32
On September 10, 1958, Mao set out again, traveling by plane, train, and boat, to see for himself the vast changes taking place in the country. His popular adulation grew at every stop we made.
We flew first to Wuhan. Two of Mao's most enthusiastic admirers—“democratic personage” and Guomindang defector Zhang Zhizhong and Anhui's first party secretary Zeng Xisheng—visited him there. Mao thrilled Zhang Zhizhong by inviting him to come along on his inspection tour, and Zhang obliged by showering Mao with flattery. “The condition of the country is excellent indeed,” he said to Mao. “The weather is favorable, the nation is at peace, and the people feel secure.”
Zeng Xisheng, too, was courting Mao's favor. He wanted the Chairman to visit Anhui province. Zhang Zhizhong, a native of Anhui himself, joined Zeng in encouraging the visit. Mao agreed. We took a boat down the Yangtze to the city of Anqing, just on the border of Anhui, where first party secretary Zeng Xisheng escorted our party by car to Anhui's capital, Hefei. There, we witnessed new miracles. “Backyard steel furnaces” were the local specialty.
I saw the first such furnace—a makeshift brick and mortar affair, four or five meters high—in the courtyard of the offices of the Anhui provincial party committee. The fire was going full-blast, and inside were all sorts of household implements made of steel—pots, pans, doorknobs, and shovels—being melted down to produce what Zeng assured Mao was also steel. Zeng Xisheng picked up a hot nugget from the ground, plucked from the furnace only moments before, to show Mao the fruit of the mill, and nearby were samples of finished steel, indisputable evidence of the success of the backyard steel furnace. Mao had called upon the country to overtake Great Britain in steel production within fifteen years, by using methods that were quick and economical. Even now, I do not know where the idea of the backyard steel furnaces originated. But the logic was always clear: Why spend millions of dollars building modern steel plants when steel could be produced for almost nothing in courtyards and fields? The “indigenous,” or “backyard,” steel furnace was the result.
I was astounded. The furnace was taking basic household implements and transforming them into nuggets called steel, melting down knives into ingots that could be used to make other knives. I had no idea whether the ingots were of good-quality steel, but it did seem ridiculous to melt steel to produce steel, to destroy knives to make knives. The backyard steel furnaces were everywhere in Anhui, all producing the same rough-looking ingots.
Toward the end of the visit, Zhang Zhizhong proposed that Mao ride through the streets in an open car so the citizens of Hefei could see their great leader. In the summer of 1949, Mao had entered Beijing in an open jeep and the citizens lined the streets to welcome their liberation. In September 1956, during a visit by Indonesian president Sukarno, Mao had ridden in an open cavalcade. But he rarely appeared so openly before the masses. The Chairman's provincial visits were almost always secret, and security was tight. When he visited factories, his exchanges with workers were carefully controlled. Mao's face-to-face meetings were ordinarily confined to high-ranking party elite or leaders of the “democratic” parties. His twice-yearly appearances on the top of Tiananmen were not really exceptions. The crowds in the square were carefully chosen. The risk of appearing publicly before the masses was not only to Mao's security. The Chairman did not want to be accused of fostering his own cult of personality.
Mao believed that the masses needed a great leader and that the chance to see him could have an inspirational, potentially transformative, effect. But he needed the illusion that the demand for his leadership came spontaneously from the masses themselves. He would not be guilty of having actively promoted his own cult of personality. “Democratic personage” Zhang Zhizhong, sensitive to Mao's dilemma, was well suited to push Mao into the limelight. “You seem very concerned about the development of a personality cult,” Zhang said to Mao.
Zhang argued, though, that Mao was the Lenin, not the Stalin, of China. Mao, like Lenin, had led the Communist party and the Chinese people to revolutionary victory, living on to lead in the construction of socialism, too. Unlike Lenin, who had died only eight years after the success of revolution, Mao would bless the people of China with his leadership for another thirty or forty years, they hoped. The difference between Mao and Stalin was that Stalin had promoted his own cult of personality. Mao had not. Mao, said Zhang, had a democratic style of leadership that stressed the “mass line” and avoided arbitrariness and dictatorship. “How can our country have a personality cult?” he wondered. “Progress is so fast, and the improvement in the life of the people so great that the masses spontaneously pour out their sincere, passionate feelings for you. Our people truly love their great leader. This is not a personality cult.” Mao loved Zhang's flattery. The two were a perfect pair. The Chairman agreed to show himself to the citizens of Hefei.
