31 FAMINE AND FEAR

Throughout the summer of 1959 drought gripped Northeast China while torrential rains fell in the south. The exhausted population lost its enthusiasm for the Great Leap, but Mao still believed that the difficulties were temporary. He placed high hopes on 1960 and announced grandiose plans. “The situation in the country is excellent,” he insisted.¹ Now he demanded 300 million tons of grain and 20–22 million tons of steel despite the fact that the grain harvest in 1959 was only 170 million tons and steel 13 million tons. In the spring of 1960 Chinese newspapers heralded a “New Great Leap.”²

But in 1960 the entire country was in the grip of a terrible drought. There had been nothing like it since the beginning of the century. Rivers and canals dried up, and even the mighty Yellow River shrank. Following the drought came a period of torrential rains and typhoons. Rivers overflowed their banks. Weak dams collapsed and terrible flooding ensued. On more than half of the cultivated land the harvest either shriveled to the roots or was drowned. The grain harvest was a mere 143.5 million tons, more than 50 million less than in 1957, the year preceding the Great Leap. A humanitarian crisis unfolded throughout the country. China had never witnessed such a terrible famine in its entire history. Tens of thousands of people were dying every day in the countryside and in the cities.

The ones who suffered worst were peasants from whom the state had seized their last crumbs. In many villages there was simply nothing to eat. Emaciated villagers roamed the countryside, stripping off leaves and bark from trees, collecting worms, beetles, frogs, wild plants, and grasses. In many places they even ate dirt mixed with weeds, a concoction called Guan Yin tu (Goddess of Mercy earth). Death was the result of eating such food even though in some places it was boiled before being eaten. An eyewitness recalled, “People mixed it [the Guan Yin soil] with corn flour and the bread made of this mixture was …… very filling…… But once in the stomach, the soil dried out all the moisture in the colon…… Many people never made it to the hospital and others died on the operating table.”³

Once more, as in 1957–58, people began to hunt for sparrows, only now it was to relieve their hunger. Nor were other birds spared. Another eyewitness related that

we began to eat anything that flew. I practiced with a sling to shoot sparrows. After I caught one, I would take it home to my mother, and she would cook some soup for my grandmother…… That is why my grandmother did not die…… After the birds became scarce, we stripped tree leaves…… People even drained the ponds and ate practically everything that could be found there, even water snakes…… When there was almost nothing left, many people starved to death…… During the great famine, it was common to have two or three members of the family starve to death.⁴

In several provinces the population of entire villages died. A doctor who visited western Gansu with a group of inspectors reported:

Early one morning, we stopped at a big village but found few signs of life around the low mud huts. A few people could be seen who were so weak, they could hardly beg for food. The team leader raised his voice, shouting “Old folks, come out now! Chairman Mao and the Communist Party have sent doctors to rescue you!” He shouted over and over again. Eventually, those still alive crawled out of their houses. These were people struggling on the edge of death. If they fell over, they were unable to get up again. The team found one group of dead bodies after another. I pushed open the door of one hut and had to draw back because of the stink. A low groan came from inside and I saw two or three people lying still in the darkness on a kang. At the front lay an old man and one of his hands pointed at something. Together with him lay a woman who had long been dead and whose decomposing body was the source of the stench. The old man's hand was pointing at a small human body, four limbs spread out, mouth open wide. It looked as if the child was crying out but in fact the body had been lying dead for days.⁵

The situation in southeastern Fujian was no less horrifying. “We were so weak that we could not work,” recalled one of the local inhabitants. “Not long afterwards my brother starved to death. I still remember what he looked like before his death. He was too weak to walk. He lay in bed, uttering the same word, ‘eat, eat, eat.' He continued to groan until his last breath.”⁶

“Is Chairman Mao going to allow us to starve to death?” asked members of communes in letters to their sons who were serving in the army.⁷ In some places people rose up and attacked railroad grain cars, warehouses, and granaries, often under the leadership of party secretaries. Elsewhere peasants took to the roads and entered the cities, where they na vely supposed the people had ample supplies of rice and meat. In 1958–61 approximately 1 million people outmigrated from the villages of Anhui, 1.5 million from the people's communes in Hunan, 1.6 million from villages in Shandong. In all, more than 10 million people took part in this exodus. Many died along the roads, famished and emaciated. “The road from the village to the neighboring province was strewn with bodies,” recalled someone from Northeast China, “and piercing wails came from holes on both sides of the road. Following the cries, you could see the tops of the heads of children who were abandoned in these holes. A lot of parents thought their children had a better chance of surviving if they were adopted by somebody else. The holes were just deep enough so that the children could not get out to follow them but could be seen by passers-by who might adopt them.”⁸

Life was hardly better in the cities. The crowds of rural poor with glassy eyes and sunken cheeks elicited little sympathy from malnourished city folk. They, too, were stripping trees of their leaves and bark, catching birds, and gathering wild vegetables and grasses. The situation was no better in the capital. A Beijing resident recalled, “It was extremely hard to find anything to eat. But once a friend and I managed to get hold of some sugar. We were overjoyed! We really wanted to eat it all on the spot. However, after feasting our eyes on the sweet lumps, we decided to bring it to our colleague. He was in such a bad state that he had been hospitalized. But there was no food in the hospital either. He was so happy when we presented the sticky sugar to him. But he did not manage to eat it. He simply smiled and died.”⁹

Even within Zhongnanhai the famine made itself known. “Our rations had been reduced to sixteen pounds of grain a month,” recalled Mao's personal physician. “Meat, eggs, and cooking oil were nowhere to be had. We were allowed to buy vegetables on the open market, but there were hardly any for sale. Some people organized expeditions to hunt wild goats, but soon goats became extinct too…… Our stomachs were always half empty.”¹⁰

Mao resolved to suffer with everyone else. He gave up eating meat. “Everyone is starving. I can't eat meat,” he said to those in his entourage. Zhou Enlai gave up meat and eggs and curtailed his monthly consumption of rice to fifteen pounds. Many party leaders and their wives began to grow vegetables in the inner courtyards of their luxurious houses, to travel outside of town to gather wild grasses and edible roots, and to drink tea brewed from the leaves of trees. None of this, of course, had any impact upon the problem of hunger.

At this point, Khrushchev recalled all the Soviet specialists from China. He could not have administered a heavier or more ruthless blow to a starving nation. The meanest enemy is he who only recently was proclaiming friendship and brotherhood. Khrushchev was actually no less cruel than Stalin.

In six weeks 1,390 Soviet engineers and technicians, scientists, industrial designers, and other experts left China for the Soviet Union, taking with them all their scientific documents, plans, and blueprints. Many building sites were shut down and many scientific projects were halted. This exodus exacerbated China's economic crisis.

Khrushchev's decision was made hastily, in mid-July 1960, right after the congress of the Romanian Communist Party at which he had clashed with Peng Zhen, the head of the Chinese delegation.¹¹ During the nine months since Khrushchev's last unsuccessful visit to Beijing, relations between the two parties and the two countries had rapidly deteriorated. Thus Khrushchev's emotional outburst in Bucharest and his subsequent recall of experts from China were far from fortuitous. A covert sniping in the press and at various party forums continued throughout the winter and spring of 1959–60. Finally it emerged openly in late April 1960 on the ninetieth anniversary of Lenin's birth, April 22. On that date Red Flag, the theoretical journal of the CCP, published a lengthy editorial, “Long Live Leninism!” and People's Daily published a somewhat shorter lead article, “Forward along the Path of the Great Lenin!” These polemical articles took aim against Khrushchev's policy of “peaceful coexistence between two systems” as well as his thesis about “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.” Mao himself had done the final editing on the article in Red Flag, which was buttressed with quotations from Lenin, Marx, and Engels. Its main point was to demonstrate that Lenin had always considered war an inevitable consequence of imperialism. The Russian response was drafted by the old Comintern apparatchik Otto Kuusinen, who quoted Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaia, to the effect that her late husband had believed a time would come when wars would become so destructive it would be impossible to fight them.¹² The recollections of Krupskaia, however, could hardly persuade Mao and the other leaders of the CCP.

