Mao: The Unknown Story

This episode enormously stoked Mao’s suspicions that there might be a vast plot against him involving senior colleagues in cahoots with the Russians. Nothing could be more dangerous for him than the Kremlin expressing a serious wish to oust him. Neither the challenge by Peng De-huai in 1959, nor that by Liu in 1962, had shaken his position. But if the Kremlin really wanted to get rid of him, that would be a different story. Interest on the part of Russia might well embolden some of his colleagues to take drastic steps. The distance from the border of Russia’s satellite Outer Mongolia to Peking was only some 500 km, over mainly flat and open land, which Russian tanks could easily overrun, and China lacked effective anti-tank defenses. The very next month, December 1964, on Mao’s instructions, the army drew up a plan to construct artificial mountains, each like a giant military fortress, on the North China plain, as obstacles to Russian tanks — a huge project that was abandoned as useless after several years and immense cost.

Chou managed to retain Mao’s favor, as Mao figured Chou was too shrewd to try anything rash. But Chou knew that a cloud of suspicion was hanging over his head. Before leaving Moscow, members of his entourage heard him say that he had visited Moscow ten times since the founding of Communist China, but that it was most unlikely that he would ever be returning. Indeed, this was his last visit — and none of Mao’s colleagues ever visited Moscow as long as Mao lived.

Mao was chary about anyone in his top circle going to Russia in case they schemed with the Russians to overthrow him. Even being present at the same occasion as high-level Russians in a third country — i.e., outside Mao’s control — was to be avoided. In September 1969, Chou faced the possibility of bumping into some Soviet leader at the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, so he rushed to Hanoi ahead of the funeral, ignoring Vietnamese protests that they were not ready for visitors. And Chou left well before the ceremony itself, to which China sent a second-level delegation.

In the forthcoming purge, any connection with Russia became a key issue, especially among the top echelon. Marshal Ho Lung and a huge number of his old subordinates were arrested and interrogated. Ho Lung himself died in detention in appalling conditions in 1969.

So did Deputy Defense Minister General Xu Guang-da, who was brutally tortured over a period of eighteen months, being interrogated no fewer than 416 times. He had the misfortune to be the only senior military figure to visit Russia after Malinovsky’s remarks, and so was suspected of being a link between Mao’s domestic foes and Moscow. Xu had gone to Russia in May 1965 because at the time there was still some nuclear cooperation with Russia. Immediately after his trip, Mao withdrew all the Chinese at the Russian nuclear center at Dubna, shutting off nuclear collaboration completely.

Thanks to the Malinovsky episode, Mao had absolutely no relationship with Brezhnev. China’s relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated to their worst ever under Brezhnev, who remained in power for the rest of Mao’s lifetime.

But at the time of the Kremlin’s heavy-handed feeler in November 1964, Mao did not order Chou to leave. Chou stayed on in Moscow, and held meetings with a host of foreign delegates, whom Mao was keen for him to see. He returned to Peking on 14 November, according to schedule. Mao turned up to greet him at the airport with his whole team. The message was for the Russians: that the Chinese leadership was united. But the Russians drew mixed inferences. Soviet diplomats at the airport observed that Mao did not look at all well—“close to prostration,” they thought.

THIS WAS AN exceptionally unsure time for Mao, and Liu Shao-chi exploited it. He made a bid to strengthen his position by having himself reconfirmed as state president. This would provide an opportunity for a huge burst of profile-building, as a sort of personality cult for himself. Reconfirmation of his tenure was long overdue. Mao had not allowed the body that “elected” the president, the National Assembly, to convene as it should have in 1963, because he only wanted it to meet when he was ready to purge Liu. But within weeks of Malinovsky’s remarks about getting rid of Mao, Liu convened the Assembly on extraordinarily short notice, calculating that Mao would feel too insecure either to veto this move or to purge him. Mao saw what Liu was up to, and erupted. “Let’s do the handover now,” he said sarcastically to Liu on 26 November: “You take over and be the chairman. You be Qinshihuang [the First Emperor] …”