Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao left Peking in late February 1965, moving slowly, feeling his way. En route, on 9 April, he learned of the death of a favorite retainer, the 63-year-old boss of Shanghai, Ke Qing-shi, of misdiagnosed pancreatitis. For such an invaluable acolyte to die by human error at this juncture was alarming, so Mao stayed put in Wuhan. There, he summoned his long-term accomplice, defense minister Marshal Lin Biao, for a tête-à-tête meeting on 22 April. The marshal, who had rescued Mao at the Conference of the Seven Thousand in January 1962, was in on Mao’s plans to purge President Liu. Mao told him to keep a particularly tight grip on the army and a sharp lookout in case the president, who was overseeing things in the capital, should try to gain support among the military.

On 19 May, Lin Biao made a spectacular démarche in line with Mao’s request. On that day, in his capacity as president, Liu was receiving the participants at a high-level army meeting when the marshal turned up unexpectedly, having earlier declined the invitation on health grounds. At the end of the meeting, when the president announced that it had reached a satisfactory conclusion the marshal suddenly stood up and launched into a harangue that basically contradicted what Liu had said. He thus made it unmistakably clear to the top brass that he, not the president, was their boss, massively undermining Liu’s authority.

While the marshal kept an eye on President Liu in Peking, Mao proceeded to his old outlaw stamping-ground on 21 May. He stayed there seven nights, going nowhere apart from short walks in the immediate vicinity of the guest house. A stop had been scheduled at his old residence, the Octagonal Pavilion, but as he got out of the car, Mao heard faint noises. These were actually hammers and chisels clanging from some masons at work on a distant slope, but here in the mountains noise traveled far. Just as his foot was touching the ground, Mao shrank back into the car, and ordered it to drive off at once.

Mao did not see any local people until minutes before his departure, when organized crowds were brought to stand outside the guest house, and he waved at them and had photographs taken. His presence had been kept secret until the last minute. During his stay, and for some time after he left, all communications with the outside world for the locals were cut off.

The guest house where Mao stayed, which had been built during the famine, was not up to his standards, so work on another soon began, to the usual specifications: one-story and totally bomb-proof. But Mao never returned. He had come for one purpose only: to make a threat.

WHILE MAO WAS in the mountains, Liu was busy building up his own profile. On 27 May an article appeared in People’s Daily, replete with vintage cult language: “The hills were extraordinarily green, and the water was exceptionally blue … the scenery of the Ming Tombs Reservoir displayed unprecedented splendour.” But instead of being just about Mao, it was about both Mao and Liu, and both of them were engaged in the quintessential Mao cult activity of swimming:

After 3 in the afternoon, two cars stopped … Two towering, kindly-looking men stepped out of the cars, and with firm steps walked towards the water.

… these were our most revered and beloved leaders, Chairman Mao and Chairman Liu. The crowd immediately burst into loud cheers:

“Chairman Mao has come swimming!”

“Chairman Liu has come swimming!”

The youth saw that Chairman Mao and Chairman Liu were glowing with tremendous health and spirits, and felt a surge of happiness through their bodies …

Chairman Mao and Chairman Liu … swam forward shoulder to shoulder …

But this was not a “news” report at all. The swim had actually taken place the previous year, on 16 June 1964. That it was resurrected suggests that the story was inserted to promote Liu’s image, at a time when Mao’s absence from Peking meant People’s Daily did not have to clear it with Mao. For this and other acts of disobedience, Mao later visited ghastly punishment on his media chiefs.

AFTER HIS TRIP to the Jinggang Mountains to make his threat, Mao did not act at once. It seems that the reason he held his fire was that he was waiting for a particular international event to take place. This was the second Afro-Asian summit, scheduled for June 1965 in Algiers. As president, Liu had had dealings with many heads of state who would be there, and to purge him just before the gathering would create a bad impression. The summit was crucial to Mao, who wanted to use it to establish a dominant role in the Third World. As he was not prepared to leave his home turf, for security reasons, he had to pull the strings from afar. His man for the job was Chou En-lai.