27 SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION
Stalin's death facilitated Mao's victory at the Conference on Financial and Economics Work. Only now could Mao accelerate the tempo of revolutionary transformation, in other words, the complete and decisive Stalinization of China. Naturally, he never displayed his innermost feelings. On the contrary, arriving at the embassy of the USSR to pay his respects to the late Kremlin boss, he was almost in tears. “He tried to maintain his self-control and not display any emotions, but he did not succeed,” recalled an eyewitness. “There were tears in [his] eyes.” Zhou Enlai cried along with the new Soviet ambassador, Alexander Panyushkin.1
Mao, however, did not wish to attend the funeral of the “Father of Nations.” Perhaps he was afraid of catching pneumonia—there was frost in Moscow in early March. Perhaps it was because just two months earlier he had discovered that Stalin had been listening in on his conversations with members of the Politburo in Zhongnanhai itself. At the end of 1950, Stalinist technicians from the MGB who were working in Beijing installed microphones in Mao's bedroom and several other rooms in Mao's residence, obviously with the help of their Chinese agents. When this was discovered, Mao was furious and even sent Stalin a note of protest. The latter replied disingenuously that he had no idea what sorts of unseemly activities these MGB agents were up to in China. He conveyed to Mao his formal apology.2 In his last year Stalin caused one more unpleasant incident that again clouded his relations with Mao. This resulted from the screening in the Soviet Union of Przheval'skii, a film that depicted the Chinese people in an unfavorable light, according to the CCP leadership. The screenwriters may have tried to create an objective picture of the great traveler Nikolai Przheval'skii who disliked the Chinese on account of their “hypocrisy, craftiness, and cunning.”3 But Stalin, who was the chief censor in matters of cinematography, saw nothing amiss, and not only approved showing the film in the USSR, but also sent a copy to an international film festival in Czechoslovakia. Dissatisfied, the Chinese requested that their Soviet comrades not show the film. Then Stalin, in the name of Minister of Cinematography Ivan Bol'shakov, sent a sharply worded telegram to Beijing saying that he considered the Chinese criticism “incorrect and deeply mistaken.” The dictator, unaccustomed to criticism, accused the Chinese of nationalism. “It must be said,” he noted,
that here in the Soviet Union at a certain time among a certain number of historians and artists of a nationalist persuasion we also observed and still encounter attempts to embellish history as well as to conceal historical truth…… We Russian communists view such persons as dangerous, as chauvinists who infect the masses with the poison of nationalism and undermine the bases of criticism and self-criticism that are the foundation of the communist method of educating the masses.4
Mao was of course offended by the tone of the telegram and the reproaches it contained.
A meeting of the Central Committee selected Zhou Enlai to head the Chinese delegation to Stalin's funeral. He would also convey the Chairman's condolences to the new leadership of the CPSU. “Everyone knows that Comrade Stalin greatly loved the Chinese people and believed that the forces of the Chinese revolution were amazing,” Mao Zedong wrote. “He displayed the greatest wisdom on questions relating to the Chinese revolution…… We have lost a great teacher and a most sincere friend…… This is a great sorrow. It is impossible to express our grief in words.”5
Mao was also unofficially represented by his wife, Jiang Qing, who was in the USSR again for rest and treatment. She was also very upset by Stalin's death and visited the Hall of Columns in the House of Soviets where she was allowed to stand guard at the bier of the deceased.6 On March 9, Zhou marched in the funeral procession; alone among the foreign guests he was given the honor of carrying Stalin's coffin along with the leaders of the CPSU.
On March 11, Zhou and other members of his delegation held talks with the new Kremlin leaders Georgii Malenkov, Lavrentii Beria, and Nikita Khrushchev on economic assistance to the PRC.7 These talks culminated in the signing on March 21 of an important protocol on the exchange of goods between the USSR and the PRC for 1953 as well as an agreement regarding Soviet assistance to the PRC in the construction of electricity-generating stations.8 Then, on May 15, 1953, the USSR and China signed an even more important agreement, by which the Soviet Union undertook the responsibility of furnishing all the technical documentation and complete sets of equipment for constructing ninety-one large industrial enterprises in China by the end of 1959.9
The negotiations between Zhou Enlai and Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev also led to the acceleration of work on the construction of fifty projects that the Soviet side had already undertaken to build. In a telegram to Malenkov on this occasion Mao expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the Soviet government for its agreement to provide economic and technical aid to China. “This will have extraordinary importance for the industrialization of China, for China's gradual transition to socialism, as well as for strengthening the forces of the camp of peace and democracy headed by the Soviet Union,” Mao wrote.10
The negotiations in March signified a sharp turn in the Soviet leadership's attitude toward Chinese plans for socialist industrialization. In the complicated post-Stalin period, the leaders of the CPSU quickly abandoned Stalin's cautious policy toward the PRC. Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev were striving to gain Mao's support, fearing that he might take advantage of Stalin's death to cast off Soviet tutelage. Sensing danger, they went all out to indulge Mao. They wanted to preclude the possibility that China might go the way of Yugoslavia, an independent communist state. Khrushchev, at least, understood very well that the late dictator had pursued an imperialist foreign policy. To all appearances, he genuinely tried to change this.11 Beria and Malenkov probably were in the same boat. Unlike Molotov and Mikoyan, none of the three had been directly involved with Stalin's China policy and therefore bore no responsibility for Stalin's denigration of Mao.