On September 19, 1958, over 300,000 people lined the streets of Hefei hoping for a glimpse of Mao. He rode slowly through the city in an open car, waving impassively to the throngs, basking in their show of affection. I suspect that the crowds in Hefei were no more spontaneous than those in Tiananmen. The gaily colored clothes, the garlands of flowers around their necks, the bouquets they held aloft as the motorcade passed by, the singing, the dancing, the slogans they shouted—“Long Live Chairman Mao,” “Long Live the People's Communes,” “Long Live the Great Leap Forward”—suggested that Zeng Xisheng had left little to chance. These crowds had also been carefully chosen, directed by the Anhui bureau of public security. But the crowds were no less enthusiastic, no less sincere in their adulation, for having been carefully chosen. At the sight of their Chairman, they went wild with delight.
Mao was beginning to talk about establishing a free-food-supply system in the rural people's communes, so people could eat all they wanted without having to pay. He talked about taking cadres off salaries and returning them to a free-supply system similar to the one that had existed until 1954–the same system that had depleted my foreign savings. Salaries would cease. Basic necessities would be provided by the state along with a small allowance to cover incidental expenditures. His idea was to revive the system first in Zhongnanhai's General Office, starting with us in Group One.
On September 15, Zhang Chunqiao, the director of propaganda in the Shanghai party committee, had written an article promoting a free-food-supply system. Mao was so enthusiastic about it that when we stopped in Shanghai a few days later, he invited the city's propaganda chief to meet with him on the train. It was the first time I met the man who would rise to such prominence during the Cultural Revolution and later become one of the Gang of Four. Zhang was a silent, unfriendly, and brooding type, and conversation with him was difficult. I disliked him at once, and his proposal to reintroduce the free-supply system sent a chill down my spine. I opposed it. My entire savings had been dissipated two years after my return to China because of the free-supply system. The free supplies and petty allowance would not be enough to keep my family alive. In addition to my wife, mother, two small children, and my wife's parents, I had been subsidizing several other relatives, too-two aunts and a cousin. Without my salary, we would all have to rely on my wife's much smaller income. There was no way we could survive.
No one in Group One wanted a revival of the free-supply system. Ye Zilong, with us on the trip, was equally concerned. His salary was high, and he loved his life of luxury. Privilege gave him access to all sorts of free supplies, but he wanted his salary, too. When he discovered how I felt about the supply system, he encouraged me to raise my concerns with Mao. It was a clever suggestion. I might be successful in persuading the Chairman not to introduce the plan, in which case Ye's generous salary would continue. If Mao was not convinced and introduced the system anyway, I would be the one to be labeled a backward element. Ye's salary would be gone, but politically he would still be safe.
Mao's mind was still not made up, and he really did want to hear the opinions of his staff before reaching a decision. But no one was willing to risk being seen as a backward element. The issue was a matter of my family's survival. I had to tell Mao my doubts.
Mao was lying in his bed reading when I went into his compartment.
“Any news?”
“We've been talking about the free-supply system.”
“Any brilliant ideas?”
I explained the difficulties I would face with no salary and so many family members to support.
Mao thought the problem could be solved by establishing communes in the cities, too. City residents, even the young and the old who had no work, could get their supplies from the commune. Children would be sent to public nurseries. This was the route to communism. “Wouldn't that solve all your problems?” he asked.
I explained that my elderly relatives were not in good health and would be unable to work in a commune. But they also had great pride and would not want to live off the labor of others. Moreover, if the commune had to support them as well as my children, the cost to the government would surely be higher than my salary.
Mao agreed that this was a problem. “Before we decide, we will have to calculate carefully the amount of labor available to the urban commune and the commune's capacity to support non-working people. If there are too many old or young, we really would have a problem.” He was prepared to wait if the time did not seem ripe.
