Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao attributed this failure to China’s lack of economic and military muscle. “We are a short tree and the Soviet Union is a tall tree,” he told Poland’s Gomulka, citing steel output as the yardstick. He was determined to remedy this. In his final speech he announced: “Comrade Khrushchev told me that in fifteen years the Soviet Union can overtake America. I can also say that in fifteen years we may catch up or overtake Britain.” The subtext was that he was in the race, as much a player as Khrushchev.

To put Khrushchev down, Mao adopted a grand style, talking to the Soviet leader like a teacher: “You have a quick temper, which tends to make enemies … let people voice their different views, and talk to them slowly …” In the presence of a large audience, Mao sounded even more superior:

Everyone needs support. An able fellow needs the help of three other people, a fence needs three stakes to support it. These are Chinese proverbs. Still another Chinese proverb says that with all its beauty the lotus needs the green of its leaves to set it off. You, comrade Khrushchev, even though you are a beautiful lotus, you too need the leaves to set you off …

At this point, according to one participant, Khrushchev “hung his head and went very red.”

Worse, in front of delegates from all 64 countries, Mao brought up the attempt to oust Khrushchev a few months earlier, and described Molotov, the chief plotter, as “an old comrade with a long history of struggle,” saying that Khrushchev’s line was only “relatively correct”; at this point a deathly silence fell over the hall. Mao repeatedly said things to top Russians in private like “We loved Molotov very much.” (In 1955 the highly unlovable Molotov had called China the “co-leader” of the Communist camp.)

In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote about Mao’s “megalomania”: “Mao thought of himself as a man sent by God to do God’s bidding. In fact, Mao probably thought God did Mao’s own bidding.” But Mao was not just being megalomaniac, he was also deliberately aiming to diminish Khrushchev’s stature, and elevate his own. Khrushchev put up with all this in the interests of preserving the unity of the Communist camp. This concern tied Khrushchev’s hands vis-à-vis Mao, and Mao exploited this weak spot to the full.

AFTER RETURNING from Moscow, Mao added to his shopping list another item dear to his heart: nuclear submarines, which Peking regarded as “the ace in the modern arsenal.” In June 1958 Chou wrote to ask Khrushchev for the technology and equipment to manufacture these, as well as aircraft-carriers and other large warships.

But this time Khrushchev did not just hand over what Mao asked for. Instead, he tried to secure a quid pro quo: use of China’s long coastline, which had easy access to the high seas, unlike Russia’s. Khrushchev suggested that China (and Vietnam) could co-crew ships with the Russians in return for these ships using Chinese (and Vietnamese) ports. Ambassador Yudin put this to Mao on 21 July.

Mao wanted a fleet of his own, and to build his own ships. In order to give himself an excuse to turn down the Russian proposal for cooperation, he staged a tantrum. Next day, on 22 July, he summoned Yudin back and told him: “You upset me so much that I didn’t sleep all night.” He then distorted Moscow’s proposal into an issue of sovereignty, accusing the Russians of “wanting to control us” through a “joint fleet.” “It boils down to you don’t trust the Chinese …” In among the bluster, Mao inserted his real demand: “You must help us to build a navy!.. We want to have two or three hundred [nuclear] submarines” (our italics).

Khrushchev was alarmed by Mao’s outburst, as Mao had hoped he would be, and rushed to Peking in secret on 31 July. Mao gave him an ostentatiously frosty welcome. As the leaders drove into their first talk, Khrushchev declared straightaway that: “There was no thought of a joint fleet.” After much bombast, Mao backed down and conceded that his interpretation of Khrushchev’s proposal was unfounded, that he had “lost sleep” for nothing, though he continued to act as if his national pride had been mortally wounded. But Mao’s theatrics had got Khrushchev to come more than halfway, and the Soviet leader offered to build China “a big plant … to manufacture a large number of nuclear submarines.” To keep the pressure on, Mao strongly hinted that otherwise the Russians might be drawn into a war: “Now that we don’t have a nuclear submarine fleet, we might as well hand our entire coast over to you, for you to fight for us.” Then, to hammer this point home, as soon as Khrushchev departed, Mao manufactured a war situation, once again using Taiwan.