Moscow's new position meant that Mao could now seriously depend upon wide-scale Soviet assistance for the construction of an industrialized socialist China. With Soviet political support and economic cooperation he could finally crush the intraparty opposition that had opposed his plans to abandon New Democracy. The discussions at the Conference on Financial and Economic Work and its decisions reflected this new ideological-political situation.
After Mao's victory over the “moderates” in the summer of 1953, any polemic in the Chinese Communist Party could occur only within the framework of the dominant ideological tendency, aimed at constructing a powerful socialist state. The general line of the party on constructing socialism did not replace the political program of the CCP, but it did define its concrete social and political objectives and clarified the means of achieving them.
The adoption of the general line provoked additional conflict within the party leadership. The discussion generated by the formulation of the new course clearly indicated the positions of the contending sides. Mao provided the initial definition of the general line in early June 1953 while familiarizing himself with the draft report on the relationship between the party and capitalist industry and commerce, prepared by Li Weihan, secretary of the State Council and head of the United Front Department of the Central Committee.12 During a Politburo discussion of this draft on June 15, 1953, Mao said: “The general line or general task of the Party for the transition period is basically to accomplish the industrialization of the country and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce in ten to fifteen years, or a little longer.”13 Obviously, for the time being he was still rather cautious, apparently trying to secure formal support of his new course from all the members of the Politburo. He did not want to frighten the “moderates,” and he even mentioned in passing a “step-by-step” transition to socialism.14 However, he severely criticized those who had failed to understand that a shift in the character of the revolution had occurred (the “right” deviation) while mildly admonishing the “mistakes” of those who “had gone too fast” (the “left” deviation).
The Politburo supported Mao's ideas, but “moderates” like Liu Shaoqi tried to attenuate their revolutionary impulse by changing several key words in the text. On June 23, 1953, speaking at the Conference on Financial and Economic Work, Li Weihan, in the name of the Politburo, offered the following proposition:
From the time of the creation of the People's Republic of China our country has entered into a transitional period, a time of gradual transition to socialist society. The general line and the general task during the transitional period consists of gradually achieving the basic industrialization of the country and gradually achieving the basic transformation of agriculture and handicraft industry as well as of capitalist industry and commerce in the course of a protracted period of time.15
The new formulation did not indicate the time frame of the new course (“ten to fifteen years, or a little longer”) and the word “gradual,” repeated three times, apparently was of particular significance.
Toward the end of the conference, Mao again attempted to change economic policy radically. On August 10, during a Politburo discussion of the text of the Concluding Report, which Zhou Enlai intended to deliver at the conference and which contained the Politburo's formulation, he proposed a third formula that carefully avoided the term “gradually.” At the same time he agreed not to provide a specific time frame. Although the remainder of the text was unaltered, its general meaning changed. Mao's new version read:
The time between the founding of the People's Republic of China and the basic completion of socialist transformation is a period of transition. The Party's general line or general task for the transition period is basically to accomplish the country's industrialization and the socialist transformation of industry of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce over a fairly long period of time.16
Accepting this definition, Zhou Enlai made the appropriate corrections to his Concluding Report.17 On September 8, 1953, he unveiled this formulation at an enlarged plenum of the Standing Committee of the All-China Committee of the CPPCC.18 However, other “moderates” continued to maneuver, and in December 1953 they presented yet another version of the general line. They added the word “gradually” to the verb “accomplish” in Mao's formula, and this new definition of the general line was inserted into the Central Committee's thesis for propagating the party's general line during the transitional period, which thesis was titled, “Struggle to Mobilize All Forces to Transform Our Country into a Great Socialist State.”19 On February 10, 1954, the final formulation calling for the “step by step” implementation of industrialization and socialist transformation was adopted by the Fourth Plenum of the CCP Central Committee.20
Mao was absent from the plenum, resting up at Hangzhou while Liu Shaoqi directed the forum. Liu had to engage in self-criticism for having mistakenly asserted that “China was suffering from the underdevelopment of capitalism.”21 Thus a compromise was achieved. Mao accepted the cautious formulation of the general line while the “moderates” in the person of Liu apologized for their “right deviation.” But as soon became evident, the Chairman had no intention of maintaining this balance of power. New Democracy became obsolete, and China began to move forward along the path of constructing Stalinist socialism. Moscow adopted a benevolent attitude.
Meanwhile, Mao had to resolve myriad problems, including intraparty ones. Chief among them in 1953–54 was “unmasking” Gao Gang, the same “Comrade Zhang Zuolin” whom Stalin had compromised during the Moscow summit. Stalin, however, would not allow anyone to get at Gao, and only the death of the dictator and the establishment of equal relations with the Soviet leadership helped Mao get rid of the traitor who “provide[d] foreigners with information behind the back of the Central Committee.”22 Gao was not among Mao's ideological opponents. On the contrary, he was one of the most fervent partisans of the leftist course. In the late 1940s, in one of his telegrams to Kovalev, Stalin even criticized Gao for excessive leftism, and in the early 1950s Mao used Gao in his struggle against the “moderates.” On February 16, 1952, for example, Mao published a private letter to Gao Gang in the main party newspaper Renmin ribao (People's daily) that contained a detailed critique of the “right deviation.”23 Moreover, in private conversations with Gao, Mao often complained about the “conservatism” of Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai.24 He was unwilling, however, to forgive Gao his role as an informer for Stalin.
