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The situation in Mao's native Shaoshan was good compared with the rest of China. A horrible famine was sweeping the country. The province of Anhui, where party secretary Zeng Xisheng had first shown Mao the backyard steel furnaces, had been badly hit, and so had Henan, where we had gone in August 1958 to see the new people's communes. People in some of the more remote and sparsely populated places, like Gansu, were starving. Peasants were starving in Sichuan, too—the nation's most populous province, larger than most countries and known as China's rice bowl. During the meetings in Chengdu, Sichuan, in March 1958, Mao had pushed his plan to overtake Great Britain in fifteen years. In many provinces, tens of thousands were fleeing, just as Chinese peasants always had done in face of famine.
I never witnessed the terrible famine myself. Group One was protected from the awful realities. I learned about the famine on the way to Lushan, sailing down the magnificent Yangtze River with Mao, his staff, and several provincial leaders. Tian Jiaying was on board, and the memories of his six-month inspection tour of Henan and Sichuan were still fresh. I was standing on deck with him, Lin Ke, and Wang Jingxian, who had been put in charge of Mao's security after Wang Dongxing was sent away. Tian Jiaying described the famine in Sichuan. The government's efforts to alleviate the crisis had been inadequate. The overly optimistic target for steel production in 1959 had been cut from 20 million tons to 13 million. But 60 million able-bodied peasants, strong and healthy men who ought to have been at work in the fields, were still working on the backyard steel furnaces. The dislocation of labor was disastrous. The fields were not being farmed. The problem was getting worse.
Tian Jiaying was distressed not only because so many people were starving but because so many in authority were lying. Falsehoods are flying and getting more absurd with every passing day, he said. But the people speaking falsehoods are being praised; the ones who tell the truth are being criticized.
The conversation turned first obliquely and then more directly to Mao. Mao was a great philosopher, a great soldier, and a great politician, but he was a terrible economist. He had a penchant for grandiose schemes. He had lost touch with the people, forgotten the work style that he himself had promoted—seeking truth from facts, humility, attention to details. This was the source of the country's economic problems.
Wang Jingxian began telling us about Mao's many girlfriends. The Chairman's private life, Wang said, was shockingly indecent.
I was incredulous. I had known the economic situation was bad, but not that famine had swept the country and that millions were starving. I was surprised at the criticisms against Mao. My friend Tian Jiaying was ordinarily cautious, but the forthrightness with which he was speaking was dangerous, even among so close and sympathetic a group. Wang Jingxian's revelations were startling, too. Wang was charged with safeguarding the Chairman, and even among friends he should have been more careful. I remained silent and so did Lin Ke. Still grateful to Mao for having saved him during the Black Flag Incident, Lin Ke knew better than to criticize the Chairman.
Ke Qingshi, Wang Renzhong, and Li Jingquan, the first party secretary of Sichuan province, joined our conversation, wondering what we could be discussing with such intensity.
“We are talking about the famine,” Tian Jiaying replied. “People are dying of starvation.”
“China is a big country,” Li Jingquan responded. “Which dynasty has not witnessed death by starvation?” He was right. Episodic famine is part of China's history. But in 1959, China was supposed to be in the middle of a Great Leap Forward. Even as people starved, official propaganda was making fantastic claims.
“The people are showing greater enthusiasm for work than ever before in our history,” Wang Renzhong said, mimicking the Chairman's words. Both provincial secretaries were well tuned to Mao's political line.
Ke Qingshi, too, followed Mao's political lead. “Some people pay attention only to the minor things and not the major ones,” he said. “They always see the negative side of things, complaining about everything. The Chairman says this kind of person could stand right in front of Mount Tai [Taishan] and still not see it.”
Even before we reached Lushan, the battle lines were being drawn. Wang Renzhong, Li Jingquan, and Ke Qingshi, under pressure from Mao to increase production or lose their jobs, sacrificed truth on the altar of Mao. They extolled the Great Leap and minimized their economic problems, feeding the central authority unrealistic economic statistics because they knew what the center wanted to hear. They were supported by central officials like Luo Ruiqing and Yang Shangkun, whose official responsibilities were unrelated to economic questions but who were attuned to Mao's policy preferences, had been criticized by Mao in the past, and wanted to do nothing to anger him again. They supported Mao not out of conviction but for self-preservation, remaining, whether deliberately or naively, ignorant of the real extent of the country's economic problems. They offered nothing but support for Mao.