Xiao Zhang, one of the bodyguards, had been eavesdropping on our conversation and gave me thumbs-up as I left Mao's compartment. He was no more willing than I to see the free-supply system introduced. I, too, was pleased with my conversation with Mao. He was exhilarated about the vast changes taking place but was still thinking reasonably then, willing to listen to voices of caution, weighing the consequences of the many changes being proposed. He even had doubts about the backyard steel furnaces and whether such small-scale mills were the way to catch up with Great Britain in fifteen years. “If these small backyard furnaces can really produce so much steel,” he wanted to know, “why do foreigners build such gigantic steel mills? Are foreigners really so stupid?”
Tian Jiaying was a voice of caution. He was distressed about Zhang Chunqiao's call for a free-supply system and accused Zhang of writing irresponsibly in order to ingratiate himself with the Chairman. “We ought not to adopt these slogans lightly,” Tian argued. “We cannot ignore our low level of agricultural production or disregard the need to feed and clothe our hundreds of millions of people. It is absurd to think we can march into a communist society by dragging a naked and starving population along with us. In the past, our party has always sought truth from facts, but this isn't what we are doing now. People are telling lies, boasting. They have lost their sense of shame. This is a violation of our party's great tradition.” Some of the reports coming in from the provinces, Tian said, were claiming average grain yields per mu1 of ten thousand pounds. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “It is shameful.”
He blamed the deceit on the atmosphere created by Mao. “When the king of Chu was looking for a consort with a pretty figure, all his concubines starved to death trying to lose weight,” Tian remarked. “When the master lets his preference be known, the servants pursue it with a vengeance.” Mao's plan for the Great Leap Forward was grandiose, utopian—to catch up with Great Britain in fifteen years, to transform agricultural production, using people's communes to walk the road from socialism to communism, from poverty to abundance. Mao was accustomed to sycophancy and flattery. He had been pushing the top-level party and government leaders to embrace his grandiose schemes. Wanting to please Mao, fearing for their own political futures if they did not, the top-level officials put pressure on the lower ones, and lower-level cadres complied both by working the peasants relentlessly and by reporting what their superiors wanted to hear. Impossible, fantastical claims were being made. Claims of per-mu grain production went from 10,000 to 20,000 to 30,000 pounds.
Psychologists of mass behavior might have an explanation for what went wrong in China in the late summer of 1958. China was struck with a mass hysteria fed by Mao, who then fell victim himself. We returned to Beijing in time for the October first celebrations. Mao began believing the slogans, casting caution to the winds. Mini-steel mills were being set up even in Zhongnanhai, and at night the whole compound was a sea of red light. The idea had originated with the Central Bureau of Guards, but Mao did not oppose them, and soon everyone was stoking the fires—cadres, clerks, secretaries, doctors, nurses, and me. The rare voices of caution were being stilled. Everyone was hurrying to jump on the utopian bandwagon. Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, and Chen Yi, men who might once have reined the Chairman in, were speaking with a single voice, and that voice was Mao's. What those men really thought, we never will know. Everyone was caught in the grip of this utopian hysteria.
Immediately after the October first celebrations, we set out again by train, heading south. The scene along the railroad tracks was incredible. Harvest time was approaching, and the crops were thriving. The fields were crowded with peasants at work, and they were all women and young girls dressed in reds and greens, gray-haired old men, or teenagers. All the able-bodied males, the real farmers of China, had been taken out of agricultural production to tend the backyard steel furnaces.
The backyard furnaces had transformed the rural landscape. They were everywhere, and we could see peasant men in a constant frenzy of activity, transporting fuel and raw materials, keeping the fires stoked. At night, the furnaces dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see, their fires lighting the skies.
Every commune we visited provided testimony to the abundance of the upcoming harvest. The statistics, for both grain and steel production, were astounding. “Good-news reporting stations” were being set up in communal dining halls, each station competing with nearby brigades and communes to report—red flags waving, gongs and drums sounding—the highest, most extravagant figures.
Mao's earlier skepticism had vanished. Common sense escaped him. He acted as though he believed the outrageous figures for agricultural production. The excitement was contagious. I was infected, too. Naturally, I could not help but wonder how rural China could be so quickly transformed. But I was seeing that transformation with my own eyes. I allowed myself only occasional, fleeting doubts.