Not suspecting Mao's true feelings, Gao Gang treasured his “intimate” conversations with the Chairman as a mark of special trust. Therefore, he actively sought ways to eliminate the “moderates” from the higher echelons of party leadership. He actively circulated rumors in the party that the Central Committee contained “two groups that cannot be trusted: Liu Shaoqi heads one of them and Zhou Enlai the other.”25 He succeeded in winning over Rao Shushi, the head of the Organizational Department of the Central Committee, who had earlier been the boss of the Shanghai region, as well as several other leading officials. The conspirators had already begun to divide up the positions—Gao Gang intended to occupy Liu's place, and Rao Shushi the post of prime minister—when Mao learned of their plans from Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping, both of whom Gao had unwisely tried to win over to his side.26 He was furious. Mao had no desire to replace Liu and Zhou with Gao and Rao despite the differences between himself and “the moderates.” During his meeting with Deng, restraining his rage, Mao asked Deng what he thought about all this and how he would advise him to proceed. Deng, knowing of Mao's fondness for classical aphorisms, replied with the words of Confucius: “If a gentleman forsakes humanity, how can he make a name for himself?”27 Mao could not but agree. At a Politburo meeting on December 24, 1953, Mao attacked Gao and Rao, accusing them of “conspiratorial” activity. On Mao's initiative, in February 1954, Liu Shaoqi presented the so-called Gao Gang–Rao Shushi Affair to the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee. Both conspirators were accused of “sectarianism” and “factionalism,” of establishing “independent kingdoms,” and of organizing a plot to seize power. The Fourth Plenum censured Gao and Rao but did not expel them from the party. Nonetheless, Gao committed suicide on August 17, 1954, apparently because he became convinced that Mao had betrayed him. After all, while concocting the plot against Liu and Zhou, he assumed he was acting with the Chairman's tacit approval.28 In March 1955, the All-China Conference of the CCP considered the Gao Gang–Rao Shushi Affair. It expelled Gao Gang and Rao Shushi from the party and affirmed the political line of Mao Zedong, in effect calling for the uprooting of all of his enemies.29 (Rao would be imprisoned and died in his cell in March 1975 from pneumonia.)
Mao's triumph in the Gao-Rao Affair, the first purge of top leaders in the history of the PRC, created a dangerous precedent that doomed a significant part of the party leadership to defeat in battles with the Chairman. The affair was an extraordinarily important episode. Thereafter the countrywide promotion of the Mao cult constituted the basic direction of ideological work in the Communist Party. The campaign to exalt Chairman Mao Zedong was well organized and extremely effective. The Selected Works of the Leader were the primary means of ideological indoctrination, and studying them became the duty of every citizen. In 1954, it is true, Mao suggested removing the term “Mao Zedong Thought” from circulation. He did this for tactical reasons in the context of evolving active relations with the USSR. The Propaganda Department of the Central Committee explained it as follows:
Their [Mao Zedong Thought] content and the content of Marxism-Leninism is identical…… In expounding the party statutes and the most important party documents that were adopted earlier, as before we must proceed from the original, and not substitute the latter. However, to avoid the possibility of false interpretations regarding differences in the content of both terms, it is necessary to indicate that Mao Zedong Thought is synonymous with the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.30
The purge of Gao, Rao, and their confederates provoked an intense and widespread campaign inside and outside the party to uproot “hidden” counter-revolutionaries. The politically active part of Chinese society, including many ganbu (party cadres) and intellectuals, could not easily accept abandoning New Democracy. They supported the New Democratic slogans of the CCP and were disoriented by the sharp turn of 1953. The party leadership resorted to ideological terror, employing the method of “study” that had been approved more than once, starting from the notorious zhengfeng (rectification of style) movement that had unfolded in the party in the early 1940s. During the Marxist indoctrination of 1951, Mao had used these same methods. He initially presented each of these campaigns as “pedagogic,” supposedly directed at educating backward intellectual cadres, and afterward he resorted to repression.
The next campaign began in 1954 as a scholarly discussion of the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber (incidentally, Mao's favorite novel). It quickly developed into a political witch hunt aimed at Yu Pingbo, a scholar who was the best-known expert on this novel. But this was only the beginning. Soon Mao attacked Hu Shi, a leading philosopher of pragmatism who had fled to Taiwan. Hu, whom Mao at one time had treated with great reverence, was now inscribed on his enemies' list. Hu's liberal philosophy undermined the ideological bases of the communist regime. Yu Pingbo and other cultural figures were accused of sympathy toward Hu Shi and Western bourgeois ideology.31 In late 1954, a struggle unfolded against Hu Feng, a poet, essayist, and literary critic who was a member of the CCP and one of the leaders of the League of Chinese Writers. As a well-known nonconformist among left-wing writers, Hu Feng, who defended freedom of speech, was accused of counterrevolunationary activity and of seeking to restore the Guomindang regime. The Maoists were no longer willing to tolerate him or his supporters, who criticized their harsh methods of guiding culture. In 1955 Hu Feng and seventy-seven other liberal intellectuals were arrested. In all, more than two thousand persons in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Nanjing were swept up in this affair.32 (All of them were rehabilitated only twenty-five years later.)