In June 1960, the Chinese emphasized their hard-line viewpoint at a session of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions meeting in Beijing. They were unwittingly assisted by the Americans, who stressed on the eve of the forum their continuing commitment to contain communism. On May 1, in the sky over Sverdlovsk, a city in the Ural Mountains, a Soviet rocket downed a U-2 plane engaged in intelligence gathering. Its pilot, Gary Powers, wound up in the hands of the Soviet authorities. Without deliberating, the choleric Khrushchev puffed up a spy scandal, not realizing this played into Mao's hands. Khrushchev wanted to confront Eisenhower, who had deceived him. The Chinese took advantage of the opportunity to intensify their criticism of what they regarded as Khrushchev's softheaded policy toward the imperialists, a policy that had brought about this situation. On May 12, Khrushchev, wishing to discuss this question with Mao, invited him to visit Moscow, but Mao refused.¹³

Now in Bucharest, clashing with Peng Zhen at the Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, Khrushchev exploded. He discarded his prepared text and suddenly poured invective on Mao personally. He called him an “ultra-leftist, an ultra-dogmatist, indeed, a left revisionist,” “a Buddha who gets his theory out of his nose,” and “an old galosh.” He also accused him of being “oblivious of any interests other than his own.”¹⁴ Peng responded in kind, accusing Khrushchev of blowing hot and cold in foreign policy. Khrushchev now switched to the subject of Stalin and the cult of personality. Fedor Burlatsky, who attended the congress, recalls that Khrushchev began to yell at the head of the Chinese delegation,ⁿ⁷⁶ “If you want Stalin, you can have him in a coffin! We'll send him to you in a special railway car!”¹⁵ Khrushchev returned to Moscow greatly agitated. It is quite unlikely that he seriously considered the impact his decision to recall Soviet experts would have on the Chinese economy. He simply wanted to punish Mao.

Meanwhile, people in China were continuing to starve. Mao adopted extreme measures, agreeing to the purchase of grain from abroad. In 1961 the PRC imported four million tons of grain from Australia, Canada, and the United States via third parties, and the next year it imported even more.¹⁶ But the crisis remained severe. Even Khrushchev suddenly grasped this, and on February 27, 1961, in a personal letter to Mao he offered to supply one million tons of grain—300,000 tons of wheat and 700,000 tons of rye—to China as well as 500,000 tons of Cuban sugar. He received a reply from Zhou Enlai who agreed to accept only the sugar. “The USSR itself is now experiencing difficulties,” Zhou declared, “therefore we do not want to burden the Soviet Union.”¹⁷

The Chinese authorities denied the existence of famine and did everything they could to conceal it. In the latter half of 1960, on Mao's instructions Edgar Snow, an “old friend” of the Chinese Communist Party, was invited on a five-month visit to China. Mao always believed that Snow was a CIA agent, so he permitted Snow to visit many interior regions, including the poorest ones, because he wanted to use him as a channel to inform Americans and the whole world about the absence of famine in China. Toward the end of Snow's visit he met with Mao twice and Zhou Enlai once. Mao was simple, sociable, and friendly, just as he had been in Baoan twenty-four years earlier. He told Snow about the “remarkable successes” of the Great Leap, especially in the production of steel, but he added that China as before was still a “poor and backward country.” However, he expressed no anxiety about this, simply noting that “people must become acquainted with difficulties, shortages, and struggle.” He said nothing about mass famine; Mao only indulged in black humor by saying that “the Chinese people are mostly vegetarians, and although they eat little meat, there is not enough.”¹⁸ Snow reported to the world just what the Great Helmsman wanted him to say. “I must assert that I saw no starving people in China, nothing that looked like old-time famine…… I do not believe there is famine in China.”¹⁹

Of course, the millions of Chinese dying of malnutrition had no inkling of what Snow said. Neither did the starving hear Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, who visited China twice, in May 1960 and September 1961. After meeting with Mao he asserted, “Talks of large-scale famine, of thousands dying from hunger, of grim want, of apathy, of a restless nation, are totally untrue, they are lies spread by those who want the regime of Mao Tse-tung [Mao Zedong] and his government to fail. All such talk is nonsense, maybe even dangerous.”²⁰ Nor did ordinary Chinese citizens know what Mao said to the French socialist Fran ois Mitterrand in February 1961: “I repeat in order to be clearly understood: there is no famine in China.”²¹ All this was repeated abroad.

Only in 1980, after the death of Mao, did China officially acknowledge the massive loss of life from famine during and after the Great Leap. Hu Yaobang, the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CCP, gave a figure of 20 million dead; however, according to various estimates this figure is too low. A more realistic figure would be 30 million, perhaps as high as 40 million or even more. The most recent Western study of the Great Famine based on Chinese local archives puts the number of deaths at a minimum of 45 million while a book by a Chinese dissident writer indicates deaths of 36 million.²² In the single province of Sichuan, with a 1957 population of 70 million, one out of every eight persons died, and in Anhui with 33 million and Gansu 12 million, one out of every four perished.²³ The overall economic loss from the Great Leap amounted to 100–120 billion yuan, which was twice as much as the capital investment in the PRC during the entire First Five-Year Plan.²⁴

In a democratic country after such a catastrophe the entire government would be replaced. But in the PRC all power belonged to the party-state bureaucracy, which relied upon the army, the police, and the extended bureaucratic apparatus. The party penetrated every cell of society, and dissenters were persecuted. The bureaucracy was recruited from the people itself, more precisely from its lowest social classes—the poorest peasantry, the Hakka, as well as former lumpens, paupers, and other proletarians. But the bureaucracy expressed its own corporate interests and cared most about protecting its own privileges and power. At the summit of power was a group of “old revolutionaries” who had taken part in the class struggles of the 1920s through the 1940s. “Today there are about 800 survivors of all those years,” Mao said to Edgar Snow in October 1960. “By and large the country is still being run and for some time will depend upon these 800.”²⁵

In such circumstances opposition could emerge only from within this narrow stratum of the party elite. It was the mood within this group that caused Mao the greatest anxiety, particularly after the Peng Dehuai affair. Famine and economic crisis might again cause dissatisfaction among his old comrades, many of whom still clung to their New Democratic inclinations.

He understood that something had to be done about the economy and perhaps politics, too, but he refused to acknowledge his fundamental errors. He needed to seize the initiative, but throughout the spring and most of the summer of 1960 Mao was terribly depressed. Not until August was he able to snap out of it. By this time there were voices in the government calling for an end to the Great Leap. In July 1960, the head of the State Planning Commission, Li Fuchun, suggested a new economic policy of “adjustment, consolidation, and raising standards.” He was supported by Zhou Enlai, who added to this formula one word, namely, “replenishment.” Chen Yun also expressed his strong approval for such a policy.²⁶

Mao understood the need to act promptly. He insisted on investigations but continued to blame the famine on local cadres. “In some communes, the cadres went too far; they lost any concept of discipline; without authorization from higher authorities they engaged in egalitarianism and redistribution,” he said shamelessly.²⁷ These were the cadres who needed to be investigated.

