Mao: The Unknown Story

Meanwhile, Khrushchev endorsed a number of high-end technology transfers, which led to an astonishing deal on 4 February 1959 under which Russia committed to helping China to make a whole range of advanced ships and weapons, including conventional-powered ballistic missile submarines and submarine-to-surface missiles. The first Taiwan Strait crisis had panicked the secrets of the Bomb out of Moscow; now, four years later, with the second Taiwan Strait crisis, Mao had prised out of Khrushchev an agreement to transfer no less than the whole range of equipment needed to deliver the Bomb.

Over the years from 1953 when Mao had first outlined his Superpower Program, its scale had grown prodigiously, but each expansion had only aggravated his fundamental problem: how to squeeze out enough food to pay for his purchases. In 1956, when the scope of the Program was much smaller, deaths from starvation had become so shocking that his usually docile Politburo had balked at the plan and forced him to slow down. Now a far worse death toll was in the offing. But this time Mao did not have to make concessions to his colleagues at home. In the course of 1957 he had altered one fundamental thing. Khrushchev no longer had any authority in Peking, and Mao no longer felt constrained by him.

A joke went the rounds in Budapest about a man buying tea. When asked: Which tea do you want — Russian or Chinese? he replied: I’ll have coffee instead!

Khrushchev handed over two R-2 short-range, ground-to-ground missiles, which China copied, though he declined to transfer rockets with a range of more than 2,900 km. The Russians also stationed a missile regiment outside Peking, with sixty-three R-1 and R-2 missiles, on which they trained the Chinese.

Mao decided to play the superior philosopher, and used a language full of Chinese metaphors, oblique for a non-Chinese audience, and almost impossible to translate. One of the Italian interpreters recalled: “From the Russian translation I heard, no one could understand what Mao said. I remember our translators put their heads in their hands.” In fact, even Chinese audiences had to guess what Mao was driving at when he employed this style.

Mao had said similar things before, in less overtly callous language. In 1955 he told the Finnish ambassador that “America’s atom bombs are too few to wipe out the Chinese. Even if the US atom bombs … were dropped on China, blasted a hole in the Earth or blew it to pieces, this might be a big thing for the solar system, but it would still be an insignificant matter as far as the universe as a whole is concerned.”

39. KILLING THE “HUNDRED FLOWERS” (1957–58 AGE 63–64)

TERRORIZATION HAD always been Mao’s panacea whenever he wanted to achieve anything. But in 1956, after Khrushchev condemned Stalin’s use of terror, Mao had to lower the rate of arrests and killings. On 29 February, as soon as he learned about Khrushchev’s secret speech, Mao had ordered his police chief to revise established plans: “This year the number of arrests must be greatly reduced from last year … The number of executions especially must be fewer …”

But when Khrushchev’s tanks rolled into Hungary later that year, Mao saw his chance to revive persecution. His colleagues were still saying that the troubles in Eastern Europe were the result of over-concentration on heavy industry and neglecting living standards. Liu Shao-chi argued that China should go “slower” with industrialization, so that “people won’t be going onto the streets to demonstrate … and moreover will be fairly happy.” Chou, too, wanted to scrap some arms factories. Although wholly in agreement with Mao over giving priority to nuclear weapons, he remarked pointedly: “We can’t eat cannons, or guns.”

Mao’s view of the “lessons from Eastern Europe” was completely different. “In Hungary,” he told his top echelon on 15 November, “it’s true the standard of living did not improve much, but it wasn’t too bad. And yet … there were great troubles there.” “The basic problem with some Eastern European countries,” he said, “is that they didn’t eliminate all those counter-revolutionaries … Now they are eating their own bitter fruit.” “Eastern Europe just didn’t kill on a grand scale.” “We must kill,” Mao declared. “And we say it’s good to kill.”

But with the trend in the Communist world blowing towards de-Stalinization, Mao decided it was not wise to be too blatant about launching a purge. To create a justification, he cooked up a devious plan. He did so mainly while lying in bed, where he spent most of his time that winter of 1956–57. He ate in bed, sitting on the edge, and only got up to go to the toilet.