Mao's critics were generally of two types. One consisted of economic planners like Bo Yibo, the head of the State Economic Commission, and Li Fuchun, in charge of the State Planning Commission. Their offices were responsible for setting production targets and for working out the plans that would ensure that those targets could be fulfilled. Early during the Great Leap Forward, Bo Yibo had resisted setting such unrealistic production targets, but later, under pressure from Mao, he had caved in and done everything he could to push his subordinates to meet them. When Bo realized how serious the economic crisis was, he instructed his staff to prepare an honest and comprehensive report detailing the problems. But sensing that Mao would not welcome criticism, he balked at submitting the report. In a telephone conference with his subordinates around the country, he instructed them to continue doing their utmost to fulfill the production plan and to press ahead to achieve the stated, still bloated, goals. He was uncomfortable with Mao's economic audaciousness, certain that his plan would fail. But he dared not challenge Mao. He refused to speak out. Bo Yibo never publicly criticized the Great Leap. Nor did Li Fuchun.
The second type of critic consisted of those who had been on inspection trips to local areas and knew firsthand how bad the disaster was. They were neither economic planners nor responsible for implementing Mao's grandiose schemes, but they had witnessed the deteriorating, chaotic conditions in the countryside. Mao's political secretaries—Tian Jiaying, Hu Qiaomu, and Chen Boda—were among them. Their job was to report the truth.
But while the critics talked among themselves, as we did on the boat down the Yangtze, conversation with the people making the preposterous claims was almost impossible. Those who insisted on the truth, and were thus willing to offend Mao, were rare indeed. Most trimmed their sails to the wind. Even people like Tian Jiaying, who had been on inspection tours and knew the truth, or provincial leaders like Zhou Xiaozhou, who knew the extent of the crisis and was privately critical of both the Great Leap and of Mao himself, were reluctant to challenge Mao directly. On the boat, Tian Jiaying was willing to talk with Lin Ke about the country's problems. But when Mao's close supporters—Ke Qingshi and Li Jingquan—joined us, he fell silent.
We docked at Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, on July 1, 1959. Wang Dongxing, still in Jiangxi for his “reform,” had become a vice-governor of the province and came on board to welcome Mao. He had been in close contact with the masses, truly educated by his experience, Wang assured Mao.
The Chairman was delighted. “People cannot always stay at the top,” he said. “Let's make a new rule. Everyone who works at the central level should take turns working at lower-level organizations.”
The highway from Jiujiang to Lushan was well paved, and we reached the sprawling mountain resort in little more than an hour. Logistical arrangements for the party leaders were under the direction of first party secretary Yang Shangkui, chairman of the Jiangxi provincial people's congress Fang Zhichun, who was married to Mao Yuanxin's mother, and vice-governor Wang Dongxing. Wang was directing the security arrangements for Mao, thus putting himself into immediate conflict with Wang Jingxian. Wang Jingxian ignored Wang Dongxing's arrangements, claiming that Wang Dongxing had been out of touch with Mao for so long that he no longer understood the Chairman. It was an insult Wang Dongxing would never forget, and Wang Jingxian would pay for it later.
Mao stayed in Chiang Kai-shek's two-story villa, and I was housed in a building nearby. The weather on the mountaintop was cool and damp, and we were so high up that when I left my windows open, clouds would float in through one window and out another.
When Mao opened the enlarged politburo meeting on July 2, the day after our arrival, he dubbed the gathering a “fairy [shenxian] meeting.” Fairies live in the heavens among the clouds, just as we were living then, and they have no cares and no limits on their behavior. Fairies can do whatever they please. Mao wanted no fixed agenda for the meeting. Party leaders could talk about whatever they wanted. Mao proposed nineteen possible topics for discussion, and the participants were encouraged to talk about them freely. When the meeting began, Mao knew there were problems with the Great Leap, and he believed measures were being taken to correct those problems. He had no reason to believe there would be trouble. In his short opening address, Mao praised the achievements of the Great Leap Forward, alluded to the problems, and said he hoped that the participants would appreciate the energy and creativity of the Chinese people.
Mao's confidence in the Great Leap Forward remained unshaken, and I do not know how much of the real situation Mao knew when he spoke then. His visit to Shaoshan had given him a clear sense that there were problems. He certainly knew that something had gone awry and that there were major shortages of food. He knew that in many places there was no rice to eat, and he was willing to discuss those problems and work to solve them. But I do not think that when he spoke on July 2, 1959, he knew how bad the disaster had become, and he believed the party was doing everything it could to manage the situation. The purpose of the “fairy meeting” was to discuss both how to solve the problems and how to retain the enthusiasm of the masses. But his solution was simply for people to work harder still.