At the same time, a so-called doctors' plot was concocted involving physicians who treated the leaders of the CCP. Several doctors in Zhongnanhai were accused of attempting to poison high-ranking patients. In the words of an eyewitness, “this campaign was a hard lesson. Chinese had no rights. Everyone had to obey their ‘superiors' unconditionally…… A given individual was merely a tiny gear in an enormous and complicated machine. The slightest sign of dissatisfaction or deviation from established norms and the gear would be discarded.”33
Mao's campaign against intellectuals was merely the prologue to a nationwide movement against counterrevolutionaries that commenced in March 1955 and was aimed at uprooting all those who doubted his course in constructing socialism. During the next two years more than eighty thousand “counterrevolutionaries” were subjected to repression. According to information from a party leader in Canton that came to the attention of the Soviet embassy, no less than 7 percent of the officials of the local administrative and party apparatus were “involved in counterrevolutionary affairs to one degree or another.”34 The atmosphere of terror was such that in the latter half of 1955 more than 190,000 party members, fearing public humiliation, voluntarily appeared at the security organs with false self-accusations.35 More than four thousand people committed suicide. The ideological campaign among intellectuals also accelerated. Among the new targets of criticism was Liang Shuming, a leading Chinese philosopher renowned for his ideas of reforming rural China. Liang, who lived and worked in Beijing, supported the new government, but he tried to defend his independent point of view. Characteristically, he was one of a few social scientists who maintained his convictions in an atmosphere of ideological terror. Meanwhile, several other leading cultural figures, including Guo Moro, Mao Dun, and Zhou Yang, acted as a shock force of the ideological terror during these initial large-scale ideological campaigns. The wave of repression reached the countryside as well when in 1954–55 a number of former landlords and rich peasants were subjected to preemptive repression.
Ultimately, Mao triumphed. His general line aimed at the Stalinization of China along a Soviet model was supported both by the party and broad strata of the population. This was assisted not only by the campaigns of repression but by the economic successes that the communist regime, aided by the Soviet Union, had achieved in the first half of the 1950s. By 1953 the communists had managed to establish order in the country, accomplish land reform, and recover a national economy that had been wrecked during the long period of wars. They increased production of steel by approximately 80 percent, coal and cotton by 50 percent, and grain by 25 percent over 1950–53. As a result they reached the levels attained in 1936. They could even tackle inflation “by restraining demand and by stimulating supply.” The rate of inflation “declined from one in the hundreds of thousands to 20 percent in 1951 and well below 10 per cent in 1952.”36 Mao was so enthusiastic that he even included the formulation of the general line and an additional sentence regarding the significance for China of the Soviet experience in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which replaced the Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Council, which had functioned as the basic law up until then.?He introduced a suitable sentence in the revised version of Liu Shaoqi's report on the draft constitution.37
This constitution was adopted on September 20, 1954, by the first session of the new parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC). The highest state organs of the PRC were reorganized and the post of chairman of the People's Republic of China, in effect the president of the country, was established. Mao of course occupied it and Zhu De was his deputy. Liu Shaoqi was chosen as chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC. Zhou Enlai was confirmed as premier of the State Council.38
The new parliament was chosen as a result of elections that, while not universal, were still of a mass character. (“Class enemies” of the regime, as well as landlords and other “counterrevolutionaries,” were denied voting rights.) Thus the CCP derived its power from a “popular mandate,” and that is why the event was greeted so ecstatically in the USSR.
Nikita S. Khrushchev, who headed the Central Committee of the CPSU from September 1953, played the decisive role in defining Soviet policy toward the PRC. While Khrushchev was fighting for power, support from China was essential, and Mao helped him out at critical moments. CCP leaders fully accepted the absurd accusations, arrest, and physical elimination of Stalin's closest associate, Lavrentii Beria, the minister of internal affairs. They likewise quickly accepted the elimination of Malenkov. Mao was pragmatic about this. His interpreter Shi Zhe recalled him saying, “We will support whoever comes out on top [in the Soviet leadership].”39 Nevertheless, this did not diminish the significance of such support.
