Mao: The Unknown Story

ON 27 FEBRUARY 1957, Mao delivered a four-hour speech to the rubber-stamp Supreme Council announcing that he was inviting criticisms of the Communist Party. The Party, he said, needed to be accountable and “under supervision.” He sounded reasonable, criticizing Stalin for his “excessive” purges, and giving the impression there were going to be no more of these in China. In this context, he cited an adage, “Let a hundred flowers bloom.”

Few guessed that Mao was setting a trap, and that he was inviting people to speak out so that he could then use what they said as an excuse to victimize them. Mao’s targets were intellectuals and the educated, the people most likely to speak up. After taking power, Mao’s policy had been to give them a generally better standard of living than the average. Those who were well-known or “useful” were given special privileges. But Mao had them put through the grinder several times, not least with “thought reform,” which he himself described as brainwashing: “Some foreigners say our thought reform is brainwashing. I think that’s right, it is exactly brainwashing.” In fact, even the fearsome term “brainwashing” does not conjure up the mental anguish of the process, which bent and twisted people’s minds. Now Mao was planning to persecute the educated en masse.

Mao confided his scheme only to a very few special cronies like the boss of Shanghai, Ke Qing-shi, keeping even most of the Politburo in the dark. In early April, he told these few cronies that as a result of him soliciting criticisms, “intellectuals are beginning to … change their mood from cautious to more open … One day punishment will come down on their heads … We want to let them speak out. You must stiffen your scalps and let them attack!.. Let all those ox devils and snake demons … curse us for a few months.” To these same few cronies, Mao spelled out that he was “casting a long line to bait big fish.” He later described his ensnaring like this: “How can we catch the snakes if we don’t let them out of their lairs? We wanted those sons-of-turtles [bastards] to wriggle out and sing and fart … that way we can catch them.”

Mao’s trap was extremely successful. Once the lid was loosened just a fraction, a deluge of dissent burst out, mostly in wall posters and small-scale meetings called “seminars,” which were the only forums allowed.

One of the very first things to be challenged was the Communists’ monopoly of power, which one critic described as “the source of all ills.” One poster was entitled “Totalitarian power is peril!” The Communists’ exercise of power was compared to Hitler’s. One man said in a seminar that “in not protecting citizens’ rights, today’s government is worse than the feudal dynasties or Chiang Kai-shek.” One professor called the Constitution “toilet paper.” Another, an economist, went right to the core of Mao’s methods, and called for banning public denunciations, “which are much worse than being in prison”—“just the thought of them makes one tremble from heart to flesh.” Democracy was the popular demand.

So was the rule of law. One vice-minister called for the independence of the judiciary. Another administrator said he wanted to be able “just to follow the law, not the orders of the Party.” Referring to the CCP’s smothering methods of controlling everything, one well-known playwright asked: “Why is it necessary to have ‘leadership’ in the arts? Who led Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Beethoven, Molière?”

Foreign policy, too, came in for questioning by some of the elite who had access to partial information. The former Nationalist governor of Yunnan province, who had crossed over to the Communists, protested that “it is unfair that China should pay all the costs in the Korean War”—and called for reducing the level of aid being lavished on foreign countries.

The regime’s secretiveness also came under attack. “All absolute economic statistics are state secrets,” protested one critic, “even the output of alkali … What is this but an attempt to keep people in a state of stupidity?” He demanded information about the industrialization program. Another wrote: “I have indeed heard about peasants … dying from having just grass roots to eat, in areas so rich in produce that they are known as the land of fish and rice. But the newspapers say nothing about any of this …”

Many contrasted the harsh life of the peasants with that of the leaders (which they could only glimpse). People’s Daily had reported a banquet for the Russian president Kliment Voroshilov, attended by 1,000 people. “Why such grandeur?” one poster enquired, when “ ‘local Party emperors’ are using methods like abuse, torture and detention to gouge food out of the peasants …?” “We must know that dissatisfied peasants could throw Chairman Mao’s portrait into the toilet,” this daring author warned.