Mao: The Unknown Story

ALL THE WHILE, Deng was trying to undo the practices of the Cultural Revolution and improve standards of living. In this, the twenty-fifth year of Mao’s reign, most of the population were living in dire poverty and misery. In the urban areas, which were privileged, extremely severe rationing of food, clothing and virtually all daily essentials was still in force. Families of three generations were often crammed into one small room, as the urban population had increased by 100 million under Mao and yet very little housing had been built, and maintenance was nonexistent. Mao’s priorities — and the quality of life — may be gauged from the fact that total investment in urban upkeep (including water, electricity, transport, sewage, etc.) in the eleven years 1965–75 was less than 4 percent of that in arms-centered industries. Health and education were getting well under half of the already tiny percentage of investment that they had been receiving at the outset of Mao’s rule. In the countryside, most people were still living on the verge of starvation. In places, there were adult women who had no clothes to cover themselves and had to go stark naked. In Mao’s old capital, Yenan city, people were poorer than when the Communists had first arrived four decades before. The city was teeming with hungry beggars, who would be roped up and shoved into detention when foreigners came to admire Mao’s old base, and then deported back to their villages.

Mao knew beyond a doubt how bad things were. He kept himself extremely well informed by reading (or having read to him) daily reports from a network of feedback channels he had installed. In September 1975 he told Le Duan, the Party chief of Vietnam, which had just been through thirty years of nonstop war, including devastating US bombing: “Now the poorest nation in the world is not you, but us.” And yet he directed the media to attack Deng’s efforts to raise living standards with absurd slogans like: “The weeds of socialism are better than the crops of capitalism.”

Deng also tried to lift the virtual blanket ban on books, arts and entertainment that had lasted for nearly a decade. Most immediately, he tried to release a few feature films to give the population some entertainment. Though all of these kept well within the bounds of socialist realism, Mme Mao, acting on Mao’s behalf, tried to get them withdrawn, accusing them of “crimes” such as using pretty actresses.

Mao himself had plenty of entertainment. One was to watch his favorite Peking operas in the comfort of his home. For this, opera stars were summoned back from their camps to be filmed in the now empty Peking TV Studio by crews who had also been recalled from exile. After years in the backwoods they were rusty, so they were first kept isolated for months and told to recover their lost art, and ask no questions. As no one would explain to them why they were to perform these still banned — and therefore extremely dangerous—“poisonous weeds,” most spent these months in a state of great apprehension. The films were then broadcast for Mao from a TV van parked next to his house. He also watched films from pre-Communist days, from Hong Kong, and from the West.

But Mao refused to let the population savor so much as a drop of what he himself enjoyed. Deng often fought with Mao’s wife, sometimes shouting at her and banging on the table — not treatment she was used to from anyone except her husband. Deng also denounced Jiang Qing’s action to Mao’s face, and encouraged people like film directors to write letters to Mao complaining about her. Mao wanted to stop Deng’s initiatives by getting him to put on paper a pledge to stick to Cultural Revolution practices. In November 1975 he demanded that Deng draw up a Party resolution that would set the Cultural Revolution in stone.

Deng not only declined, he did so point-blank in front of some 130 senior cadres, thus defying Mao in no uncertain terms. Mao had to give up on the resolution. For him, this was the last straw. He made up his mind to discard Deng.

Chou and Yeh had been urging Deng not to be too confrontational with Mao: just to pay lip-service and wait for him to die. But Deng would not wait. He calculated that he could force Mao to swallow what he was doing, provided that he did not harm Mao personally.

Mao was fading fast. The muscular paralysis had invaded his vital organs, including his throat, severely affecting his ability to eat. But beneath this crumbling shell, he preserved his phenomenal determination not to be beaten.