Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao was seriously unnerved. He had agreed to a Russian delegation coming to Peking for negotiations on the border dispute. This itself now became a source of anxiety. The delegation was due to fly in on 18 October. Mao and his cabal feared that the aircraft might be carrying atomic bombs rather than negotiators, so he and Lin Biao both left Peking for the south: Mao to Wuhan on the 15th, and Lin for Suzhou on the 17th. On the 18th the marshal forwent his regular siesta to follow the Russian plane’s flight path, and only went to lie down after the Russians had alighted from the plane.

Just before the Russians arrived, Chou En-lai decamped from his residence in Zhongnanhai and moved into the nuclear bunkers in the Western Hills, where he stayed until February 1970. Mme Mao holed up there too, most likely to keep an eye on Chou.

This war scare lasted nearly four months. The entire army was put on red alert, which involved moving 4,100 planes, 600 ships and 940,000 troops. The army now resumed serious military training, which had largely fallen into abeyance since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Zhongnanhai was dug up in order to build a giant underground shelter, linked by tunnels wide enough for four cars abreast, running to Tiananmen, the Great Hall of the People, a major hospital (Hospital 305, specially built for Mao and the top leaders, with all his security requirements, although he never set foot in it), Lin Biao’s residence, and the secret underground military HQ in the Western Hills. Tens of millions of civilians were corvéed to build underground shelters and tunnels in every city, at punishing expense. This whole scare, started by Mao’s miscalculation, cost China dearly.

In the end, the scare remained only a scare, which restored Mao’s confidence in his old belief that no country, Russia included, would really want to invade China. To make doubly sure, he set out to mollify the Russians. On May Day 1970 he made a point of greeting the deputy chief Soviet delegate to the border talks, who was present on Tiananmen Gate, and told him he wanted to be a “friendly neighbor” with Russia, and did not want war. Relations were restored to ambassadorial level, with a new Russian ambassador arriving in Peking in October, making a Soviet strike still more unlikely.

THOUGH CONFIDENT THAT there would not be a war, Mao continued scare propaganda inside China, judging that a war atmosphere was advantageous to the Superpower Program.

Becoming a superpower had remained Mao’s dearest dream. This was partly why he had carried out the Purge — to install new enforcers who were more in tune with his demands. After this process was complete, he started to accelerate the Program. To this end, in August 1970 he opened a plenum in Lushan, the mountain of volatile clouds, where the Central Committee had met twice before, in 1959 and 1961, both times for the same goal of pushing the Program ahead, resulting in nearly 38 million deaths from starvation and overwork.

On both those occasions Mao had met with considerable resistance. This time his new enforcers showed few qualms about obliging him, even though his latest plans involved investing as much in the nuclear program for the five years 1971–75 as had been expended in all the previous fifteen years. This was at a time when per capita income in China was lower than in dirt-poor Somalia, and calorie intake less than it had been under the Nationalists in 1930. But Mao met no opposition. Lin Biao and his coterie actually advocated that the question of whether or not the country could afford this level of spending should not matter. The new boss of Jiangxi, General Cheng Shi-qing, offered to cough up more than seven times as much food annually to the central government as the province was currently contributing — when the people of Jiangxi were already on the margin of survival. The new slave-drivers were willing to dragoon the population more harshly then ever before.

Mao was in a satisfied mood. As he drove up the mountain from the steaming plain, he itched for a swim. As soon as he arrived, he tore off his clothes and dived into the reservoir, ignoring the bodyguards who cautioned that the water was too cold, and that he had sweated too much. Laughing and joking, he swam for nearly an hour in water that made the young men around him shiver. At seventy-six, he was in excellent shape. His appetite impressed his chef and his housekeeper. He still had boundless energy.

But at this point, events took an unexpected turn. Mao and Lin Biao fell out. The post-Purge set-up began to unravel.

52. FALLING OUT WITH LIN BIAO (1970–71 AGE 76–77)