One evening on the train, Lin Ke tried to set me straight. Chatting with Lin Ke and Wang Jingxian, looking out at the fires from the backyard furnaces that stretched all the way to the horizon, I shared the puzzlement I had been feeling, wondering out loud how the furnaces had appeared so suddenly and how the production figures could be so high.
What we were seeing from our windows, Lin Ke said, was staged, a huge multi-act nationwide Chinese opera performed especially for Mao. The party secretaries had ordered furnaces constructed everywhere along the rail route, stretching out for ten li on either side, and the women were dressed so colorfully, in reds and greens, because they had been ordered to dress that way. In Hubei, party secretary Wang Renzhong had ordered the peasants to remove rice plants from faraway fields and transplant them along Mao's route, to give the impression of a wildly abundant crop. The rice was planted so closely together that electric fans had to be set up around the fields to circulate air in order to prevent the plants from rotting. All of China was a stage, all the people performers in an extravaganza for Mao.
The production figures were false, Lin Ke said. No soil could produce twenty or thirty thousand pounds per mu. And what was coming out of the backyard steel furnaces was useless. The finished steel I had seen in Anhui that Zeng Xisheng claimed had been produced by the backyard steel furnace was fake, delivered there from a huge, modern factory.
“This isn't what the newspapers are saying,” I protested.
The newspapers, too, were filled with falsehoods, Lin Ke insisted, printing only what they had been told. “They would not dare tell the public what was really happening,” Lin said.
I was astonished. The People's Daily was our source of truth, the most authoritative of all the country's newspapers. If the People's Daily was printing falsehoods, which one would tell the truth?
Our talk was dangerous, and my agitation was worrying Wang Jingxian. “Let's not talk anymore,” he interrupted. “It's time to go to bed.” He pulled me aside privately, as he had when I had come to Lin Ke's defense before, and cautioned me against speaking so freely. “You could get into trouble,” he warned.
I did not really believe Lin Ke. I was swept away by the drama of the Great Leap Forward, caught up in its delusions. I still trusted the party, Mao, the People's Daily. But Lin's revelations were distressing. The situation was troubling.
If Lin Ke was right, why was no one telling Chairman Mao? What about the Chairman's advisers—men like Tian Jiaying, Hu Qiaomu, Chen Boda, Wang Jingxian, Lin Ke, and leaders like Zhou Enlai? If they knew the reality, why did they not inform the Chairman? But no one, not even those closest to him, dared to speak out.
I wondered whether Mao, despite his outward enthusiasm, had his own private doubts.
From my conversations with Mao, I doubted that he really knew. In October 1958, Mao's doubts were not about the production figures or the miraculous increases in grain and steel production. There were exaggerations, perhaps, but he was worried most about the claims that communism was at hand. With the establishment of people's communes, the introduction of public dining halls, and the abundant harvest soon to come, word was spreading that communism was just around the corner. The creative enthusiasm of the Chinese peasantry had finally been unleashed. Mao's problem was how to maintain that mass enthusiasm while checking the belief that communism was upon us. “No one can deny the high spirits and strong determination of the masses,” he said to me one night. “Of course, the people's commune is a new thing. It will take lots of hard work to turn it into a healthy institution. Certain leaders, with good intentions, want to rush things. They want to jump into communism immediately. We have to deal with this kind of problem. But other people are still suspicious about the general line, the Great Leap Forward, and the people's communes. Some hopelessly stubborn people even secretly oppose them. When they go to see God, they'll probably take their marble heads with them.”
When Mao called central and local-level leaders to a conference in Zhengzhou, Henan, from November 2 to 10, 1958, the mood was still optimistic. Spirits were high. Mao stressed to the participants what he had already told me—that the general line, the Great Leap Forward, and the people's communes had to be reaffirmed. For the transformation to communism, though, patience was required. China could not rush prematurely into the future. And the peasants were being worked too hard. Cadres at all levels had to pay attention to the well-being of the masses. Months earlier, Mao had been whipping and goading the cadres into action. Now he was trying to slow them down. He was putting a brake on the most fantastical claims. But about the production figures and the backyard furnaces, he had no complaints.