Khrushchev initially responded in kind, accepting post facto the resolution on Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi informed Soviet ambassador Yudin about this matter only in early February 1954.40 Prior to this, conversing in Hangzhou on January 2 with Ivan Tevosian, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and Yudin, Mao merely hinted at what had occurred. He told his guests a story about how in antiquity the kingdom of Qin had destroyed the kingdom of Chu. Mao noted that had this not happened “disorders might have arisen in China.”41 His Soviet guests, of course, did not understand this ancient story, but Mao was in no hurry to enlighten them. He personally informed Khrushchev about the matter several months later, on September 1, after the death of Gao.42 Even though the Chinese had acted without Moscow's sanction, Mao was not rebuked. The Chairman and his associates presented the purge of Gao and Rao as a parallel to the Beria affair in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets did not object.43
Soon, however, Soviet-Chinese cooperation entered a new phase. After receiving a request from the PRC government in 1954 to increase the size of Soviet loans for the construction of Chinese heavy industrial enterprises, Khrushchev responded with such enormous enthusiasm that he directed the appropriate ministries of the USSR to work up plans for furnishing such assistance on an unprecedented scale. He decided to make Mao a present, offering him a new long-term credit and broad-scale economic cooperation in various fields. Aid to China was placed under the direct control of the first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party,44 thereby becoming a priority item.45 At the same time, Khrushchev began to purge Soviet-Chinese relations of all the past misunderstandings and tried to put them on a true basis of equality. “We will live like brothers with the Chinese,” he reiterated. “If it comes to that, we will divide in half our last piece of bread.”46 He needed Mao's unconditional recognition of him as Stalin's successor and as the most authoritative leader not only of the CPSU, but also of the world communist movement. The chairman of the CCP enjoyed an extraordinarily high reputation throughout the communist world. Moreover, a close friendship with Mao would strengthen the eastern borders of the Soviet Union, by no means insignificant in the context of a worsening Cold War.
In late September 1954, Khrushchev convened a special meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU to secure approval of his China policy from the Soviet leadership. He declared, “We will let slip an historic opportunity to build and strengthen our friendship with China if …… we do not help to implement the most important projects in the forthcoming Five-Year Plan for the socialist industrial development of China.”47 It was Khrushchev's enthusiasm that compelled other leaders of the USSR to drop their objections.
Shortly after, on September 29, Khrushchev headed a Soviet party and government delegation to Beijing to participate in the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. During high-level meetings a number of agreements were signed by which the Soviet side extended to China a long-term foreign currency loan equal to 520 million rubles, expanded technical assistance in the sum of 400 million rubles for the construction of 141 industrial enterprises, and offered assistance in constructing an additional 15 industrial projects. Moreover, Khrushchev relinquished the Soviet share of four joint enterprisesn63 and returned the Soviet naval base in Lüshun, where Soviet troops had been stationed, to China. (During the Korean War, the USSR and China had agreed on September 15, 1952, to extend the stay of Soviet troops in Lüshun. Their withdrawal was scheduled for completion by May 26, 1955.) He also annulled the secret agreements that gave the USSR privileges in Manchuria and Xinjiang. Finally, he agreed to help China develop atomic weapons and to train nuclear specialists.48 In sum, Khrushchev's visit greatly helped accelerate the implementation of Chinese plans for socialist industrialization.49
At first sight, Mao was pleased. As he later conceded, “[T]he first time I met with Comrade Khrushchev, we had very pleasant conversations …… and established mutual trust.”50 He also acknowledged that “[W]e are thankful to him for this…… Comrade Khrushchev abolished the [previous] ‘cooperatives.' ”51 Khrushchev, however, went too far in his generosity. Where he should have been guided by reason, he was instead ruled by emotion. He had always wanted to see the world, but Stalin had not allowed him to go abroad. Now, at the first opportunity, Khrushchev giddily plunged into this new business. He made a fatal mistake at the very outset. Under no circumstances should he have paid Mao a visit first; he should have arranged for Mao to visit him. But the opportunity to visit China excited Khrushchev and he was unable to suppress his playful and enthusiastic impulses. He was happy as a child.52 At the departure from Moscow, he was making puns, teasing Mikoyan, and suggesting to Nikolai Shvernik, chairman of the Soviet Labor Union Association, that he “prepare himself to eat snake.”53 He was in the same elevated mood during his stay in China. He did not observe protocol, went around embracing and kissing Mao, which shocked the Chinese, joked around, told stories about Beria's sexual escapades, promised a lot, and gave a lot in the fashion of a merchant.
His conduct, like his excessively expensive gifts, in fact provoked a negative response from Mao, who, like Stalin, respected only force. Mao was unable to appreciate Khrushchev's cordiality, took it as a sign of weakness, and became convinced that the new Soviet leader was “a big fool.”54 This feeling led Mao to believe that Khrushchev was in need of his moral support.55 During the summit meetings, Mao and Zhou constantly tested Khrushchev, bombarding him with innumerable requests. Mao even asked him for the secrets of the atomic bomb and asked him to build China a submarine fleet.56 Although Khrushchev rebuffed most of these requests, the impression remained that he was a weak partner. For his part Mao was in no hurry to be effusive. He did not even want to introduce Khrushchev to his wife. When Zhou Enlai, following protocol, tried to steer Jiang Qing over to Khrushchev on the rostrum of Tiananmen Gate during the October 1 parade, Mao quickly took her by the hand and led her to the far side of the platform.57
The summit meeting signified the beginning of Mao's emancipation, of his deliverance from Soviet tutelage, as Khrushchev himself sensed by the end of his visit. Many years later he recalled:
When we made our trip to China in 1954 and held several meetings with Mao, I said to the comrades afterward: “A conflict between China and us is inevitable.” I drew this conclusion from remarks Mao had made and from the way our delegation was treated. A kind of Oriental atmosphere of sickly sweet politeness was created around us. They were unbelievably attentive, but it was all insincere. We lovingly hugged and kissed with Mao, swam in a pool with him, chatted away on various subjects, and spent the whole time like soul mates. But it was all so sickly sweet it turned your stomach. Some particular questions, on the other hand, that came up and confronted us put us on our guard. Most important, I had the feeling—and I said something about this to all my comrades even then—that Mao had not resigned himself to having any Communist Party other than the Chinese party be predominant in the world Communist movement, not even to the slightest extent. That he could not tolerate.58
For the time being, Mao's moods did not surface. Even he could not so easily free himself from respecting the “elder brother.” Moreover, China still wanted to receive Soviet assistance in building socialism.
