Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao had to placate the army, so he threw it a few sops, pretending that he was not responsible for having tried to purge it. One sop was Small Group member Wang Li, of the Wuhan episode. Mao now made him a scapegoat. On 30 August, Wang Li was arrested. Hardly a month before, he had stood on Tiananmen Gate being hailed by a million people as the hero of Wuhan, the only occasion when leaders ever lined up there without Mao. Actually, this prominence was his undoing. The sight of him on Tiananmen, Mao’s preserve, annoyed the Great Helmsman, who said Wang Li had “got too big for his boots, and must be cut down to size.”

Purging Wang Li, however, did not solve Mao’s problem. He still had to find a way to make sure the new army enforcers would be men who would do what they were told unconditionally. To select such men, he depended on Lin Biao, who had to dig into the second tier of the army to find them. Mao thus found that he had no alternative but to allow Lin to turn the army leadership into a personal fiefdom, run by Lin’s cronies and working on the basis of what amounted to gang loyalty. On 17 August 1967, Mao authorized Lin to form a new body called “the Administration Office” to run the army. This consisted of Lin’s wife and a few generals who owed their careers, and sometimes even their lives, to Lin.

Typical of these was General Qiu Hui-zuo, the head of Army Logistics. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution he had been denounced and beaten up. One of his ribs was broken, and his shoulder joints and muscles severely torn. He passed out on stage and was brought around by cold water for more beatings. Just when he thought he was going to die, an order came from Lin Biao to release him. He wrote afterwards to the Lins: “Hour 0:40 on 25 Jan 1967 was the moment of my second life, the moment I, my wife and children will never forget …”

Qiu promoted a personal coterie and indulged in a vendetta against those who had made him suffer. In his old department alone, 462 subordinates were arrested and tortured; among their lesser torments were being forced to eat bread soaked in excrement, and being kicked in the genitals. Eight died.

Qiu was an example of a person who had become totally cynical, for reasons that went back much further than the Cultural Revolution, and related to the unscrupulous nature of the Party itself from the earliest days. On the eve of the Long March, he and several other Red Army youngsters, including one aged eleven, had been ordered to hide some Party documents, which they sealed and sank in a river tied to stones. As they were climbing back up the river bank, they found themselves staring into the gun-barrels of their own comrades who had been sent to eliminate them so that no trail would be left. Qiu only survived because of a chance intervention.

Lin let Qiu and his other cronies wage their vendettas and build their own gangs as long as they obeyed him. Mao did the same with Lin. For a while, Mao tried to keep his own men in the army, and appointed one of his acolytes, General Yang Cheng-wu, as acting chief of staff. But Lin did not want General Yang on his back, and eventually got Mao to clap him in prison in March 1968. Mao even suspended the Military Council, the old supreme authority which he himself chaired. Mao retained just one vital veto: moving any force from battalion-strength up required his direct authorization.

Lin installed a sidekick called Huang Yong-sheng to be army chief of staff. Huang was so junior that Mao could not even put a face to his name. A well-known womanizer, he soon became Mrs. Lin’s lover. Ye Qun was a woman of voracious sexual appetite, for which she had little outlet with the clearly impotent marshal, whom she described as “a frozen corpse.” The relationship between her and her lover is revealed in a three-hour telephone conversation that was bugged.

YE QUN [YQ]: I am so worried you might get into trouble for pursuing physical satisfaction. I can tell you, this life of mine is linked with you, political life and personal life … Don’t you know what 101 [Lin Biao’s code name] is like at home? I live with his abuse … I can sense you value feelings … The country is big. Our children can each take up one key position! Am I not right?

HUANG: Yes, you are absolutely right.

YQ: … Our children put together, there must be five of them. They will be like five generals and will get on. Each will take one key position, and they can all be your assistants.

HUANG: Oh? I am so grateful to you!

YQ: … I took that measure [implying contraceptive]. Just in case I have it and have to get rid of it [implying baby], I hope you will come and visit me once. [Sound of sobbing]

HUANG: I will come! I will come! Don’t be like this. This makes me very sad.

YQ: Another thing: you mustn’t be restricted by me. You can fool around … I’m not narrow-minded. You can have other women, and be hot with them. Don’t worry about me …

HUANG: … I’m faithful to you alone.