At the same time, he believed that vast numbers of city dwellers should be mobilized to help the peasants. Millions of industrial workers and intellectuals should be relocated to the countryside. During the Great Leap the urban population of China had doubled through an influx of working hands from the countryside. Now Mao decided to return at least some of them to the villages. Of course, “rightists and guilty persons” were swept up in this mobilization; many of those sent to the countryside, including intellectuals, had never actually worked there before. This did not bother Mao. “Man must eat every day whether engaged in industry, communication, education, capital construction, or any other enterprise; no one can do without grain,” the Chairman declared, demanding to “adopt all effective measures” in order to “strengthen the first line of agricultural production” by squeezing out “all of the labor force that can be squeezed out” for the rural people's communes.²⁸ His instructions immediately became the guide to action. Hundreds of thousands of city people were sent to work in the fields.

His main proposal, however, impacted basic policies. In September 1960, he demanded that the members of the Politburo Standing Committee make the “production brigade” or the “team” consisting of twenty or so households the basic accounting unit. The people's communes would remain only as the basic administrative units as well as one of the elements in the tripartite system of property in the countryside. This system, which had come into effect after the establishment of the people's commune, was one in which a part of the means of production—for example, almost all of the land—had belonged to a commune consisting of 40,000–50,000 persons while another part was divided up among the big production brigades consisting of some 6,000 persons, and the production brigades or teams at the lowest level consisting of some 200 or so people. Thus, each level of property corresponded to a certain level of collectivization.

In early November the Central Committee issued a twelve-point directive titled “Emergency Directives on Current Policies regarding Rural People's Communes,” which also allowed peasants to have small personal plots and to engage in sideline handicraft enterprises on a small scale. Zhou Enlai authored this document.²⁹

Soon, in the name of the Central Committee, Mao directed provincial, municipal, and district party committees to ensure that “the five epidemics be thoroughly eliminated,” meaning the collectivization of personal belongings, deception, commandism, the isolation of cadres, and blind command of production. Emphasis was to be put on eliminating the “epidemic of collectivizing [personal] property.”³⁰

Mao's tilt to the right was palpable, but the Chairman did not even consider capitulating to the “moderates.” He simply wanted to be seen as the source of the reforms, and he succeeded. The next regular plenum of the Central Committee, held in January 1961, approved the reform of the communes. The party retreated to the era of higher-level agricultural producers' cooperatives of the mid-1950s. But Mao was satisfied because the participants in the plenum echoed his ideas.

At the end of the meeting he again called upon everyone to engage in investigations. “We must look at everything through our own eyes, not others', listen with our own ears, and touch things with our own hands…… In all we must proceed from practice,” he urged them. He also gently admonished the Central Committee, noting that “last fall …… it did not see the situation clearly, did not grasp things well and did not make full corrections.” In this way he underscored that he was the initiator of the new policy of adjustment, having sized up the situation in good time. “1961 must become the year of a realistic approach to our affairs,” Mao declared and added, “There is no need to be discouraged if you made a mistake.”³¹ He easily dodged a crisis in the party.

Nevertheless, he still had a very poor grasp of economics. “There are many issues of economic construction I do not understand,” he said in a moment of frankness. “I am not well-versed in industry and commerce; I know a little about agriculture, but only to a certain degree, that is, I understand a little.”³² This is precisely why he fell into deep depression in the spring of 1960, when he finally understood that the famine was catastrophic. Although he resumed activity in the autumn, his mood remained depressed. He knew that the Great Leap had failed but he had no clear plan for correcting the errors. To return to New Democracy would have meant repudiating the entire experience of building socialism, to admit having been wrong in his dispute with the “moderates,” and to lose face. Yet to bulldoze one's way forward to communism was to risk a powerful explosion of popular indignation. “You know, we have a lot of experience when it comes to policy, political directives, political methods, military affairs, and class struggle,” he said to Snow in October 1960, “but as far as socialist construction is concerned, we had never been engaged in it, and we still don't have much experience. You might ask, haven't you been doing it now for eleven years? Indeed, we have, but we still lack knowledge, our experience is insufficient, and one might say we have just begun to accumulate some experience, but it is still only a little.”

This is why the first thing he thought of was to return for a time, at least for the next seven years, to the pre–Great Leap forms of organizing production. Beyond that he had no idea whatsoever. When Snow asked him about his long-term plans for economic development in China, Mao replied, “I don't know.” Snow was astounded. “You are speaking too cautiously.” But Mao reiterated, “It's not a question of whether I'm being cautious or not, it's simply that I don't know; we simply lack experience.”³³

Abandoning his ambitious Great Leap plans, he now believed it would be impossible to build a powerful socialist economy in China in the next fifty years. “In order to catch up with and overtake the most advanced capitalist countries,” he said entirely without enthusiasm, “it will take a hundred years or more in my opinion.”³⁴ In the middle of April 1961, he issued instructions to shutter the communal dining halls, which, in his words, had developed into “fatal tumors.”³⁵

Feeling dispirited, he decided to retreat to the “second line” and allow other members of the party to lead. He entrusted Liu Shaoqi, who of course was a “moderate” but still supporting Mao fanatically, to implement the new eight-character line, that is, “adjustment, consolidation, raising standards, and replenishment.” Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping, and other members of the Politburo were to help Liu, whom Mao now began to speak of as his successor. Several years later, he explained: “What I am responsible for is the division [of the leadership] into first and second lines. Why did we make this division into first and second lines? The first reason is that my health is not very good [here Mao was being cunning]; the second was the lesson of the Soviet Union. Malenkov was not mature enough, and before Stalin died he had not wielded power. Every time he proposed a toast, he [Liu] fawned and flattered. I wanted to establish their prestige before I died.”³⁶

Mao did not stop attending conferences and meetings, but his speeches now became perfunctory. He continued to call upon administrators to conduct “systematic investigations and study of reality,” and not “to view flowers from horseback.” He grumbled that “cadres at all levels still do not really understand what socialism is,” and he called for a struggle against the “evil wind of [excessive] collectivization.”³⁷ He could do nothing more.

Epochal events were occurring throughout the country. In Anhui and elsewhere peasants began adopting so-called household contracts that meant actually dividing the land and assigning responsibility for production to families. They signed agreements with the local authorities to rent land de facto from the brigade or the team, promising to fulfill grain quotas to the state during the harvest season. This happened spontaneously (“rather suddenly,” as Mao Zedong would say later on) and then began to spread like a chain reaction.³⁸ Some party leaders perceived no danger in this undertaking. The first secretary of the Anhui party committee even supported it. Some believed that “[p]easants were very concerned about their own profit. If the profit is to be shared with ten thousand people, they will not work; if it is shared with one thousand, they will work a little bit; if shared with one hundred, they will work a bit more; if shared by ten, they will work even better; and if shared only by their own family, they work the most.”³⁹

Of course, no one in the party thought of distributing land to the peasants as their private property. The small sideline plots were alloted only for short-term use and even then not everywhere. Thus it is not surprising that the secretary of the Anhui party committee considered this a temporary expedient that would not damage socialism but would solve the short-term problem of hunger. By midsummer 1961, 5 percent of the land in Anhui was being cultivated by individual peasant households.⁴⁰

Many Central Committee leaders reacted positively to the Anhui initiative. “The peasants are doing nothing now but complain,” Chen Yun said in exasperation. “They are saying that under Chiang Kai-shek they ‘suffered' but had plenty to eat. Under Mao Zedong everything is ‘great' but they eat only porridge. All we have to do is give the peasants their own land. Then everyone will have plenty to eat.”⁴¹ What could it mean for Mao It doesn't matter if it is socialism or capitalism as long as the economy develops and the people are living well?

