Mao: The Unknown Story

The first Afro-Asian summit had taken place ten years before at Bandung in Indonesia, where Chou had had considerable success in wooing newly independent Third World countries. Since then, Peking’s influence had grown substantially, thanks, not least, to its extravagant aid. Nehru, the star at Bandung, was dead, and meanwhile China had acquired the Bomb. Mao entertained the idea that at this second summit he could be seen as the patron — if Russia did not take part. In the preparations for the Algiers summit Mao’s goal had been to keep the Russians out.

To this end, Peking courted Indonesia’s President Sukarno, as he was the man vetting the invitations, in his capacity as host of the first summit. China offered him lavish gifts, quite possibly including soldiers for a war he was waging against Malaysia. Top of the list of offers was to train Indonesian nuclear scientists, enabling Sukarno to announce that Indonesia would soon explode an atom bomb. China dangled the same lure of nuclear secrets in front of Egypt, another key Third World country, when in fact Mao had no intention of sharing his nuclear knowledge; when Nasser later asked Chou to deliver on his promise, Chou told him to be “self-reliant.”

To buy votes for the Algiers summit, Mao committed China to its biggest-ever overseas project — a railway nearly 2,000 km long from landlocked Zambia across Tanzania to the Indian Ocean. Informed that Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere was interested in such a railway and could not get the West to put up the money, Chou said: “Chairman Mao said whatever the imperialists oppose, we support; the imperialists oppose this, so we sponsor it …” Mao was not concerned whether the railway was viable. When Nyerere expressed hesitation about accepting the offer, Chou pressed harder, claiming that Chinese railway-building materials and personnel would be going to waste if they were not used in Tanzania. The project cost about US$1 billion, which Mao dismissed as “No big deal.”

Ten days before the summit was due to open, Algeria’s President Ahmed Ben Bella was overthrown in a military coup. A short while before, Mao had called him “my dear brother.” Now he dropped Ben Bella like a hot potato, and ordered Chou to back the new military government and ensure the summit went ahead on schedule.

Peking’s diplomats started lobbying frantically, even though it was clear that the vast majority of governments due to attend favored a postponement. Even the very pro-Chinese Nyerere gave Peking’s lobbyist a piece of his mind: “Chou En-lai is my most respected statesman. But I don’t understand why he insists on the conference being held on schedule,” Ben Bella, Nyerere said, was an “anti-colonialist hero recognised all over Africa,” adding: “I must tell you [that China’s lobbying] has damaged the reputation of China and Premier Chou himself.”

The summit was postponed. Peking’s hustling boomeranged. Within weeks, Nasser, in many ways the decisive voice, was backing Russian participation. If the Russians attended, Mao would be unable to play the leading role. So the Chinese announced that they would not take part. The summit never convened.

AS HIS DREAM of playing the leader to Asian and African countries collapsed, in fury, Mao lashed out. Longing to score a victory somewhere, he went to the brink of war with India.

Three years before he had trounced India satisfactorily. But now, in autumn 1965, he could not guarantee success, as India was much better prepared. So he resorted to parasitizing on someone else’s conflict, always a risky undertaking. On 6 September, Pakistan got into a war with India. Over the previous years, Pakistan had grown much closer to China, and become one of the two biggest non-Communist recipients of Chinese aid.

Pakistan’s war with India seemed to Mao to offer a chance to score another victory over India, which would be forced to fight on two fronts if China intervened. He moved troops up to the border, and issued two ultimatums, demanding that India dismantle alleged outposts on some territory Peking claimed, within three days, by 22 September. When Delhi replied in a conciliatory vein, denying it had outposts there, but calling for a “joint investigation” and promising that if outposts were found, it “would not oppose dismantling them,” Peking answered thuggishly that “there is no need for investigation,” and that there just were outposts. Mao was bent on war.