Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao only finally granted Chou surgery because he was feeling highly vulnerable himself, as a result of a deterioration in his own physical condition. He was nearly blind, and, of more concern to him, was beginning to lose control over parts of his body. In this state, he did not want to drive Chou into a corner and make him feel he had nothing to lose and might as well take extreme measures.

Just over a month after his operation, Chou received a startling piece of news: Mao was suffering from a rare and incurable disease, and had only two years to live. Chou decided not to pass on the information to Mao.

This knowledge transformed the Chou — Mao relationship. Chou now became a much bolder man.

Kissinger later said (to the Russian ambassador in Washington) that he “had been wrong in basing his concepts on the inevitability of a Soviet attack against China.”

Mao could see that the whole process of technology transfer from the West was far too slow for him. The Rolls-Royce engine deal encouraged by Kissinger was not signed for another two years, and the first engines were not produced in China until well after Mao’s death. The first significant high-technology agreement with the US, for fast computers, was only signed in October 1976, after Mao was dead. Mao could not impose his own timetable on democratic countries, or on modern industry.

56. MME MAO IN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION (1966–75 AGE 72–81)

MAO’S LAST WIFE, Jiang Qing, is often thought of as the evil woman who manipulated Mao. Evil she was, but she never originated policy, and she was always Mao’s obedient servant, from the time of their marriage in 1938. Their relationship was aptly described by herself after Mao died: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. Whoever Chairman Mao asked me to bite, I bit.” In the first few years of the Great Purge, she headed the Small Group, Mao’s office that dealt with the Purge, and afterwards she was a member of the Politburo. In these posts, she played a big part in ruining the lives of tens of millions of people. She also helped Mao to destroy Chinese culture and keep China a cultural desert.

The only individual initiative that she took in the Purge was to use her position to engage in personal vendettas. One was against an actress called Wang Ying, who decades before had won a theatrical role Mme Mao herself had coveted, and who then spent glamorous years in America, even performing in the White House for the Roosevelts. Wang Ying died in prison.

Mme Mao had one vulnerable spot, her Shanghai past. She lived in constant dread that her scandals, and her behavior in prison under the Nationalists, would be exposed. So former colleagues, friends, a lover, lovers’ friends, and even a maid who had been devoted to her, were thrown into prison, many of them never to emerge alive.

Another obsession was to retrieve a letter she had once written after a row with Mao, back in 1958. In a fit of frenzy she had dashed off a letter to an old friend, a film director, asking for the address of a former husband, Tang Na, who was living in Paris. The potentially fatal consequences of this rash act had been nagging at her ever since. Eight years later, as soon as she had the power, she had the hapless film director and several other former mutual friends arrested and their houses ransacked. The director died from torture, pleading in vain that he had destroyed her letter.

With so much blood on her hands, Mme Mao was haunted by the specter of assassins. At the peak of her power, she developed an intense fear of strangers coming near her, as well as of unexpected sounds, just as Mao had on the eve of conquering China. When a new secretary joined her staff in 1967, his predecessor greeted him by saying: “Comrade Jiang Qing is not very well … She is particularly afraid of sounds, and of strangers. As soon as she hears a noise or sees a stranger, she … starts to sweat and flies into a temper. Whatever we do in this building — talking, walking, opening and closing windows and doors — we must take special care to be noiseless. Please do be very, very careful. Don’t see her for a while, and try your best to stay out of her way. If the worst comes to the worst and you can’t hide, don’t try to run …”