Liu Shaoqi, who just a month before had seemed to be a fanatical supporter of Mao, drew the most unwelcome conclusions from Mao's perspective. Returning from a trip to his native district of Ningxiang in Hunan, at a working session of the Central Committee in May 1961 he said, “The peasants in Hunan have a saying, ‘Three-tenths of misfortune comes from Heaven, seven-tenths from man.' …… There are some places in the country where the main reason [for difficulties] was natural disasters, but I'm afraid there are not many such places. In most places the main reason is shortcomings and mistakes in our work.” He went on, “There are comrades who consider this a matter of one finger and nine fingers. But I'm afraid that it is obvious now …… that if we talk all the time about nine fingers and one finger and do not change this equation, this will contradict reality.”⁴² This remark was essentially an attack against Mao since everyone knew that the Chairman loved to compare achievements and failures according to the principle of “nine healthy fingers and one sick one,” a formula he even applied to the Great Leap. But Liu could not restrain himself. The visit to his native village really shook him. Over the course of forty days, Liu had become acquainted with conditions on the spot. Prior to his departure, on saying farewell to the peasants of his native village, he was unable to cover up how upset he felt. “I have not been home for forty years, and I wanted very much to come here and see how things are. Now that I have returned I can see that the lives of my fellow villagers are very difficult. We have done our work badly; please forgive us!”⁴³

At this meeting Deng Xiaoping supported Liu Shaoqi. Many others were similarly inclined. Not expecting such a blow, Mao looked embarrassed. Taking the floor, he acknowledged mistakes. “And now they are taking retribution upon us,” he said. “The soil is not fertile, people and livestock are emaciated. The retribution is for the policies of the past three years. And who is guilty? The Central Committee and I bear the heaviest responsibility. I bear the major responsibility.”⁴⁴ He also noted that for a long time he had “profoundly not understood how to build socialism in China.”⁴⁵ For a time, in mid-1961, Mao was even ready to recognize the Anhui experiment, but not for long.

He was greatly demoralized. “All the good party members are dead. The only ones left are a bunch of zombies,” he said to his physician. “What we want, though, is socialism,” Mao said in a moment of frankness. “We are facing difficulties in agricultural production now, so we have to make concessions to the peasants. But this is not the direction we should take in the future.”⁴⁶

The intraparty opposition continued to gain strength. Indirect criticism directed at Mao grew continuously and once more he felt isolated as he had many years before in southern Jiangxi. Again he felt like chucking it all and going off into the mountains. Let them send messengers imploring him to return!

Meeting Field Marshal Montgomery for a second time, Mao raised the subject of death. Mao was then in his sixty-ninth year, his guest was seventy-five, but the Chairman ignored etiquette. He observed that one might die at any moment from any number of causes, but he considered death from illness the most likely. He told the field marshal that a popular belief existed in China that seventy-three and eighty-four were the critical years in life. If a person survived these milestones he would live to be one hundred. Mao said that he himself had no desire to live past seventy-three. He intended “to join Karl Marx” since “he had much to discuss with Marx.” He again referred to Liu Shaoqi as his successor.⁴⁷

Throughout the second half of 1961, Mao's mood was gloomy, and it did not improve in 1962. At an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee in January and February, Mao encountered the most serious criticism he had been subjected to recently. More than seven thousand leaders had assembled from all over China. It is no wonder that some of them “went too far,” particularly since members of the Politburo set the tone. Peng Zhen raised the question of the personal responsibility of top leaders for the failures of the Great Leap, and suggested that blame should be put on the Central Committee, including the Chairman, Liu Shaoqi, and other members of the Politburo Standing Committee if they deserved it. He even added, “If Chairman Mao's prestige isn't as high as Mt. Everest, it is certainly as high as Mt. Taishan, so much so that even if you remove a few tons of earth away, it is still very high. It is like the East China Sea (even if you remove several buckets of water, there is still a lot left)…… But if Chairman Mao has committed a 1 per cent error or even a one in a thousand error, it would be odious to our Party if he did not self-criticize.”⁴⁸

Mao should have blamed himself. He had to be more careful in selecting leading cadres. After deciding that he would provoke everyone else, he determined to include in the conference agenda the question of democratic centralism and criticism and self-criticism, standard CCP techniques to assess the loyalty of party members. His intent was to test the soundness of his comrades by giving them a chance to “let off steam.” He wanted to lure the venomous snakes from their holes by once more using the tried and true tactic of “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” but this time applied to the party.

He got more than he bargained for in Liu Shaoqi's astounding speech. “Earlier we invariably said that the ratio between shortcomings and mistakes and successes was one to nine,” Liu began, repeating the conclusion about the unfavorable relationship between subjective and objective factors responsible for economic crisis, and then added, “Now, I'm afraid, we cannot say that this applies to all regions, but only to a few.” At this point Mao interrupted. “There are quite a few such regions,” he muttered, but Liu Shaoqi continued. “If one speaks of the country as a whole we cannot say that the ratio between shortcomings and successes is one finger to nine fingers. I'm afraid we have to say three fingers to seven fingers.”

Mao was unhappy, but Liu was not finished. “There are even some regions in the country,” he noted, “in which the shortcomings and mistakes outweigh the successes.”⁴⁹ According to an eyewitness, Liu Shaoqi's speech completely ruined Mao's mood.⁵⁰

At this point local representatives entered the fray. One declared that subjectivism was the main problem that had arisen in recent years. Others questioned Mao's thesis that shortcomings derived from lack of experience. Everyone knew that the CCP had also lacked much experience during the struggle to fulfill the First Five-Year Plan. “Why then did not as many problems arise as they have now?” several party cadres asked sharply.⁵¹

How could Mao respond? All he could say was that he was to blame. And he did. “I bear responsibility for all of the errors directly committed by the Central Committee,” he said. “I also will answer in part for the indirect errors of the Central Committee for I am the chairman of the Central Committee.” That is as far as his self-criticism went, although he also acknowledged that for him economics remained “an unknown realm of necessity.” Almost everyone knew this. Mao directed his main fire against other party leaders who, in his words, “commit errors but remain silent, fearing that others will talk about it.” He warned such persons “the more you are afraid, the more you will be pursued by devils…… All those who shun responsibility, who fear responsibility, who do not allow others to speak out, who are afraid to stroke the tiger, all those who cling to such a position, will undoubtedly fail.” He even managed to joke to the assembled, “Are you really afraid to stroke the tiger?” adding, “In my speech I criticized various phenomena and criticized various comrades, but I did not name any names…… You yourselves can figure it out.”⁵²

Everyone laughed, although many were in no mood for humor. After the Chairman's speech, numerous party leaders engaged in self-criticism, but only a few enthusiastically supported Mao's speech, Lin Biao among them. He said that he “felt strongly that when our work was going well it was a period when we were implementing the ideas of Chairman Mao, a period when the ideas of Chairman Mao were not being obstructed…… If we encounter any problem, any difficulty, it is because we have not followed the instructions of the Chairman closely enough, because we ignored or circumscribed the Chairman's advice. Such is the history of our party over several decades.” Based on this logic, Lin explained that the mistakes of the Great Leap occurred because “we did not heed the warnings of Chairman Mao.” The secretary of Mao's native county party committee, the able and efficient Hua Guofeng, also delivered a panegyric to the Chairman. Mao remembered this fine fellow from his trip to Shaoshan in 1959. He had liked him then and he liked him now. But it was Lin's speech that was balm to his wounded soul. This was hardly an accident since Mao had edited the speech himself.⁵³

The Great Helmsman was irritated by most of the other speeches and increasingly disappointed with his associates. He was tired, looked somewhat pinched, and had aged a lot. The atmosphere in the Politburo sickened him. On February 8, the day after the forum, he turned daily affairs over to Liu Shaoqi and left Beijing, intending not to return for a long time. He wanted to see how these “big headed know-it-alls” would cope with running the state. He did not view them as enemies, of course, but his resentment toward them was constantly growing. He had intentionally relinquished his power, retreated to the “second line” in order to bolster their influence in the country prior to his death, and now suddenly everything moved “in the opposite direction.”⁵⁴ Let them suffer without him!

