Mao: The Unknown Story

In the face of raging mass starvation, Mao made a point of generating a holiday atmosphere at Lushan. Participants had been specially instructed to bring their wives and children. (For many of the children, this was their first experience inside European villas, whose flush toilets and stone walls mesmerized them.) The food was excellent; even the staff canteen served more than half a dozen dishes at each meal. In the evenings, there were local operas chosen by Mao, and dances in a former Catholic church, with dancing girls bussed in. At least one of the dancers and one of the resort nurses were summoned to Mao’s villa “for a chat.”

Mao’s womanizing was now more brazen than ever. In Zhongnanhai, a new lounge was added to the dance hall, and a bed installed there. Mao would take one or several girls into it to engage in sexual play or orgies. The lounge was well insulated so the noise did not carry, and the thick floor-to-ceiling velvet curtain would be drawn behind them. It was obvious what Mao disappeared in there for, but he did not care.

WHEN PENG arrived at Lushan for the conference, he was stopped as he entered the villa area by guards with little flags: “Group One”—code-name for Mao — was resting. Peng had to get out and walk. His villa, No. 176, was about 100 meters from Mao’s — so Mao’s security men could monitor him easily.

The conference of over 100 top officials began on 2 July 1959. Mao’s first tactic was to split the participants into six groups, each chaired and controlled by a trusted provincial chief, who reported directly to Mao. Discussions were confined to these groups, so any unwanted views would have only a restricted audience. The rest of the participants could find out only what Mao wanted them to read in the conference bulletin, which was printed by his office.

When Peng spoke to his group, the Northwest Group, he voiced his views about the Leap, raising the issue of the phantom harvest claims, and basically called Mao a liar: “The growth figure claimed by … Chairman Mao’s home place for last year was far higher than the real figure. I was there and asked around and learned that the increase was only 16 percent … and even that was because the state gave large subsidies and loans.”/“The Chairman has also been to this commune. I asked the Chairman: What was your information through your investigation? He said he didn’t talk about it. I think he did.”

Peng spelled out Mao’s responsibility again the next day: “The 10.7 million [tons of steel, the 1958 target] was decided by Chairman Mao. You cannot say he didn’t have responsibility.” Over the following days, Peng called into question Mao’s role in the villa-building spree, and warned that Mao “must not abuse his prestige.” Peng also hit out at Mao’s policy of squeezing out food for export “at the cost of domestic consumption.”

But, as Mao had made sure would be the case, Peng’s words did not percolate beyond his group. In frustration, on 14 July, Peng wrote a letter to Mao, criticizing the Great Leap Forward, using carefully phrased language. His hope was that this would set off a real debate about the Leap. Mao circulated the letter to the other participants, only to turn it into an excuse to purge Peng.

Mao had been watching Peng like a cobra to see whether Peng was involved in any conspiracy, which was the only way Mao could really be threatened. He wanted to know who was coming to see Peng so he could round them all up.

In fact, Peng had put out some feelers. He knew that Lo Fu, the former Party No. 1, was opposed to Mao’s policies, and Peng had asked Lo to read the letter he was sending to Mao. But Lo declined; and when Peng tried to read it out to him, Lo jumped up and fled. Mao had instilled such fear about “plotting” that people were simply paralyzed when there was any whiff of it. Under Mao, as under Stalin, only one person was allowed to plot — and that, as Stalin’s sidekick Molotov observed, was the boss.