Mao: The Unknown Story

On this occasion, for the first time since he had come to power, Mao all but threw himself on the mercy of his colleagues by asking them not to contemplate a coup. Again and again, he implored them: “Don’t practice revisionism; don’t split; don’t plot.” The first point meant: Stick with the Cultural Revolution. The rest meant: Don’t plot against me. Several times during this period, he recounted a historical tale to Deng and his allies, whose implicit, but unmistakable, message was: If you are thinking of a coup, do it to my wife and the Gang, after I die.

MAO HAD TO beg like this because he had virtually lost control of the army. The Alliance had rehabilitated many generals who had been victims of Mao’s, and put them in high office. If it came to a showdown, Mao would have no top men in the army on his side. He had tried to insert his own men, two members of the Gang of Four, into leading army jobs, but they had been frozen out.

In June 1975 the army made a powerful gesture of defiance towards Mao. The occasion was the sixth anniversary of the death of Marshal Ho Lung, the man to whom Russian defense minister Malinovsky had said “get rid of Mao” a decade before. As a result of Mao’s suspicions, Marshal Ho had died in incarceration in appalling circumstances in 1969. The army now decided to hold a memorial service for him, which was both a sign of the changing times and a huge snub to Mao. Mao could not prevent the service taking place, but he ordered that it be extremely low-key — without even wreaths or speeches. With the support of the top brass, Ho’s family wrote to Mao, threatening to boycott the service if these restrictions were not lifted, and making a point of saying that Ho had many loyal comrades alive. Mao had to give in. The most he could salvage was to keep the news of the service out of the media.

The service was dominated by bitter emotions, and the atmosphere was heightened by the extraordinarily demonstrative sorrow exhibited by Chou En-lai, who got up from what was manifestly his deathbed to attend, and delivered the eulogy. He entered the hall crying out the name of the marshal’s widow, sobbed loudly while hugging her shoulders, and told her he felt “very sorry” for “not having been able to protect” her husband.

Chou had been in charge of the investigation into Ho during the Cultural Revolution, which had resulted in Ho’s death, and a host of Ho’s subordinates being imprisoned and tortured, some to death. There were strong feelings against Chou, which he was aware of, and his apology to Ho’s widow was partly an attempt to exonerate himself and put the blame on Mao. This, and the fact he turned up when he himself was dying — which he made a point of telling the congregation — dissipated much of the anger people felt towards him and redirected it towards Mao.

Mao, who was used to passing the buck, did not like having the blame laid on himself, and he hit back at Chou — as soon as he recovered his eyesight. On 23 July, Mao had the cataract removed from his left eye. To accompany the seven-minute operation, he chose a piece of soaring music to give himself a boost. He was delighted by the ease of the operation, and asked the surgeon to perform it on his right eye the following year. In the meantime, he consented to have special glasses made. They were made in two pairs, one with only a left arm, the other with only a right arm, which were swapped around by an attendant when Mao turned over in bed, so that the side of his face would never be resting on an arm.

Being able to see again gave Mao a renewed sense of confidence. Within two weeks he had initiated a new media campaign against Chou. Mao announced that one of the most famous classic Chinese novels, The Water Margin, was really all about “capitulationists,” who deserved to be condemned. “Capitulationists” was an allusion to the fake 1932 “recantation notice” that bore Chou’s name. Chou was so worried that Mao might blacken his name, particularly after his death, that at the very last moment before a big operation for his cancer, after he had been given the pre-op medication, just as he was about to be wheeled into the operating theater, he insisted on devoting an hour to go over his self-defense about the notice. He only got on the waiting trolley after he had signed the document, in a shaky hand, and passed it to his wife. Deng confronted Mao about the campaign the next time he saw him, and Mao had to back down, again. He tried to blame it on his wife, using his characteristic language: “Shit!” he said of her. “Barking up the wrong tree!” The campaign petered out.