That same evening his associates convened a working meeting, chaired by Liu Shaoqi, at which they analyzed the economic situation in the country. The budget deficit was more than 300 million yuan and prospects for the future were disturbing, to put it mildly. Chen Yun, who was considered the best economist among the members of the Politburo, shouldered the task of working out concrete proposals for dealing with the situation. In essence, his plan, presented two weeks later, was to curtail the urban population, the army, and the administrative apparatus significantly, and to shift the center of gravity of economic construction from industry to agriculture. That is as far as he went. He offered no radical ideas. Liu Shaoqi warned that China might be on the threshold of civil war if the leadership did not promptly adopt concrete measures to improve the food situation. They all recognized the gravity of the economic situation.⁵⁵

Meanwhile, after withdrawing to Hangzhou, Mao was nursing his wounds. On February 25, he instructed his secretary, Tian Jiaying, to assemble a small commission and travel to the same places in Hunan where Liu Shaoqi had recently been. They should also visit Shaoshan and the neighboring village of Tangjiatuo, the birthplace of Mao's mother, to talk with the people and assess the situation. Liu's assertion that people, that is, the Chairman himself, were chiefly responsible for the failure of the Great Leap gnawed at Mao. He wanted to refute this calumny. Tian Jiaying suited this purpose better than anyone else. Mao recalled how Tian had sharply condemned the contract system in March 1961 after a trip to Anhui, where, on assignment from Mao, he had conducted his first investigation of this innovation. Tian had considered the contract system inhumane because there was no place in it for widows and orphans. Just thinking of what would become of the latter if the contract system was extended throughout the whole country distressed Mao's good-hearted secretary.⁵⁶ Now he was charged with collecting material that would enable the Chairman to refute his associates.

Arriving in Hunan, Tian was genuinely shocked by what the peasants told him. Most of them cursed the Great Leap and praised the contract system. Some even wished to return to New Democracy. The secretary had no choice but to report all this to Mao, who made a wry face and said, “We are among those people who follow the mass line, but sometimes it is impossible to listen to everything that the masses say. For example, it is impossible for us to listen to what they say about the contract system.”⁵⁷

Tian also spoke with Chen Yun and Liu Shaoqi and was pleased that they took the side of the peasants. Deng Xiaoping also supported the contract system. Liu, Deng, and Chen worked hard all spring to restore the economy. Slowly the situation began to improve due to extension of the contract system. By the summer of 1962, between 20 and 30 percent of the land was in the hands of the peasants.⁵⁸ This was enough to enable the country gradually to overcome the profound food crisis. In 1961, the production of grain increased by 4 million tons, and in 1962 by 12.5 million tons.⁵⁹ Liu, Deng, and Chen concluded that without the widespread division of land among households, there would be no way to secure steady economic growth. Chen was particularly radical in this respect. “This is an emergency measure for an unusual time,” he said. “You may call it ‘household division of land,' or ‘assignment of tasks by household,' either way is fine…… The state has encountered colossal disasters brought about both by nature and by man, and we must let all the peasants, following the words of The International, ‘save' themselves and ‘decree the common salvation.' They will restore production faster than anyone else.”⁶⁰

Liu and Deng supported Chen. Deng even asserted by using an old Sichuan and Anhui proverb, “It does not matter if it is a black cat or yellow cat, as long as it catches mice it is a good cat.”⁶¹ Zhou Enlai offered no objections. Deng Zihui, head of the Central Committee's Rural Work Department, did all he could to promote the contract system.

Moreover, in March, Liu and Deng had begun working to rehabilitate the hundreds of thousands of so-called rightists targeted by the purges of the late 1950s. “Beginning in 1959,” Liu wrote to the minister of public security, “many local organs of the Ministry of Public Security and even communes and brigades, using methods of long-term detention and lengthy reeducation through labor, actually deprived a large number of people of their freedom, some of whom died of hunger or were tortured to death…… This was not stopped completely even in 1961. I encountered such a situation last year in Hunan. You must seriously investigate, disclose, criticize, and correct this lawlessness.”⁶² Neither Liu nor Deng spoke of rehabilitating Peng Dehuai and his “confederates.” These men were too important. They did succeed in vindicating more than 3,500 rank-and-file rightists.⁶³

Buoyed by support from Liu and other leaders, Tian Jiaying told Mao that if peasants were allowed to choose, the number of households on the contract system would soon grow to 40 percent, and only 60 percent of families would remain in the cooperatives. He cautiously added that when production was restored at a later date, the peasants might be induced to return to the collectives. Mao calmly inquired, “Is this only your personal opinion or do others also think this way?” Tian replied, “It's just mine.”⁶⁴ He did not want to betray Liu and Chen. But Mao knew very well what was going on in his absence. He understood that the loyalty the “moderates” showed him was just a formality. He now decided to strike the intraparty opposition a crushing blow from which it would never recover.

He returned to Beijing in early July 1962 and immediately summoned Liu, Zhou, Deng, and Tian. He also invited Chen Boda, the editor in chief of Red Flag, knowing that Chen would always take his side. Mao raged against the contract system and instructed Chen Boda to prepare a draft Central Committee resolution to strengthen the collective economy of the people's communes.⁶⁵ Chen Yun was absent from this meeting. Mao had met with Chen earlier and expressed his indignation at his plan to divide up the land. “Comrade Mao Zedong was incensed,” Chen Yun subsequently recalled.⁶⁶

All of Mao's associates retreated. Chen Yun complained about his poor health. Deng Xiaoping, who just the day before had repeated his favorite phrase about different-colored cats at a Communist Youth League meeting, urgently called the first secretary of its Central Committee to demand that his unfortunate remark be deleted from the stenographic record of his speech.⁶⁷

As always, the cautious Zhou Enlai supported Mao. The Great Helmsman said that Zhou had been taught a lesson when he had opposed “blindly rushing forward” back in 1956–57.⁶⁸ Liu Shaoqi also tried to alter course; he began defending collective property passionately just a few days after the “cold shower” that Mao Zedong had administered. On July 18, the Central Committee issued a circular prohibiting propagating family contracts.⁶⁹

Mao continued to rage. He repeatedly summoned first Liu and then Zhou and vented his anger upon them. “I feel that the situation is very serious!! Very unsettled!” one of the Central Committee leaders wrote in his diary in these days, and he underlined these words.⁷⁰

Mao sharply criticized Chen Yun, Deng Zihui, Tian Jiaying, and other Party cadres. “Are you for socialism or for capitalism?” he shouted. “Now some people speak out in favor of introducing the contract system on a national scale, including even dividing up the land. Is the communist party in favor of dividing up the land?”⁷¹

From the end of July to the end of August, Mao held another Central Committee work conference and tongue-lashed the terrified party officials. “You have also pressured me for a long time,” he said menacingly. “Since 1960, one may say, that is, for more than two years. I can also pressure you in return.”⁷² He simply seethed with rage. “Some persons are suffering from ideological confusion; they have lost their way, they have lost their faith. This is no good,” he fulminated. At this conference he raised for the first time the issue of antagonistic classes in socialist society, interpreting the disagreements within the party in class terms. This made his speech truly ominous.

