Mao: The Unknown Story

Soon after Khrushchev left, Mao escalated the crisis by bombing and strafing more Nationalist-held islands. US President Eisenhower responded by agreeing to sign a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Mao pressed on, apparently intent on taking the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu — and more. His calculation was to nudge America into threatening to use nuclear weapons. In March 1955 the US said it would use nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. Eisenhower very deliberately told a press conference on the 16th that he could see no reason why they should not be used “just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” Mao had what he had aimed for — a situation in which China seemed to be in real danger of a US nuclear strike.

Not wishing to be drawn into a nuclear confrontation with America, Khrushchev took the momentous decision to provide China with the technical assistance to make the Bomb.

At this time, substantial uranium deposits had just been confirmed in Guangxi province. Mao was extremely excited, and immediately ordered a demonstration on 14 January. Geology chief Liu Jie recalled:

I put the uranium ore on the table, and … waved a Geiger counter across it. The Geiger counter went “ga-ga-ga …” Chairman Mao looked so intrigued. He laughed like a child, and picked up the Geiger counter himself, waving it across the ore, listening to the “ga-ga” sounds again … When I said goodbye … Mao held my hand and said: “Liu Jie — ah! I want you to know that what you are doing is the thing that decides our destiny!”

Afterwards, there was a banquet. Mao’s toast was straight to the point: “Bottoms up … to having our own atom bombs as quickly as possible!”

In April, the Russians agreed to build China the two key items needed to make a Bomb: a cyclotron and a nuclear reactor. Mao was en route to becoming a nuclear power. Large groups of Chinese scientists set off to be trained in Russia. In December, news came that the Russians had committed to help build a comprehensive nuclear industry in China. Mao was ecstatic. On the advice of Russian scientists, a twelve-year nuclear plan was drawn up. As 1956 dawned, Mao told his aides he was in better spirits than when he had taken China six years before. He felt on top of the world, and announced grandly to his inner circle: “We must control the Earth!”

TO CORRESPOND WITH the twelve-year nuclear plan, in January 1956 Mao and a group of his cronies drafted a twelve-year plan for agriculture. This was really Mao’s scheme to extract much more food to fund his upgraded and expanded Superpower Program. It ordered peasants to produce the equivalent of 500 billion kg of grain per annum by the end of the twelve years, more than triple the highest-ever previous annual output (in 1936). And this tall order had to be achieved with virtually no investment, not even of fertilizer.

At this point, Mao met with new resistance — this time from virtually the whole Politburo, spearheaded by the usually doglike Chou En-lai, who was in charge of planning, and Chou was backed by Liu. They all knew that Mao’s astronomical output target was unattainable. Mao had set the figure by a process of “back-calculation,” starting not from reality, but from the amount of food that he would need to fund his purchases, and working back from there. The obvious conclusion was that Mao’s plan would involve extracting a much larger percentage of the harvest from the peasantry than before. As the peasants were already living on a knife-edge, millions, at a minimum, would be tipped over the edge into starvation and death.

Realizing the implications, in February 1956, Chou cut spending on industrial projects by over a quarter. He was just as keen as Mao for China to be a superpower, but he was willing to face up to the fact that the country did not have nearly enough resources to pay for everything Mao wanted, much less simultaneously. So he opted for focusing on the nuclear program and key projects, and cutting back on other projects, which was necessitated anyway by shortages of basic materials like steel, cement and timber.