by Jung Chang
Mao holding up a wreath to Stalin’s portrait. Stalin’s death was Mao’s moment of liberation.(photo illustration 39)
Post — Stalin Soviet supremo Nikita Khrushchev was willing to help turn China into a military superpower, which was Mao’s long-cherished dream. The two leaders embrace at Peking airport in August 1958. Interpreter Li Yueran on the left.(photo illustration 40)
Riveted at the sight of a jet fighter (personal security overlord Luo Rui-qing on right).(photo illustration 41)
“Power comes out of the barrel of the gun”: Mao at a military exercise, with (from left) Luo Rui-qing and President Liu Shao-chi.(photo illustration 42)
A blonde dummy catches Mao’s eye at a Japanese exhibition in Peking in 1956. Mao was not here to check out fashion for Chinese women, who were restricted mostly to “Mao suits,” but to court the Japanese for strategic goods for his Superpower Program.(photo illustration 43)
Mao liked to rule from bed, often summoning his colleagues from their own beds in the middle of the night. Chairs for his Politburo were set out at the foot of his huge book-strewn bed, on which he also romped with his numerous girlfriends.(photo illustration 44)
In the Great Leap Forward (1958–61) Mao toyed with the idea of getting rid of names and identifying people by numbers. Peasants in his model province, Henan, working with numbers on their shirts.(photo illustration 45)
False bumper harvests were invented in order to extract the maximum amount of food for export.(photo illustration 46)
People were worked much harder in the Leap: a girl pulling a cart.(photo illustration 47)
President Liu Shao-chi visiting his home village in Hunan in spring 1961. (Above) He listens aghast to an elderly peasant and (below) stares at an empty food utensil, with his wife, Wang Guang-mei. This trip propelled him to ambush Mao and halt the Leap — and the famine.(photo illustration 48)
Determined to fight back, Mao used his favorite hobby, swimming, as a political gesture to demonstrate strength and willpower.(photo illustration 50)
Contemplating a map of the world during the famine in 1961. He told his inner circle: “We must control the earth!”(photo illustration 51)
Anyone who spoke up was persecuted. (Top) Tibet’s Panchen Lama being denounced in front of a portrait of Mao; and ex-defense minister Peng De-huai (inset) paraded (left) in the Cultural Revolution; he was made to suffer a lingering death.(photo illustration 52)
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao took revenge against Liu Shao-chi, seen here being struck by Little Red Book — wielding staff inside the leaders’ compound, Zhongnanhai, and then (below) trampled to the ground. He died an agonizing death in captivity. (Inset) Liu’s brave wife, Wang Guang-mei, being manhandled wearing a necklace of Ping-Pong balls and a label calling her a “political thief.”(photo illustration 54)
Everyday scenes in the Cultural Revolution. The “jet-plane” position (left), and brutal hair-cutting, always under a picture of Mao.(photo illustration 57)
A rare picture catches how the population really looked during these years.(photo illustration 59)
Defiant dissidents being shot before a crowd outside Harbin during the Cultural Revolution.(photo illustration 60)
The Cultural Revolution was made possible by a horse-trade between Mao and Marshal Lin Biao. (Left) Lin alongside Mao (wearing Red Guard armband) on Tiananmen Gate, 1966. (Note Mao’s black teeth, which he rarely brushed. He did not have a bath or a shower throughout his twenty-seven-year reign.) Eventually, Mao and Lin fell out; (below) on May Day 1971 a sulking Lin (in cap, right) defied protocol and turned up on Tiananmen for only one minute, refusing to talk to Mao, or Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk (next to Mao) or Princess Monique (next to Lin).(photo illustration 61)
Lin Biao’s son, “Tiger” (right), is the only person known to have planned to assassinate Mao. In September 1971, Lin, his wife (center) and Tiger fled China by plane and crashed to their deaths in Mongolia, after Lin’s brainwashed daughter, Dodo (left), informed on them.(photo illustration 62)
Wooing Cuba’s Che Guevara in 1960; Guevara was cut off when he came to be seen as too much of a competitor.(photo illustration 64)
Flirting with the Philippines’ first lady Imelda Marcos, 1974.(photo illustration 65)
Congratulating the Khmer Rouge in 1975, for bringing about a slave society in one fell swoop: Pol Pot (center); Foreign Minister Ieng Sary (right).(photo illustration 66)
Premier Chou En-lai was the charming face of Mao’s tyranny. Mao used his services while blackmailing him for nearly half a century. In February 1972 Chou had a comfortable armchair (top) when U.S. president Nixon came calling. From left: Chou, Nancy Tang, Mao, Nixon, Kissinger, Winston Lord. By December 1973, Mao had banished Chou to a humiliating hard chair when meeting the Nepalese king (middle). At this time, Mao was withholding permission for Chou to have treatment for cancer, thus ensuring that Chou died before he did.(photo illustration 67)
(Far left) In 1974, the newly rehabilitated Deng Xiao-ping (shortest, in front) formed an alliance with Marshal Ye Jianying (second from left) and Chou En-Lai (far right) against the Gang of Four, three of whose members are here: Mme Mao (in scarf), Wang Hong-wen (behind Deng) and Yao Wen-yuan (far left).(photo illustration 70)
(Left) Mme Mao being restrained at her trial after Mao’s death. To her prosecutors, she said: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. Whoever Chairman Mao asked me to bite, I bit.” She committed suicide in 1991.(photo illustration 72)
In his last years, Mao increasingly identified with fallen leaders, especially disgraced U.S. ex-president Nixon, whom he flew to China for a private farewell in February 1976.(photo illustration 73)
The last photograph of Mao was with Pakistan’s premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 27 May 1976. Mao died on 9 September 1976. His twenty-seven-year rule brought death to well over seventy million Chinese.(photo illustration 74)
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