Mao apparently achieved his goal of inspiring terror in his auditors. In his struggle against the “moderates,” he had seemingly gone as far as he could go. Now they were all his class enemies, and settling scores with them was just a matter of time. He wanted to warn the waverers just how dangerous a road they were treading in arguing about contracts and other “bourgeois things.”

He was incredulous that other communists did not see that the family contracts had resulted in “polarization, corruption, thievery, speculation, the taking of concubines, and usury. On one hand is the growth of wealth, on the other the poverty of the families of military men, heroes who fell in battle, workers, and cadres…… Even Khrushchev did not dare to disband the collective farms.”

“Counterrevolution still exists,” Mao summed up, even raising the specter that the Communist Party might be overthrown if it continued to pander to the bourgeoisie within its ranks. “If people became too choosy,” he gloomily concluded, “revolution is necessary.”⁷³

He had arrived at these conclusions after lengthy deliberation, influenced not only by what had recently occurred in his country and party, but also by growing tension in the international situation. An important factor that had helped shape these views was the Sino-Soviet split. Naturally, Mao blamed the leadership of the CPSU, which he believed had simply degenerated or, to be more precise, had undergone a bourgeois transformation. This was the source of all of Khrushchev's “revisionist” talk about peaceful coexistence between two systems, the possibility of averting war in the present epoch, and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. It also explained his flirtation with the American imperialists and the Indian “reactionaries.” “The Soviet Union has already existed for several decades,” he declared to the participants in the work conference, “and yet revisionism, which serves international capitalism and is, in essence, a counterrevolutionary phenomenon, has appeared there…… The bourgeoisie may revive. This is what has happened in the Soviet Union.”⁷⁴

Such talk scotched any hope of improving relations with the CPSU. In Mao's mind the USSR now represented what might happen to China if it did not permanently uproot the sprouts of capitalism. In August 1962, he sanctioned the initiation of a massive propaganda campaign against the “Soviet revisionists,” the central argument being that the universal striving for material well-being in the USSR had wholly extinguished the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. After this, the severance of ties with the CPSU was inevitable.

At the next regular meeting of the Central Committee, which quickly followed the work conference, Mao also raised the possibility that the Communist Party might degenerate. This time, however, he did not loose any thunderbolts and even graciously observed, “If the comrades who have committed mistakes will understand their deficiencies and return to the positions of Marxism-Leninism, we will close ranks with them…… There is no need to resort to chopping off heads.”

Once more he felt in control since he had chased the opposition into a corner. All that remained was to create a supercharged atmosphere, educate the cadres in an antirevisionist spirit, and administer a decisive blow against all his “enemies” at a time of his choosing. “One can say now with assurance that classes exist in socialist countries,” he continued.

After the overthrow of feudalism there was restoration everywhere…… This sort of recidivism can occur in socialist countries, too. Thus, Yugoslavia has degenerated, and become revisionist …… a state ruled by reactionary nationalist elements. In our own country we must grasp, understand, and study this problem. It is necessary to recognize that …… reactionary classes can bring about restoration…… Therefore, starting today we must speak of class struggle every year, every month, every day, at meetings, party congresses, at plenums, at every session, so that with regard to this issue we have a more or less clear Marxist-Leninist line.⁷⁵

This became the main theme of his speeches. Following the plenum, Mao launched a new campaign: fan xiu, fang xiu (oppose revisionism from abroad, guard against revisionism at home). It became a component of the mass movement for socialist education.

The countryside became the primary arena for the movement. Because of the contract system, it was there, Mao believed, that the threat of restoration originated. But the urban population was also targeted. Everywhere, both in the provinces and at the center, it was necessary to reject money-grubbing and to substitute moral and revolutionary incentives in place of material ones. Only then, according to Mao, would an inspired people be able “to move mountains.”

His immediate circle fully shared his ideas, first among them Jiang Qing, who understood that only by unconditional devotion to Mao could she retain her spouse, who no longer was interested in her as a woman. In late September 1962, Mao first allowed her into the political arena by entrusting her with control over the sphere of culture. Jiang enthusiastically assumed her new role, resolved, like Ibsen's Nora, to strike another blow against bourgeois society. Her goal was to achieve the total revolutionary transformation of “rotten” literature and “degraded” art.

Again, as during the Yan'an period, Kang Sheng became an intimate of the Chairman, who once again assigned him the job of vetting cadres. Mao also relied upon the fanatically loyal Chen Boda, who was ready to provide a Marxist foundation for whatever the Chairman said, no matter how absurd. He found faithful assistants in Shanghai, among them Ke Qingshi, whom Mao had wanted to install as premier back in 1958. In early 1965, he was designated Zhou Enlai's deputy, but this dedicated anti-rightist warrior soon died of pancreatic cancer. But Ke's people were still in Shanghai, including two talented journalists, one of whom, the forty-eight-year-old Zhang Chunqiao, was secretary of the Municipal Committee in charge of propaganda, and the other, the thirty-four-year-old Yao Wenyuan, on the staff of the local party newspaper Jiefang ribao (Liberation daily).

Even though he had opposed Mao in the past, Zhou Enlai now demonstrated his selfless devotion to the Chairman. Zhou must have been pleased that the Leader's ire was directed against Liu Shaoqi and his assistants. He bore an ancient grudge against Liu, rooted in jealousy. Each of them had wanted to be second in the pecking order under Mao. Sometimes their rivalry assumed comic form. Ivan Kovalev, Stalin's former representative in China, recalled, “Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi really disliked each other…… It was rather comical: if I toasted Liu at a banquet after Mao then Zhou would stalk out of the hall, and vice versa.”⁷⁶

Everyone on Mao's team occupied a definite place. First in the lineup was Lin Biao, the minister of defense, who since the late 1950s had been turning the army into a “School of Mao Zedong Thought.” In 1961 the PLA newspaper Jiefangjun ribao (People's Liberation Army daily) began to publish a quotation from Mao every day as an epigraph. Soldiers were ordered to cut out these epigraphs and compile their own collections of Mao quotations, which they then studied assiduously. In January 1964 the General Political Administration of the PLA issued the first mimeographed book of quotations, a little red book or, as it was called in China, the hongbaoshu (the precious red book). It included 200 quotations arranged in twenty-three sections. Then in May 1964, a new, expanded edition was published with 326 quotations in thirty chapters, and in August 1965, yet another edition with 427 quotations grouped in thirty-three chapters. The third edition became a classic and more than a billion copies were printed in the next eleven years. The dimensions of this 270-page pocket-sized book were 4.1 by 3 inches. (Some editions were slightly larger, 5.1 by 3.5 inches.)