Yet, after returning to Moscow, Khrushchev decided in December 1954 to furnish China at no cost 1,400 technical blueprints of major industrial enterprises and more than 24,000 sets of various scientific-technical documents.59 In March 1955, the Soviets signed a new agreement with China in which they promised to finance an additional sixteen industrial projects.60 A month later the Soviet Union and the PRC officially reached agreement on Soviet assistance to China in developing nuclear technology for peaceful means.61 Soon afterward, in August, the Soviet government sent the PRC a memorandum in which it offered to help in the construction of fifteen defense industry enterprises and fourteen new industrial complexes. Sometime earlier, in late 1954, the Chinese government had directed a request to Moscow concerning the possibility of increasing the Soviet role in developing China's defense and fuel industries.62
The Soviets continued to cooperate with the PRC in working out the final draft of their First Five-Year Plan, an economic program the Chinese had begun to discuss with them back in 1952. This draft was completed in February 1955, and on March 21, Deputy Premier Chen Yun introduced its main features to delegates at the National Party Conference. On March 31, the final draft was approved, and on July 5–6, Li Fuchun, chairman of the State Planning Commission, presented it to the deputies of the Second Session of the National People's Congress. On July 30, the Second Session of the NPC adopted the document as the official economic development plan of the PRC for 1953–57, embodying the CCP's policies of industrialization and socialist construction.63 The plan envisioned the completion of 694 major industrial projects including large electricity-generating stations, metallurgical enterprises, machine-building plants, and other complexes that would lay the foundation for the rapid development of heavy and defense industries. The Five-Year Plan was also intended to promote the cooperative movement in the countryside. The intention was to organize about one-third of peasant households into so-called semi-socialist lower-level agricultural producers' cooperatives by the end of 1957. In these cooperatives peasant proprietors would work together only in the joint economy while preserving private property rights with respect to the shares of land, cattle, and major agricultural equipment they brought into the cooperative. Income distribution would be done according to the amount of labor as well as their share of property. Moreover, there were plans to organize about two million urban handicraft workers into cooperatives. Finally, the majority of private factories and plants as well as commercial enterprises would be converted into state enterprises or enterprises under the control of the state. The government planned to raise the pay of industrial workers by one-third.64
The close cooperation between the Soviet leadership and the leaders of the PRC in the post-Stalin era enabled the PRC to develop the Five-Year Plan, which fit the needs of the Chinese national economy as well as the economic capabilities of the USSR. By this time the industrialization of China was already under way, and the overwhelming majority of specialists considered that China could successfully achieve the objectives laid out in the plan.
The results exceeded all expectations. The rate of growth of Chinese industry was much higher than what had been planned. According to various estimates, the annual growth rate was actually on the order of 16–18 percent. The gross industrial output more than doubled while the production of pig iron and steel even tripled.65 Soviet aid was of enormous significance. Although direct Soviet investment in the economy of the PRC was not that great—1.57 billion yuan, constituting just 3 percent of the total Chinese investment capital of 49.3 billion yuan66—it is difficult to overestimate the importance of Soviet aid. Besides providing China a certain amount of financial support, the USSR furnished at no cost an enormous volume of technical information that would have cost at least hundreds of millions of American dollars on the world market. While helping China construct a significant portion of its key industrial projects, the USSR also played a vital role in training scientific and technical personnel for the PRC. In the 1950s China sent more than 6,000 students and about 7,000 workers to study in the USSR. More than 12,000 specialists and advisers from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe came to China.67
Still, despite the importance of Soviet aid, it was the state investment in economic modernization that secured the rapid growth of Chinese industry. State capital investment constituted 97 percent of total investment in the basic branches of the economy. As in the USSR under Stalin, the countryside was the source for the primary accumulation of capital for financing urban industrialization. In building socialism the Chinese communists made use of Soviet experience, which, however brutal, had demonstrated enormous economic effectiveness.
1 Rakhmanin, “Vzaimnootnosheniia mezhdu I. V. Stalinym i Mao Tszedunom glazami ochevidtsa” (An Eyewitness Account of Relations Between J. V. Stalin and Mao Zedong), 80.
2 See Deriabin and Culver, Inside Stalin's Kremlin, 111–13.
3 See N. M. Przheval'skii, Putesheshestvie v Ussuriiskom krae: Mongolia i strana tangutov (Travels in the Ussuri Region: Mongolia and the Country of Tanguts) (Moscow: Drofa, 2007).
