Mao: The Unknown Story

The records of Kissinger’s 1971 visits were held back until 2002. In his memoirs Kissinger claimed Taiwan was “mentioned only briefly.” When confronted with the record in 2002, he said: “The way I expressed it was very unfortunate and I regret it.”

Mao made doubly sure of controlling the record by not allowing an American interpreter to be present. Nixon caved in to this diktat without demur.

This was not because the stifling repression was not visible. The political commentator William Buckley noticed how people had been cleared away everywhere they went. “Where are the people?” he asked a Chinese official. “What people?” the official replied. To which Buckley retorted: “The People, as in the People’s Republic of China!”

In the published minutes in English, which had been supplied by the Chinese, there is no mention of “China,” but the word is in the Chinese record.

Kissinger had made a sounding about how much the Chinese really wanted an alliance by suggesting “Chinese military help” against India during the Bangladesh crisis in December 1971.

55. THE BOSS DENIES CHOU CANCER TREATMENT (1972–74 AGE 78–80)

IN MID-MAY 1972, shortly after Nixon’s visit, it was discovered that Chou En-lai had cancer of the bladder. Under Mao, even a life-threatening illness was not just a medical matter. Mao controlled when and how his Politburo members could receive treatment. The doctors had to report first to Mao. They requested immediate surgery for Chou, stressing that the cancer was at an early stage, and that prompt action could cure it.

On 31 May, Mao decreed: “First: keep it secret, and don’t tell the premier or [his wife]. Second: no examination. Third: no surgery …”

Mao’s pretexts for vetoing treatment were that Chou was “old” (he was seventy-four), had “heart trouble,” and that surgery was “useless.” But Mao himself was seventy-eight, and had worse heart problems, yet surgeons and anesthetists were on stand-by for him.

One reason Mao did not want Chou to go to a hospital and be treated was in order for Chou to be available to work around the clock to deal with foreign statesmen, who were queuing at the gate after Nixon’s visit. Ever since the early 1940s, Chou had been Mao’s essential diplomat. During the war against Japan he was stationed for years in Chiang Kai-shek’s capital Chongqing, and, with his combination of charm, skill and attention to detail, had won the Communists many sympathizers among foreigners. When civil war started after the Japanese surrender, he ran rings around President Truman’s envoy George Marshall, whose decisions contributed significantly to Mao’s conquest of China. After the founding of Red China, Chou was the executor of Mao’s foreign policy, and his greatest diplomatic asset. After his first three days of talks in 1971, Kissinger gushed about Chou’s “heroic stature” in his report to Nixon:

my extensive discussions with Chou in particular, had all the flavor, texture, variety and delicacy of a Chinese banquet. Prepared from the long sweep of tradition and culture, meticulously cooked by hands of experience, and served in splendidly simple surroundings, our feast consisted of many courses, some sweet and some sour [etc., etc.] … and one went away, as after all good Chinese meals, very satisfied but not at all satiated.

Yet, though a star, Chou deferred slavishly to Mao in front of foreigners. In Mao’s presence, Kissinger commented, Chou “seemed a secondary figure.” Japan’s premier Tanaka went even further. “Chou is a nobody before Mao,” he said on returning from China in September 1972, when diplomatic relations were established (and Mao grandly waived all claims to war compensation). Chou’s motto in dealing with Mao was: “Always act as if treading on thin ice.”

But entertaining visiting statesmen was not the sole, or even the principal reason why Mao vetoed surgery for Chou. Mao wanted Chou around in the short term, but he did not want him cured, as he did not want Chou, four years his junior, to outlive him. This was miserable reward for decades of service, which had involved a care for his master’s health that reached far beyond the call of any duty. Chou had even tested some of Mao’s medicines on himself, and tried out Mao’s eye-drops—“to see whether this stings,” as he put it.