aloft and legs apart, to prevent their clothes from rustling. Even though her villa sat in a garden of 420,000 square meters, she ordered the park next door, Yuyuantan, one of the few public parks left in the capital, closed down. A similar thing happened in Canton, where her villa lay beside the Pearl River, so traffic on this commercially important thoroughfare was suspended during her stays, and even a distant shipyard had to stop work.

  Heat and drafts also obsessed her. Her rooms had to be kept at exactly 21.5 degrees centigrade in winter, and 26 degrees in summer. But even when the thermostat showed that the temperature was exactly what she demanded, she would accuse her attendants: “You falsify temperature! You conspire to harm me!” Once she threw a big pair of scissors at a nurse, missing her by inches, because the nurse could not locate the source of a draft.

  “To serve me is to serve the people” was her constant refrain to her staff.

  AFTER LIN BIAO crashed to his death, and the assassination plot against Mao — and herself — surfaced in late 1971, Mme Mao became plagued by nightmares about the Lins’ ghosts pursuing her. She confided to her secretary: “I have been feeling as if I am about to die any minute … as if some catastrophe is about to happen tomorrow. I feel full of terror all the time.”