It was at Zhengzhou in November 1958 that the curtain that had prevented me from seeing Mao clearly began to lift. In the ebullience of the Great Leap Forward, Mao was less secretive about his private activities. I could see for myself. Mao was staying on his train but going each night to the dances held in his honor at the Zhengzhou guesthouse. A young nurse who was also on the train accompanied Mao openly to the dances, and I knew that she was staying with him at night.
The last contingent of Chinese volunteers had just returned from Korea, and the Cultural Work Troupe from the Twentieth Army was in Zhengzhou to be welcomed back personally by Mao. The young girls from the troupe swarmed around Mao at the parties, lavishing attention on him, competing with each other for the honor of a dance—and then putting on quite a performance when Mao agreed. I still remember one young girl dancing in perfect step with Mao, becoming bolder and bolder, leaning her body this way and that, twisting and turning in rhythm to the music, loving every twist and turn. Mao was delighted, too, and he often stayed at the parties from nine in the evening until two in the morning.
After the Zhengzhou meetings, we went by train to Wuhan. The Twentieth Army Cultural Work Troupe came, too, and so did the young nurse. Mao's spirits were still high. Wang Renzhong had made sure that Mao's view from the train was of extravagantly abundant crops, thriving backyard steel furnaces, and gaily dressed women. Everyone, it seemed, was singing. As a doctor, I could not help but notice that many of the women were standing in paddy fields with water up to their waists. Paddy fields are not ordinarily that deep, but deep planting was another innovation of the Great Leap Forward. For the women, though, the low-lying fields were an invitation to gynecological infections.
In Wuhan, Mao called the Sixth Plenum of the Eighth Party Central Committee into session. Wang Renzhong put the most capable of Hubei's security staff in charge of security and logistics, and as usual the accommodations were excellent. The best local chefs were on hand to prepare sumptuous meals of the choicest delicacies, and our rooms were continually supplied with liquid refreshment and fruit. Mao was warning against believing that communism was at hand, but living as we were in a communist paradise, for us it had already arrived. Even as Hubei public security wrapped a tight cloak of secrecy around the Chairman's activities on the train, Mao became more brazen about his female companions. The dances and lavish nightly entertainment continued, and Mao brought the young nurse openly to the nightly festivities.
Mao gave me and all his personal staff a few days' leave to visit our families in Beijing, my only vacation in twenty-two years, so I was not in Wuhan for all the meetings. The Sixth Plenum was in session from November 28 to December 10 and continued the effort to bring more reality to the Great Leap Forward. Cadres and citizens were encouraged to be more realistic. China was not yet on the verge of entering communism, and people were still to be paid on the basis of how much they worked. The enthusiasm that had swept the country was a good thing, but analyses had to be based on concrete facts. Mao had recognized that the claims for economic output were too high, so projections were scaled down and so were targets for future increases. Mao's resignation as chairman of the republic finally became official. The Central Committee agreed that he would not serve as chairman when the next session of the National People's Congress began.
But Mao resigned as chairman only to become emperor. He was still the supreme leader and coming to be seen as infallible and nearly omnipotent. The mood in Wuhan was still ebullient, and the problems, such as they were, were the type Mao liked—over-optimism, too much enthusiasm, daring, and verve. Mao's enthusiasm for the people's communes continued unabated. He was critical of the Soviet Union for insisting that mechanization had to precede collectivization. The people's commune was the route to rural prosperity. The masses, at last, had become creators of history. If mistakes were to be made, better that they be leftist than rightist. Rightists lost their jobs, were imprisoned, sent to hard labor, suffered to the point of death. Leftists got only a gentle slap on the wrist.
I returned to Wuhan shortly before the meetings closed and was there for the celebration banquet Mao hosted for the other top leaders. Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping attended, as did all the provincial party secretaries. The toasts were all tributes to Mao. Wang Renzhong, sycophantic as usual, effusively led the way. “The proclamations from this meeting are the Communist Manifesto of today,” he exclaimed. “Only under the brilliant leadership of the Chairman can such a red sun rise in the East.”
Zhou Enlai rose to add to the flattery. “Comrade Chen Boda has said that one day under a truly communist society equals twenty years in a non-communist one. Today, we have that kind of productive power.”
Ke Qingshi followed suit. “It is not correct to say that no one can outdo Marx,” he said. “Haven't we already outdone Marx in both theory and practice?”