4 See RGASPI, collection of unsorted documents.
5 Pravda (Truth), March 11, 1953.
6 See Kartunova, Vstrechi v Moskve s Tszian Tsin, zhenoi Mao Tszeduna (Encounters in Moscow with Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife), 126; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, 257.
7 See Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 289–90.
8 See Kurdiukov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia (Soviet-Chinese Relations), 284; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 290.
9 See Kurdiukov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia (Soviet-Chinese Relations), 284–85; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 290.
10 Kurdiukov, Sovetsko-kitaiskie otnosheniia (Soviet-Chinese Relations), 285.
11 See Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 401–4. Subsequently, in conversations with Mao, Khrushchev repeatedly asserted that he had opposed Stalin's “senile stupidity.” See Zubok, The Mao-Khrushchev Conversations, 250, 261.
12 See Titarenko, Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (History of the Chinese Communist Party), vol. 2, part 1, 118.
13 Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 93. Emphasis added.
14 Ibid., 94.
15 Quoted from Titarenko, Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (History of the Chinese Communist Party), vol. 2, part 1, 119–20. Emphasis added.
16 Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 102. Emphasis added.
17 See Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 317.
18 See Zhou Enlai, Zhou Enlai xuanji (Selected Works of Zhou Enlai), vol. 2 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980), 104–5.
19 Borot'sia za mobilizatsiiu vsekh sil dlia prevrashcheniia nashei strany v velikoe sotsialisticheskoe gosudarstvo: Tezisy dlia izucheniia i propagandy general'noi linii partii v perekhodnyi period (Razrabotany otdelom agitatsii i propagandy TsK KPK i utverzhdeny TsK KPK v dekabre 1953 g.) (Struggle to Mobilize All Forces to Transform Our Country into a Socialist State: Theses for Studying and Propagandizing the Party's General Line in the Transitional Period [Prepared by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the CC CCP and Affirmed by the CC CCP in December 1953]) (Moscow: Gospoliizdat, [1957]), 10.
20 “Excerpt from the Communiqué of the Fourth Plenum (February 18, 1954),” in Teiwes, Politics at Mao's Court, 237. Emphasis added.
21 Quoted from K. V. Shevelev, “O nekotorykh aspektakh raboty 4-go plenuma TsK KPK 7-ogo sozyva” (On Several Aspects of the Work of the Fourth Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee of the CCP), in Perspektivy sotrudnichestva Kitaia, Rossii i drugikh stran Severo-vostochnoi Azii v kontse XX-nachale XXI veka. Tezisy dokladov VIII Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii “Kitai. Kitaiskaia tsivilizatsiia i mir. Istoriia, sovremennost', perspektivy,” Moskva, 7–9 oktiabria 1997 g. (Prospects for Cooperation Among China, Russia, and Other Countries of Northeast Asia at the End of the Twentieth and Beginning of the Twenty-first Century. Papers from the VIII International Scholarly Conference on China, Chinese Civilization, and the World: History, the Present, and the Future, Moscow, October 7–9, 1997) (Moscow: IDV RAN, 1997), 151.
22 Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 340.
23 See Gao Gang, Izbrannoe (Selections) (Moscow: IDV AN SSSR, 1989), 226–31.
24 See Short, Mao, 442.
25 Paul Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” CWIHP Working Paper, no. 36 (April 2002): 40.
26 See Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (1975–1982), 2nd ed. (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1995), 292–93.
27 See Teiwes, Politics at Mao's Court, 308–9. For the quotation from Confucius, see Confucius, The Analects of Confucius, trans. Simon Leys (New York: Norton, 1997), 17.
28 See Short, Mao, 442, 444, 737; Zhao Jialiang and Zhang Xiaoji, Banjie mubei xiade wangshi: Gao Gang zai Beijing (A Story Dug from Underneath a Half-Destroyed Tombstone: Gao Gang in Beijing) (Hong Kong: Dafeng chubanshe, 2008), 203–6, 238–45; Teiwes, Politics at Mao's Court, 240–52.
29 See Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” 28–29, 34–35, 40–41; Teiwes, Politics at Mao's Court; Short, Mao, 441–45.
30 Hongqi (Red flag), no. 2 (1981): 32.
31 Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 150–51. See also Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” 21–23.
32 See Cheng Bo, Zhonggong “bada” juece neimu (Behind the Scenes Decision-Making at the Eighth Congress of the CCP) (Beijing: Zhonggong dang'an chubanshe, 1999), 54–55; Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” 38–40.
33 Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 65.
34 Krutikov, Na kitaiskom napravleniu (Pointed Toward China), 183.
35 He Ganzhi, Istoriia sovremennoi revoliutsii v Kitae (History of the Contemporary Revolution in China) (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo literatury na inostrannykh iazykakh, 1959), 682.
36 Richard Evans, Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1997), 112. See also Titarenko, Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (History of the Communist Party of China), vol. 2, part 1, 36; Meisner, Mao's China and After, 107.
37 See Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 4 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1998), 548.