Other forms of Maoist propaganda were developed in the army, including the cult of the rank-and-file model soldier, the communist Lei Feng, whose core virtue was his boundless loyalty to Chairman Mao. Orphaned as a child, Lei owed everything in his life to the Communist Party. Entering the army, he became a model soldier and ideal citizen. In August 1962, at the age of twenty-two, he died as the result of an accident. To enumerate his “feats” would exhaust our patience. Among them were remitting his scanty salary to the parents of his comrades in arms, serving tea to officers and new recruits, and washing the feet of his comrades who were tired out from long marches, as well as washing and darning their socks and bedclothes. Above all, what made him a national hero was the diary in which he poured out his deep feelings of love for his motherland, the party, and most of all for Chairman Mao. From his earliest childhood he had dreamed of the “great friend of all orphans,” and the first five Chinese characters that Lei learned in school were Mao zhuxi wansui (Long live Chairman Mao).

Deeply moved when he was told about the diary, on March 5, 1963, Mao ordered everyone to learn from Lei Feng and from the PLA.⁷⁷ He was satisfied with Lin Biao, who had transformed the army into the most reliable stronghold of the Chairman. The life of the country became militarized. Political departments modeled on those of the army were set up in various institutions.⁷⁸

Jiang Qing also scored some great successes. The “revolutionary operas” and “ballets” that had been created and then imposed on the artistic bureaucrats squeezed out the “wretched feudal” productions. The “progressive” movement for “socialist education” continually gathered steam, while in the economy, thanks to the efforts of Zhou and Chen Boda, collective property was once more strongly affirmed. No more leaps were attempted and there were no more natural disasters, but the peasants, now aggregated in production brigades rather than the mammoth communes, apparently were reconciled to their fate. For three straight years (1962–64) the grain harvest was fairly good. In 1964 an epochal event occurred that signaled China's debut as a potential world power. A successful test of a nuclear weapon was carried out at 3 P.M. on October 16 at the Malan Testing Ground, in the Lop Nor desert of Xinjiang. The entire country celebrated this great victory.

Now everything seemed to be going Mao's way. The country was developing, if slowly, and the masses were immersed in the struggle against the danger of capitalist restoration. The “moderates,” whom the Leader now called “the capitalist roaders,” were fast losing ground. With Mao's encouragement, the cult of the Chairman was in full flower, especially after the inglorious fall of Khrushchev, who had been ousted in October 1964 at a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Mao thought that one of the reasons for Khrushchev's downfall was that, unlike Stalin, the Soviet leader had no cult of personality at all.⁷⁹

In these eventful years Mao experienced ever-growing psychological agitation. Like a beast tirelessly tracking its prey, he burned with lethal desire. That Liu, Deng, and other apostates had done nothing “wrong” for a long time only strengthened his fervor. He viewed their loyalty as a sign of weakness and therefore he did everything in his power to isolate his former friends. Each of their initiatives, even if it was in accord with his own views, he looked upon with a jaundiced eye as an attempt by his “enemies” to strengthen their authority.

During this tempestuous period he made a new personal conquest of lasting importance. At the end of 1962, in the compartment of his special railroad car he met a young woman who soon became his closest lover, and then his most trusted secretary. Her name was Zhang Yufeng (“Jasper Phoenix”), and she was then just eighteen years old. Mao generally loved young girls, but he was particularly taken by her. There was something unusual about her. She was na ve and shy like many young Chinese girls, yet she possessed a very strong character and was quick-witted and sharp-tongued. Most of all, she was a real beauty. She melted the heart of the old man.

She came from the town of Mudanjiang in the north of China and served as a conductor on Mao's special train. She was introduced to Mao by his head bodyguard, who knew of his chief's passion for young girls. The Chairman asked her to write her given name and family name, but Yufeng's hand trembled from agitation. So he wrote the characters himself and showed them to her. She blushed. Then the chief bodyguard asked the Chairman whether he would like Comrade Zhang to service his compartment. Mao nodded. The affair quickly assumed the form of an impetuous romance.⁸⁰ There can be no doubt whatsoever that the eighteen-year-old girl was flattered. Could such a thing be imagined She had become the lover of the Great Helmsman himself! So what if he was nearing seventy and false iron teeth glittered in his mouth His sexual energy was enormous.

In May 1965, reinvigorated by his love, Mao decided to embark on a journey by rail to the places from his heroic youth. Preparing for his final battle against the “moderates” whom he found increasingly irritating, he set off for the Jinggang Mountains, where thirty-eight years earlier he had led a guerrilla war.⁸¹ The journey clearly had symbolic significance for him. Gazing at the eternal green mountains, he ecstatically composed some new verses:

水调歌头·重上井冈山

A long-time cherished hope:

久有凌云志，

to fly through clouds

and once more visit Chingkangshan?[Jinggang Mountains].

重上井冈山。

Coming a thousand miles

千里来寻故地，

to search for the old place,

all changed by a new look.

旧貌变新颜。

Orioles singing, swallows dancing, everywhere,

到处莺歌燕舞，

flowing water bubbling,

更有潺潺流水，

tall trees climbing into the sky,

高路入云端。

Huangyangchieh?[Huangyangjie]'s paths, then deadly,

过了黄洋界，

now not even steep.

险处不须看。

Wind and thunder were violent,

风雷动，

powerful flags were waving.

旌旗奋，

Now unshakeable on the earth,

是人寰。

the passing of thirty years

三十八年过去，

a moment's snap of the thumb.

弹指一挥间。

Now we can pick up the moon

可上九天揽月，

in the nine-leveled sky,

and catch turtles in all five oceans.

可下五洋捉鳖，

Triumphant return with talk and laughter:

谈笑凯歌还。

nothing difficult in this world

世上无难事，

if you can keep climbing.⁸²

只要肯登攀。

Mao had reason to be proud. He had become the ruler of a great country. With a snap of his fingers he could command the obedience of hundreds of millions of people. But the higher he reached on the pinnacle of power the less peace of mind he enjoyed. He was incapable of understanding the wisdom of the Daoists, who said that only “emptiness and stillness reached throughout ‘Heaven and Earth.'?” As the ancient Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi said, “[T]he kings of the world in ancient times …… though their abilities outshone all within the four seas …… did not of themselves act.”⁸³

¹ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitais-koi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 3, 163.

² See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, 301, 305; V. N. Usov, KNR: Ot “bol'shogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (1960–1966) (The PRC: From the Great Leap to the “Cultural Revolution,” [1960–1966]), part 1 (Moscow: IDV RAN, 1998), 13.

³ Quoted from Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 208.

⁴ Leung Laifong, Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 201, 202, 204.

⁵ Quoted from Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 159–60.

⁶ Leung, Morning Sun, 243.

⁷ Quoted from MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, 329.

⁸ Quoted from Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 153–54.

⁹ Alexander V. Pantsov's interview with a Beijing resident, October 28, 2004.

¹⁰ Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 339, 340.

¹¹ For details, see Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split, 167–80.

¹² See Hongqi (Red flag), no. 8 (1960); Renmin ribao (People's daily), April 22, 1960; Pravda (Truth), April 23, 1960.

¹³ See “The Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the Central Committee of the CPC, March 30, 1963,” in The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 496–97; Fursenko, Prezidium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964 (Presidium of the CC CPSU, 1954–1964), vol. 1, 443.

¹⁴ Quoted from The Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), 28; Taubman, Khrushchev, 471.

¹⁵ Moskovskii komsomolets (Moscow young communist), February 6, 2002.

¹⁶ See Gao, Gao Village, 138.

