Mao: The Unknown Story

As well as having to produce food to pay for military imports from Russia and Eastern Europe, the peasants were having to part with precious produce to make up the massive donations Mao was dispensing to boost his turf aspirations. China not only provided food for poor countries like North Korea and North Vietnam, it gave liberally to very much richer European Communist regimes, especially after Stalin’s death, when Peking floated the idea of Mao becoming the head of the world Communist camp. When Romania staged a youth jamboree, Mao donated 3,000 tons of vegetable oil — while the peasants in China who produced the oil were getting about one kilogram per year, which had to do for both cooking and lighting, as electricity was non-existent in most of the countryside. After the 1956 uprising in immeasurably wealthier Hungary, Peking sent the regime 30 million rubles’ worth of goods and a £3.5 million “loan” in sterling; and loans, as Mao kept saying, did not have to be repaid.

When the first big revolt in Eastern Europe erupted in East Germany in June 1953, just after Stalin died, Mao jumped in to bolster the dictatorship there, immediately offering 50 million rubles’ worth of food. But the Germans wanted more, offering in exchange machines that China had no use for. Peking’s foreign trade managers had actually decided to turn the exchange down, but Mao intervened and ordered them to accept, with the ludicrous argument that “They are much harder-up than we are. We must make it our business to take care of them” (Mao’s emphasis). It was thanks to Chinese food that East Germany was able to lift food rationing in May 1958.

Ordinary Chinese not only had no say in Mao’s largesse, they had no idea they had made such generous donations. The pleasure was all Mao’s. When East Germany’s brutish leader, Walter Ulbricht, came to China in 1956 and paid Mao a ritual compliment, Mao responded grandly: “You must not copy us to the dot.” Mao was talking like a mentor. He also wanted to ascertain that Ulbricht was oppressive enough. “After the 17th of June [1953 uprising in East Berlin],” Mao asked, “did you take a large number of them prisoner?” He suggested one Chinese “model” the East Germans might consider copying: the Great Wall. A wall, he said, was a great help with keeping out people like “fascists.” A few years later the Berlin Wall went up.

The highest proportion of GNP the richest countries gave as foreign aid barely ever exceeded 0.5 percent, and the US figure at the turn of the millennium was far below 0.01 percent. Under Mao, China’s reached an unbelievable 6.92 percent (in 1973) — by far the highest the world has ever known.

CHINESE PEASANTS were amongst the poorest in the world, as Mao knew very well. He knew equally well that peasants were starving under him. On 21 April 1953, on the eve of launching the Superpower Program, he noted on a report: “About 10 percent of agricultural households are going to suffer food scarcity in spring and summer … even out of food altogether.” This was happening “every year,” he wrote. How could the country’s limited stock of food pay for Mao’s vast ambitions? Elementary arithmetic alone would suggest there were going to be massive deaths from starvation if he went ahead sending food abroad at these levels.

Mao did not care. He would make dismissive remarks like: “Having only tree leaves to eat? So be it.” All economic statistics and information were top-secret, and ordinary people were kept completely in the dark. They were also powerless to influence policies. But the men at the top were in the picture, and one of them, Mao’s No. 2, Liu Shao-chi, balked at the colossal consequences of Mao’s program. He was in favor of industrialization and superpower status, but he wanted to reach these goals at a more gradual tempo, by building a stronger economic foundation and raising living standards first.

“We cannot develop heavy industry first,” he told a small audience on 5 July 1951, because it “consumes a tremendous amount of money with no returns … and the only way available to us to raise the money is by depriving our people … Now people’s life is very miserable. We must raise people’s living standards first,” a process he suggested would take ten years. This, he said, should be the Party’s priority. “People are very poor,” he wrote. “They desperately need to lead a better life, a well-to-do and cultured life.” “The [Party’s] most basic task must be to fulfill this wish …” “Peasants,” he said on another occasion, “want to have new clothes, to buy socks, to wear shoes, to use … mirrors, soap and handkerchiefs … their children want to go to school.” This was the kind of language Mao never used.