Mao: The Unknown Story

The statement condemned US president Richard Nixon by name. Nixon was incensed and, in a drunken rage, wanted ships moved into attack positions. Kissinger calmed him down by pointing out that Mao had “offered little to Hanoi except verbal encouragement.” Mao was ignored. In pique, he lashed out at Kissinger for failing to recognize him as a player, calling him “a stinking scholar,” “a university professor who does not know anything about diplomacy.” An exasperated and vexed Mao had this exchange with Vietnam’s premier Dong:

MAO: Why have the Americans not made a fuss about the fact that more than 100,00 °Chinese troops help you building railways, roads and airports although they knew about it?

DONG: Of course, they are afraid.

MAO: They should have made a fuss about it. Also, their estimate of the number of Chinese troops in Vietnam is less than their real number.

The promotion of Maoism had reached the end of the road, in Indochina as in the world at large. Ever resourceful, Mao came up with a new scheme that would hoist him into the limelight: to get the president of the United States to come to China.

The October 1966 success coincided with the presence in China of one of Hitler’s top rocket experts, Wolfgang Pilz, who was spotted in Peking by an Indian diplomat that month, along with three German colleagues. Pilz had previously been supervising Egypt’s missile program and had been lured away with offers of large sums of money and more exciting technical conditions. When China tried to attract other German scientists, the US offered them more money to entice them to America.

Not surprisingly, when even committed friends could find themselves at risk. When the Albanian premier Mehmet Shehu and his colleague Ramiz Alia returned to Peking after traveling around the country, Mao greeted them by asking: “Did anyone hit you?”

Its failed leader, Abimael Guzmán, called himself “Chairman of the World Revolution.” The year “Shining Path” was founded, it celebrated Mao’s birthday by hanging dogs from lamp-posts in Lima wrapped in slogans excoriating the post-Mao leader Deng Xiao-ping, whom it regarded as having betrayed Mao’s legacy, as “a son of a bitch.”

China had over 320,000 soldiers in Vietnam during the years 1965–68, including more than 150,000 anti-aircraft troops, some of whom stayed into late 1973. The presence of these troops in North Vietnam allowed Hanoi to send many more of its own forces into the South, where some Chinese accompanied them. In 1965 a Chinese general was present to watch US forces landing at Danang, on the coast of South Vietnam.

Chinese troops wore Chinese uniforms so the Americans would know they were there.

54. NIXON: THE RED-BAITER BAITED (1970–73 AGE 76–79)

WHEN HE FOUNDED his regime in 1949, Mao had deliberately made it impossible for the USA to recognize it, mainly so as to reassure Stalin, hoping that this would encourage Stalin to build up China’s military machine. After Stalin died in 1953, Mao began seeking relations with America, in order to gain access to Western technology for his Superpower Program. But memories of fighting the Chinese in the Korean War were too recent, and Washington snubbed Peking. Though the two countries established a diplomatic channel for discussing specific issues, overall, relations remained frozen. Mao hewed to an aggressively anti-US posture, and in 1960, when he was promoting Maoism, he made this bellicosity his hallmark, setting himself apart from the Kremlin, which he accused of going soft on America.

In 1969, the new US president, Nixon, publicly voiced interest in improving relations with China. Mao did not respond. Establishing a relationship with Washington would jeopardize his identity and image as a revolutionary leader. It was only in June 1970, after his anti-American manifesto of 20 May had flopped, and when it was inescapably clear that Maoism was getting nowhere in the world, that Mao decided to invite Nixon to China. The motive was not to have a reconciliation with America, but to relaunch himself on the international stage.

Mao did not want to be seen as courting the US president, and he went to considerable lengths to make the invitation deniable. In November, Chou sent a message through the Romanians, who had good relations with both China and America, saying that Nixon would be welcome in Peking. The invitation reached the White House on 11 January 1971. As Mao had feared might happen, Nixon “noted on it that we should not appear too eager to respond,” according to Kissinger. When Kissinger replied to Peking, on 29 January, he made “no reference to a Presidential visit,” regarding the idea as “premature and potentially embarrassing.”

Mao was not deterred. He soon found another way to tempt Nixon to China.