¹⁷ Quoted from Liu, Chushi sulian ba nian (Eight Years as Ambassador to the USSR), 128.

¹⁸ Mao Zedong, “Tong Sinuode tanhua (1960 nian 10 yue 22 ri)” (Conversation with Snow [October 22, 1960]), in Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 8 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1999), 215, 216–17; excerpts from Snow's notes of his conversations with Mao cited in S. Bernard Thomas, Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 299.

¹⁹ Edgar Snow, The Other Side of the River: Red China Today (New York: Random House, 1962), 619.

²⁰ Bernard Law Montgomery, Three Continents: A Study of the Situation and Problems in Asia, Africa, and Central America, and the Relationship of Those Areas to Defence Policies in the 1960's and to the British Commonwealth (London: Collins, 1962), 17.

²¹ Quoted from Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 293.

²² See Dik tter, Mao's Great Famine, x, 324–34; Yang Jisheng, Mubei: Zhongguo liushi nian dai da jihuang jishi (Tombstone: Unforgettable Facts about the Great Famine in the 1960s), 2 vols. (Hong Kong: Tian di tushu youxian gongsi, 2008).

²³ See Dudley L. Poston Jr. and David Yaukey, eds., The Population of Modern China (New York: Plenum Press, 1992), 170, 226, 252; Michael Dillon, ed., China: A Cultural and Historical Dictionary (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1998), 122; Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 149, 161, 162, 164.

²⁴ See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, 330; Usov, KNR: Ot “bol'shogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (The PRC: From the “Great Leap” to the “Cultural Revolution”), 15.

²⁵ Quoted from Thomas, Season of High Adventure, 300.

²⁶ See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, 323.

²⁷ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 3, 162.

²⁸ Mao Zedong, Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought (1949–1968), part 1 (Springfield, VA: Joint Publications Research Service, 1974), 232.

²⁹ See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2, 324; Li and Ma, Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) (Chronological Biography of Zhou Enlai [1949–1976]), vol. 1, 366.

³⁰ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), vol. 3, 167.

³¹ Ibid., 268, 269, 271, 272.

³² Ibid., series 4 (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 19.

³³ Ibid., 17–18.

³⁴ Ibid., 18–19. See also Mao Zedong, “Tong Mengemalide tanhua, 1960 nian 5 yue 27 ri” (Conversation with Montgomery, May 27, 1960), in Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 8, 189; Mao, “Tong Sinuode tanhua (1960 nian 10 yue 22 ri)” (Conversation with Snow [October 22, 1960]), 215.

³⁵ Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao's Manuscripts), vol. 9 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1996), 467–70.

³⁶ Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, 266.

³⁷ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 3, 273–74; 285–88.

³⁸ Ibid., series 4, 36.

³⁹ Leung, Morning Sun, 204–5.

⁴⁰ Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 242.

⁴¹ Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 378.

⁴² See Liu Shaoqi, Liu Shaoqi xuanji (Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi), vol. 2 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 337.

⁴³ Ibid., 328.

⁴⁴ Quoted from Usov, KNR: Ot “bol'shogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (The PRC: From the “Great Leap” to the “Cultural Revolution”), 47.

⁴⁵ Mao, Mao Zedong wenji (Works of Mao Zedong), vol. 8, 273.

⁴⁶ Quoted from Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 377, 380.

⁴⁷ See Montgomery, Three Continents, 33, 34.

⁴⁸ Quoted from Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Several Important Political Decisions and Their Implementation), vol. 2, 1026. See also MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 3, 158.

⁴⁹ Liu, Liu Shaoqi xuanji (Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi), vol. 2, 421. See also Usov, KNR: Ot “bol'shogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (The PRC: From the “Great Leap” to the “Cultural Revolution”), 78; Huang, “Liu Shaoqi yu dayuejin” (Liu Shaoqi and the Great Leap Forward), 110.

⁵⁰ Xue Muqiao, “Huainian weidade makesizhuyizhe Liu Shaoqi tongzhi” (Remembering the Great Marxist Comrade Liu Shaoqi), Guangming ribao (Enlightenment daily), November 24, 1988.

⁵¹ Quoted from Usov, KNR: Ot “bol'shogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (The PRC: From the “Great Leap” to the “Cultural Revolution”), 77.

⁵² Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's speeches previously unpublished in the Chinese press), series 4, 6, 12.

⁵³ See Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 387–88; Usov, KNR: Ot “bolsh'ogo skachka” k “kul'turnoi revoliutsii” (The PRC: From the “Great Leap” to the “Cultural Revolution”), 85–87; MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 3, 166–68, 545.

⁵⁴ Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, 266.

⁵⁵ See Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1207–8, 1218; Zhu Jiamu, ed., Chen Yun nianpu, 1905–1995 (Chronological Biography of Chen Yun, 1905–1995), vol. 3 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2000), 107–10; Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 156.

⁵⁶ See Dong Bian et al., eds., Mao Zedong he tade mishu Tian Jiaying (Mao Zedong and His Secretary Tian Jiaying) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1989), 62–65.

⁵⁷ Quoted from Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Several Important Political Decisions and Their Implementation), vol. 2, 1084.

⁵⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 4, 36.

⁵⁹ See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 3, 282.

⁶⁰ Quoted from Zhu, Chen Yun nianpu, 1905–1995 (Chronological Biography of Chen Yun, 1905–1995), vol. 3, 115.

⁶¹ Deng used this phrase for the first time at the end of June 1962 at a meeting of the CCP Central Committee Secretariat. Quoted from Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Several Important Political Decisions and Their Implementation), vol. 2, 1084.

⁶² Quoted from Liu and Chen, Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 1898–1969 (Chronological Biography of Liu Shaoqi, 1898–1969), vol. 2, 551.

⁶³ See Peng, Memuary marshala (Memoirs of a Marshal), 16.

⁶⁴ Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1230.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 1232.

⁶⁶ Quoted from Zhu, Chen Yun nianpu, 1905–1995 (Chronological Biography of Chen Yun, 1905–1995), vol. 3, 120.

⁶⁷ See Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (1938–1965) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1992), 293; Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 3, The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961–1966 (New York: Oxford University Press and Columbia University Press, 1997), 268.

⁶⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 3, 97.

⁶⁹ See Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1232–33.

⁷⁰ Yang, Yang Shangkun riji (Yang Shangkun's Diary), vol. 2, 196.

⁷¹ Quoted from Pang and Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1949–1976) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1949–1976]), vol. 2, 1234.

⁷² Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 4, 40.

⁷³ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 4, 35–40, 44.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 38–39.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 47.

⁷⁶ Kovalev, “Rossiia i Kitai (S missiei v Kitae)” (Russia and China [My Mission to China]), Duel' (Duel), November 5, 1997.

⁷⁷ Renmin ribao (People's daily), March 5, 1963.

⁷⁸ Borisov and Titarenko, Vystupleniia Mao Tsze-duna, ranee ne publikovavshiesia v kitaiskoi pechati (Mao Zedong's Speeches Previously Unpublished in the Chinese Press), series 4, 74–75.

⁷⁹ See Mao's interview with Edgar Snow, January 9, 1965, published in Snow, The Long Revolution, 70, 205, and Mao, Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, 424–25.

⁸⁰ See Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan (Biography of Jiang Qing) (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1998), 340–41.

⁸¹ See Wang, Wang Dongxing riji (Diary of Wang Dongxing), 214–16.

⁸² Mao, Poems of Mao Tse-tung, 130.

⁸³ Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang-tsu, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 144–45.

ⁿ⁷⁶ Burlatsky mistakenly wrote that this was Liu Shaoqi.