Mao: The Unknown Story

24. Jung Chang outside Mao’s official residence in Yenan.

25. Jon Halliday in Yenan.

26. Mao’s secret hide-out outside Yenan.

27. Mao with his third wife, Gui-yuan, 1937.

28. Mao’s sons in Russia.

29. Mao in 1939, reading Stalin.

30. A receipt signed by Mao for money received from the Russians.

31. Mao with US ambassador Patrick Hurley, 1945.

32. Jiang Qing, Mao’s fourth wife, with General George C. Marshall, 1946.

33. Chiang Kai-shek visiting his ancestral temple for the last time, 1949.

34. Red troops entering Nanjing, 1949.

35. Mao proclaiming the founding of Communist China, 1 October 1949.

36 and 37. Mass executions in front of organized crowds.

38. Mao at Stalin’s 70th birthday, 1949.

39. Mao in a Russian cowshed.

40. Tiananmen Gate bedecked with a portrait of the dead Stalin, 1953.

41. Mao holding up a wreath to Stalin’s portrait.

42. Mao embracing Nikita Khrushchev, 1958.

43. Mao inspecting a jet fighter.

44. Mao with a gun at a military exercise.

45. Mao at a Japanese exhibition in Peking, 1956.

46. Mao’s bedroom.

47. Peasants in Henan during the Great Leap Forward.

48. A propaganda photograph.

49. A girl pulling a cart.

50 and 51. Liu Shao-chi visiting his home village during the famine, 1961.

52. Mao swimming.

53. Mao contemplating a map of the world.

54. The Panchen Lama being denounced.

55. Peng De-huai.

56. Peng De-huai being paraded during the Cultural Revolution.

57. Liu Shao-chi being struck inside the leaders’ compound.

58. Liu being trampled.

59. Liu’s wife, Wang Guang-mei, being manhandled.

60. The “jet-plane” position.

61. Brutal hair-cutting.

62. A rare picture of how the Chinese population really looked.

63, 64 and 65. Dissidents being shot outside Harbin.

66. Mao and Lin Biao on Tiananmen Gate, 1966.

67. Lin Biao, Mao, Prince Sihanouk and Princess Monique, 1971.

68. Lin Biao’s daughter, wife and son “Tiger.” 69. Mao with Che Guevara, 1960.

70. Mao with Imelda Marcos, 1974.

71. Mao with Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, 1975.

72. Mao and Chou En-lai with Nixon and Kissinger, 1972.

73. Chou banished to a hard chair.

74. Deng Xiao-ping and the Gang of Four.

75. Madame Mao at her trial.

76. Mao with Nixon, February 1976.

77. The last picture: Mao with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 27 May 1976.

Photograph no. 10, by Auguste François, is reproduced by permission of Réunion des Musées Nationaux; no. 14, by Cecil Beaton, by permission of the Beaton Estate; no.16, by permission of Getty Images; no. 19, by permission of Wang Dan-zhi; nos. 29 and 39, by permission of the Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kinofotodokumentov (the Russian State Archive of Cine-photo Documents); nos. 34 and 49, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, by permission of Magnum Photos; no. 45, by Du Xiu-xian; no. 53, by Lu Hou-min; nos. 61, 63, 64 and 65, by Li Zhen-sheng; nos. 67, 72, 76 and 77, by Du Xiu-xian.

LIST OF MAPS

1. China

2. The area of Mao’s activities, 1927–34

3. The Long March, October 1934–October 1935

Maps by ML Design, London

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS IN TEXT

CCP Chinese

Communist Party

Cominform

Communist Information Bureau

Comintern

Communist International

CP

Communist Party

8RA

Eighth Route Army

GRU

Glavnoye Razvedyivatelnoye Upravleniye (Chief Intelligence Directorate), Soviet Military Intelligence

N4A

New Fourth Army

ZZZ

Zhang Zhi-zhong

NOTE ABOUT SPELLING IN TEXT

Chinese personal names are given surname first. In some cases, where people have a very common surname, we refer to them by their given names after first mention. We have spelled the names so as to make them as distinctive and easily recognizable as possible. For those not in pinyin (the official Mainland system), the pinyin version is given in the index.

For place names, we have used pinyin, except for Peking (Beijing), Yenan (Yan’an), Canton (Guangzhou), and the islands of Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Mazu).

China

The area of Mao’s activities, 1927–34

The Long March, October 1934–October 1935

PART ONE LUKEWARM BELIEVER

1. ON THE CUSP FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN (1893–1911 AGE 1–17)

MAO TSE-TUNG, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader. He was born into a peasant family in a valley called Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, in the heartland of China. The date was 26 December 1893. His ancestors had lived in the valley for five hundred years.