Mao: The Unknown Story

One other group particularly persecuted in this purge cycle was doctors, for the reason that they had so often identified starvation as the true cause of the tidal wave of illness and death. Mao wanted to ensure that the gigantic tragedy he had created remained a non-event. Even the names of diseases that suggested starvation were tabooed, like edema, which was just called “No. 2 Illness.” Years later, Mao was still flagellating doctors for doing their job professionally: “Why were there so many … hepatitis cases in [those days]? Weren’t they all you doctors’ doing? You went looking for them, didn’t you?”

In the following year, 1960, 22 million people died of hunger. This was the largest number in one year in any country in the history of the world.

LUSHAN ALSO SEALED the fate of Mao’s ex-wife, Gui-yuan. Twenty-two years before, unable to bear his blatant womanizing and general callousness towards her, she had left Mao and gone to Moscow. In Russia she had a mental breakdown, and spent two years in a provincial psychiatric hospital where she went through a nightmare regime. She got out in autumn 1946, stable, if a little slow, and was allowed to return to China. She was banned from Peking, and in 1959, at the time of Lushan, was living nearby, in Nanchang. She had made a good recovery, but her life was lonely, as she lived on her own. She had not set eyes on Mao for twenty-two years.

On 7 July 1959, while Mao was watching Peng before pouncing, he was seized by a whim to see Gui-yuan. He sent the savvy wife of a local boss to fetch her, but specifically asked the woman not to tell Gui-yuan who it was that she was going to see, and just to say that she was invited to Lushan for a holiday — because, Mao told the intermediary, Gui-yuan “could well collapse mentally if she got too excited.” Mao was well aware that Gui-yuan was in a fragile emotional state, and the shock might be more than she could take. Their daughter had told him her mother had had a relapse at the unexpected sound of Mao’s voice on the radio in 1954 (one of the very rare occasions his voice was broadcast — for which the radio was reprimanded). He was prepared to risk her having a breakdown merely to gratify his whim.

Mao’s selfishness cost Gui-yuan dearly. When she suddenly saw him standing in front of her, her nerves gave way. The damage was worsened by the fact that when Mao was saying goodbye he promised to see her again “tomorrow.” But the next morning she was forcibly taken back to Nanchang, on his orders. This time her breakdown was worse than ever. She did not even recognize her own daughter, and would not wash, or change her clothes. Every now and then she would escape to the gate of the provincial Party HQ, hair disheveled, drooling at the mouth, demanding to know who had schemed to prevent her from seeing Mao again. She never fully recovered.

At the end of these sessions, Mao victimized a host of prominent generals, to make the point that the top brass must keep their distance from the Russians. Mao’s message was: The only thing you are to learn from the Russians is how to use modern weapons.

Eastern Europe also allowed Peng to anticipate Mao’s gruesome mausoleum. “We have seen the corpses of the leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Gottwald, Dimitrov. Every country has one. The Asian countries probably will also have these in the future.”

When Albania broke with Russia, control of the submarines there was at the core of the bust-up. In January 1961, Peking gave the Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, the gigantic sum of 500m rubles, and when the Russians tried to pull their submarines out in early June that year, Hoxha used force to hold four of them back, and almost certainly gave Mao access to them.

Electricity was installed for Mao the next time he was nearby, on 18 May 1960. This took 470 workers, who had to battle a force-8 gale. Even so, Mao did not drop in again.

42. THE TIBETANS REBEL (1950–61 AGE 56–67)

FROM THE TIME he conquered China, Mao was determined to take Tibet by force. When he saw Stalin on 22 January 1950, he asked if the Soviet air force could transport supplies to Chinese troops “currently preparing for an attack on Tibet.” Stalin’s reply was: “It’s good that you are preparing to attack. The Tibetans need to be subdued …” Stalin also advised flooding Tibet and other border regions with Han Chinese: “Since ethnic Chinese make up no more than 5 percent of Xinjiang’s population, the percentage of ethnic Chinese should be brought to 30 … In fact, all the border territories should be populated by Chinese …” This is exactly what the Chinese Communist regime then proceeded to do.