There were toasts in criticism of the Soviet Union. “For decades, the Soviet Union has tried to establish an advanced form of social development, but always they have failed. We have succeeded in less than ten years.”
Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping joined in the toasting and drinking, but neither proposed a toast himself.
Mao ordinarily drank very little, but as China's leaders lifted their glasses in toast after toast, he joined them and his face turned a bright red. Then he turned the flattery to Zhou Enlai, his faithful servant, the most loyal of his lieutenants. “Premier Zhou can drink a lot,” he said. “Let's toast the premier.”
I took the lead in toasting Zhou Enlai, standing in front of him to clink glasses. “Bottoms up,” I said.
“Oh, we must celebrate,” Zhou replied loudly as others joined in toasting him. Zhou's capacity for liquor was enormous, and his face never turned red. But that night Zhou got drunk, and he woke up in the middle of the night with a nosebleed. Luo Ruiqing blamed me, berating me the next morning for having started the round of toasts, arguing that a doctor should know better than to urge others to drink. I thought I had only been following Mao's lead.
Agricultural production in the fall of 1958 was the highest in China's history. But by mid-December, the nation was seriously short of food. Even as China's leaders drank to the brilliant leadership of Chairman Mao, the disaster that had been brewing unseen for months was finally bubbling to the surface.
In Wuhan, feted by Wang Renzhong, the party leadership remained sheltered from the unfolding crisis. But during my visit home in the middle of the meetings, I had discovered there was no meat or oil in Zhongnanhai. Rice and basic staples were hard to come by. Vegetables were few. Something had gone awry.
Much, in fact, had gone wrong. A large portion of the huge harvest lay uncollected in the fields. Massive numbers of able-bodied male peasants had been transferred from the fields to work in the backyard steel furnaces. The women and children could not bring in the harvest. The labor was backbreaking, more than they could endure, and crops rotted in the fields.
In fact, I did not know it then, but China was tottering on the brink of disaster. The leading cadres of the party and first party secretaries in the provinces were ingratiating themselves with Mao, disregarding the welfare of hundreds of millions of peasants. The preposterous claims of vastly increased production were taken seriously by the upper-level leaders, to whom they were made. But how could one mu of land produce fifty, one hundred, or two hundred thousand pounds of rice? Rural areas were taxed on a percentage of what they produced, and areas that falsely claimed gigantically high yields were taxed according to their faked reports. Some places were delivering all they had produced to the state. Other places were giving so much there was little left for their inhabitants to eat. Peasants were beginning to go hungry. Soon they would starve. The greater the falsehoods, the more people died of starvation.
Ironically, much of the grain that was sent to the state as taxes was exported. China was still repaying its debts to the Soviet Union and much of the grain went there. It was a question of face. Mao could not admit that the communes Khrushchev had so vigorously opposed were anything less than a success.
To minimize their losses and keep enough food to eat, communes were saying that they had been struck by natural disasters. Their harvest had been abundant, but the weather had destroyed it. Such communes were thus able to keep the grain they would otherwise have owed in taxes. Or they were granted relief grain from the state.
The backyard steel furnaces were equally disastrous. As the drive to produce steel continued at an ever more frenetic pace, people were forced to contribute their pots and pans, their doorknobs, the steel from their wrought-iron gates, shovels, and spades. There was not enough coal to fire the furnaces, so the fires were fed with the peasants' wooden furniture—their tables, chairs, and beds. But what came out of the furnaces was useless—nothing more than melted-down knives and pots and pans. Mao said that China was not on the verge of communism, but in fact some absurd form of communism was already in place. Private property was being abolished, because private property was all being given away to feed the voracious steel furnaces.
Still, Mao's euphoria continued. I think at this point he was still being shielded from the impending crisis. I had misgivings. I could see disaster brewing. But I did not dare to speak. I worried that Mao was being deceived and no one was willing to tell him the truth. Of the men closest to Mao, Tian Jiaying was the best informed, the most skeptical, and the most honest. I thought he should be the one to inform Mao. But Tian Jiaying was in Henan, investigating the situation there. Realistic reports would have to await his return. Mao trusted him. Mao would believe what he said.
1 One mu equals .16 acre.