My notes record him as saying that “some people have asked, ‘If our production is so high, why is our food supply so tight? Why can't female comrades buy hairpins? Why can't people get soap or matches?' Well, if we cannot clearly explain the situation, let's not explain it. Let's just stick it out and carry on our work with even greater determination and energy. We will have more supplies next year. Then we will explain everything. In short, the situation in general is excellent. There are many problems, but our future is bright.”
Following his speech, the party leaders broke into small groups, divided geographically—north, northeast, northwest, east, central-south, and southwest—to discuss problems in their own regional areas.
When I met with Mao that night, he said the meetings would continue for about two weeks, and he was relaxed and in good spirits. He wanted to go sightseeing. Lushan was a vast mountain range, famous for its scenic spots—caves and temples and magnificent lookout points. Mao wanted to see them all.
Dr. Wang Shousong, the director of Jiangxi Hospital and a graduate of a Japanese medical school, had set up a clinic for the meeting participants and their entourages, staffing it with four young and energetic nurses from the nearby Lushan sanatorium. The Jiangxi provincial leadership arranged for evening entertainment, and performances by the Jiangxi provincial music and dance troupe were followed by the dances Mao so enjoyed. The young nurses joined the dancing parties, and within days, Mao was rotating between a young nurse and a member of the cultural troupe. The Chairman was becoming bolder about his dalliances. Security surrounding Mao's building was tight and the Chairman's privacy was still closely protected, but Mao himself did little to hide the fact that he was entertaining young women in his room.
The meetings were going so smoothly and Mao was having such a good time that he phoned Jiang Qing in Beidaihe and told her not to come to Lushan. He would join his wife when the meeting was over.
Five days after we arrived in Lushan, a great quarrel broke out in Group One. Li Yinqiao was angry with me and Lin Ke, complaining that he had to wait on the two “intellectuals.” The building where Lin Ke and I were staying had no telephone, and if the Chairman wanted either of us, Li Yinqiao had to dispatch one of the guards to get us. The guards resented the walk and suggested we set up a duty office on the first floor of Mao's residence. We objected, both because space was tight and because it was awkward to witness the frequent comings and goings of the Chairman's female guests, and we did not want to see or know. We were afraid Mao would think we were spying on his private affairs. Without explicit orders from him, Lin Ke and I thought it best to stay in our own residence.
But our disagreements over the logistical arrangements quickly spilled over into other longstanding grievances within Group One: the peasants against the intellectuals—Li Yinqiao and the guards on one side, Lin Ke and me on the other. Mao had lost his appetite since coming to Lushan and was complaining that he did not like the dishes his chef, Li Xiwu, had been preparing. Li Yinqiao wanted me to solve the problem, and when I protested that Mao's food was not my responsibility, he accused me of putting on airs and shirking my responsibilities. We met and squabbled for several days, oblivious to the party meetings around us.
Tian Jiaying brought me out of my own problems and into the reality of what was happening in the Lushan meetings. “You know, the big Lushan meeting is getting just as tense as your little Lushan meeting,” he said to me one day. I did not take him seriously at first. Mao had been relaxed and was obviously having a good time when the meetings started. I was so deeply embroiled in the mini-Lushan meetings of Group One that I had had no idea anything had gone wrong. But Mao's mood had changed. He had become less talkative and seemed lost in thought, pondering something, which is why he lost his appetite.
The regional small group meetings had been going on without an agenda for several days. Mao was not participating but found out what was going on by reading the daily reports. In the small group settings, people were beginning to speak their minds, complaining about the lies that were being transmitted as production statistics and reporting on the widespread starvation in many rural areas. The more time passed, the more boldly people were speaking out.
Watching in silence from the sidelines, Mao was learning where party leaders stood on the question of the Great Leap Forward. His critics had miscalculated, forgetting the tone Mao had set when he opened the conference, ignoring the Chairman's insistence that the situation was good and the problems were minor. They were misinterpreting his silence now, reading it as approval when in fact Mao was becoming more and more disgruntled. Mao often said that he did things openly (gao yangmou) and never engaged in conspiracies (gao yinmou). He believed he had openly set the parameters of discussion at the first meeting.
But something was going seriously wrong. Mao's “fairy meeting” was falling apart. The worst was yet to come.