38 See Pervaia sessiia Vsekitaiskogo sobraniia narodnykh predstavitelei Kitaiskoi Narodnoi Respubliki pervogo sozyva (dokumenty i materialy) (The First Session of the First National People's Congress of the PRC [Documents and Materials]) (Beijing: Izdatel'stvo literatury na inostrannykh iazykakh, 1956).
39 See Shi Zhe, Feng yu gu—Shi Zhe huiyilu (Summit and Abyss: Reminiscences of Shi Zhe) (Beijing: Hongqi chubanshe, 1992), 103; see also Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” 10–12.
40 See Westad, Brothers in Arms, 38.
41 Ye, Ye Zilong huiyilu (Memoirs of Ye Zilong), 202.
42 See Mao's telegram to the Central Committee of the CPSU, September 1, 1954, published in Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 4, 537–38.
43 See Wingrove, “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953–1955,” 13–18; Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. 5, 337–38. See also the reminiscences of the former Soviet foreign minister Dmitrii Timofeevich Shepilov about Mao Zedong's meeting with a Soviet delegation, September 30, 1954, in Beijing. D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia” (Reminiscences), Voprosy Istorii (Problems of history), no. 9 (1998): 26.
44 See Koval, “Moskovskiie peregovory I. V. Stalina s Chzhou En'laem v 1952 g. i N. S. Khrushcheva s Mao Tszedunom v 1954 g.” (J. V. Stalin's Negotiations in Moscow with Zhou Enlai in 1952, and N. S. Khrushchev's with Mao Zedong in 1954), 108–13.
45 See Westad, Brothers in Arms, 16.
46 D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia” (Reminiscences), Voprosy istorii (Problems of history), no. 10 (1998): 25.
47 Quoted from Koval, “Moskovskiie peregovory I. V. Stalina s Chzhou En'laem v 1952 g. i N. S. Khrushcheva s Mao Tszedunom v 1954 g.” (J. V. Stalin's Negotiations in Moscow with Zhou Enlai in 1952 and N. S. Khrushchev's with Mao Zedong in 1954), 113.
48 See Westad, Brothers in Arms, 16, 39.
49 See Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 420–27; D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia” (Reminiscences), Voprosy istorii (Problems of history), no. 9 (1998): 18–31; no. 10 (1998), 3–30; Koval, “Moskovskiie peregovory I. V. Stalina s Chzhou En'laem v 1952 g. i N. S. Khrushchev s Mao Tszedunom v 1954 g.” (J. V. Stalin's Negotiations with Zhou Enlai in 1952 and N. S. Khrushchev's with Mao Zedong in 1954), 113–18; Shi, Feng yu gu (Summit and Abyss), 106–15.
50 Cited in Chen Jian and Yang Kuisong, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 285.
51 Mao, Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, 251, 256.
52 Many years later, he himself said that he “had literally looked with the innocent eyes of children on our relations with our Chinese brothers.” Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 445.
53 Quoted from D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia” (Reminiscences), Voprosy istorii (Problems of history), no. 9 (1998): 18.
54 Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, 272.
55 See Shi, Feng yu gu (Summit and Abyss), 101–5; Li Yueran, Waijiao wutai shang de xin Zhongguo lingxiu (Leaders of New China on the Diplomatic Stage) (Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chubanshe, 1994), 69–70.
56 See Nikita S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia. Izbrannye fragmenty (Reminiscences: Selected Fragments) (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), 336, 356–57; see also D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia (Reminiscences), Voprosy istorii (Problems of history), no. 10 (1998): 28–29.
57 Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, 262.
58 Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 3, 399–400.
59 See Titarenko, Istoriia kommunisticheskoi partii Kitaia (History of the Communist Party of China), vol. 2, part 1, 137.
60 See Zhang, Sino-Soviet Economic Cooperation, 202.
61 See Chen and Yang, “Chinese Politics and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” 257.
62 See Goncharenko, “Sino-Soviet Military Cooperation,” in Westad, Brothers in Arms, 147.
63 Materialy vtoroi sessii Vsekitaiskogo sobraniia narodnykh predstavitelei (5–30 iulia 1955 g.) (Materials from the Second Session of the National People's Congress, [July 5–30, 1955]) (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956), 256.
64 See Li, Report on the First Five-Year Plan, 43–91.
65 See “Memo, PRC Foreign Ministry to the USSR Embassy in Beijing, March 13, 1957,” CWIHP Bulletin, nos. 6–7 (1995/1996): 160; Meisner, Mao's China and After, 113; Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Several Important Political Decisions and Their Implementation), vol. 1, 295–96.
66 See China Quarterly, no. 1 (1960): 38.
67 See Meisner, Mao's China and After, 113. According to other statistics, more than 8,000 Soviet and East European advisers and experts worked in China in the 1950s while 7,000 Chinese were receiving special training and education in the USSR and Eastern Europe. See Zhang, Sino-Soviet Economic Cooperation, 202. Shepilov asserts that more than 11,000 Chinese students and more than 8,000 workers and technicians were trained in the Soviet Union. See D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniia” (Reminiscences), Voprosy istorii (Problems of history), no. 10 (1998): 26.
n63 The Soviet Union agreed to return its shares to China on January 1, 1955, in exchange for Chinese goods.