Mao never had the same antipathy toward Deng that he had had for Liu Shaoqi. In October 1968, at the Twelfth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, when Liu Shaoqi was stripped of his power and expelled from the party, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing argued for Deng's expulsion too. Mao refused. Deng was a capable administrator, a good communist, and he believed in Marxism-Leninism. Deng, Mao thought, could still be reformed. Maybe he could use Deng again.

My first inkling of Deng's possible reinstatement was at Chen Yi's funeral in January 1972. By then, the distance between Mao and me had grown, and the Chairman no longer took me into his confidence. Wang Dongxing was my primary source of important political information. But at Chen Yi's funeral, I overheard Mao talking with Chen Yi's widow, Zhang Qian. Deng Xiaoping's problem was different from Liu Shaoqi's, Mao said. Liu's “contradiction” was antagonistic. He was an “enemy of the people.” Deng's problem was more benign, falling “within the ranks of the people.”

Zhou's illness was one reason for bringing Deng Xiaoping back. So was the increasingly complicated political situation following the death of Lin Biao. The party leadership was divided into two contending camps. Jiang Qing and her ultraleft associates Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan were on one side, and the ailing Zhou Enlai and Marshal Ye Jianying were on the other, and the Lin Biao incident was one point of disagreement.

Zhou Enlai wanted to accuse Lin Biao of ultraleftism, but Jiang Qing wanted him declared an ultrarightist. Mao settled the debate in favor of Jiang Qing. On December 17, 1972, more than a year after Lin Biao had fled and after Zhou was diagnosed with cancer, Mao decided that Lin Biao had been “an ultrarightist and a revisionist, trying to split the party, conspiring to betray the party and the nation.”

After the incident in early 1972 when Mao seemed ready to hand leadership over to Zhou and Jiang Qing responded by arguing that her husband was surrounded by a ring of spies, Mao seemed to distance himself from Zhou. He was wary that Zhou was too “right”—a revisionist. On July 4, 1973, Mao criticized Zhou Enlai for not discussing major issues with him, reporting only minor matters instead. If the situation does not change, Mao said, China will become revisionist. Five months later, in December, Mao criticized Zhou again.

Jiang Qing used Mao's growing distance from Zhou to launch a new attack on the premier—the bizarre campaign to “criticize Lin, criticize Confucius.” Zhou Enlai was accused of being a modern-day Confucius.

Zhou's position was awkward. He was still loyal to Mao. In charge of day-to-day administration but under attack from Jiang Qing and her faction, he could demonstrate his loyalty only if he had explicit instructions from the Chairman. But Zhang Yufeng had become Mao's gatekeeper and made it difficult for the two to meet. Zhou used Mao's meetings with foreign leaders to catch a few words with the Chairman, but such meetings were rare, and the two had little time to chat. Zhou Enlai thus turned to his two subordinates within the Foreign Ministry, Wang Hairong and Nancy Tang, to carry messages to Mao. The two women could speak freely in front of Mao, but their position was difficult because Zhang Yufeng was nearly always with him.

As Mao and Zhou grew estranged and Jiang Qing's faction seemed on the verge of near-total control, Mao stepped in to restore balance. In March 1973, he recommended that Deng Xiaoping be brought back to take up his former position as vice-premier, and the politburo agreed. Deng's influence grew. Moreover, Mao continued to rehabilitate many veteran cadres who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution and whom Jiang Qing regarded as rightist. When the Tenth Party Congress was convened from August 24 to 28, 1973, I was so preoccupied with Mao's health that I did not recognize its political import.

Mao's anoxia—the shortage of oxygen in his body—had become increasingly severe, and in order for him to attend the meetings in the Great Hall of the People, we had to install oxygen tanks in his car, in Room 118, at the podium where he would be talking, and in an emergency clinic we set up just under Room 118. Only when the meetings were over did I pause long enough to learn about the leadership changes that had just taken place. The membership of the newly selected Central Committee contained many rebels who had been active in the Cultural Revolution. But surprisingly, the lineup also included many old party cadres who had been purged in the early stages of the movement. Of the five party vice-chairmen, only two, Wang Hongwen and Kang Sheng, were members of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group. Three were veteran party leaders—Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, and General Li Desheng. Jiang Qing and her Cultural Revolution leftists had no more power at the end of the congress than when it began. Mao had kept his wife's power in check.

Mao's political shakeup continued. In December 1973, he called a series of politburo meetings, attended by the commanders of the eight military regions as well, to work out a rotation of the military commanders. The military commanders had been in their posts for years, and with the growing power of the military under Lin Biao and the damage to central party control due to the massive purges of the Cultural Revolution, the power of the regional military commanders had grown. Mao feared they were getting too much power, pursuing their own interests, and becoming less loyal to him. His solution was to pluck them out of their power bases and rotate them to new positions.

The return of Deng Xiaoping was part of that strategy. Deng's administrative talents could bring power back to the center. “I am calling a talented leader back into service,” he said at the meeting of military commanders. “He is Deng Xiaoping. We are sending out notices on his appointment as a member of the politburo and the Military Affairs Commission. The politburo deals with everything of importance—the party, the government, the army, the people, and the schools. It covers every geographic area—north, south, east, west, and center. I thought the politburo needed a secretary-general, but Deng didn't like that position. So he is being appointed chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army.” Deng would be in control of the regional military commanders, too.

Mao knew that some people were afraid of his new chief of the general staff. “He is a man of decisiveness, who has done good deeds seventy percent of the time and bad deeds thirty percent. But the man I have called back is your old boss, and the politburo called him back, too, not I alone.” Mao's health was on the decline. He could no longer attend all the politburo meetings, so Nancy Tang and Wang Hairong served as his liaison, using Zhou Enlai as their intermediary. Zhou reported to them on everything that happened there, and they ferried documents back and forth. Mao had withdrawn, but his power was undiminished.

Jiang Qing and her colleagues responded to the growing power of Deng Xiaoping by stepping up their attacks against Zhou. In early 1974, their campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius went into high gear. On January 18, Mao approved Jiang Qing's report “Lin Biao and the Confucius-Mencius Way” and asked the whole nation to study it. A week later, a huge rally was held in Beijing to launch the movement. Yao Wenyuan was the principal speaker, and Jiang Qing, Chi Qun, the former propaganda head of the Central Garrison Corps and now the first party secretary of Qinghua University, and Xie Jingyi, then the deputy party secretary at Qinghua University, gave speeches attacking Zhou Enlai and other “rightist” party officials. Zhou was there, too, even though the rally was directed against him. He apologized for not having called the rally earlier and led the crowd in shouting the slogan “Learn from Comrade Jiang Qing.” Wang Dongxing, who also attended, told me he thought Zhou was a coward.

Jiang Qing's “Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius” campaign never caught on. The Chinese people had been rallied to support one political movement after another since 1949, and each movement had been more deadly and debilitating than the last. As the Cultural Revolution turned first against this enemy and then against that, as the Communist party was decimated and even the man once touted as Chairman Mao's closest comrade in arms plotted a coup against him, the people of China became fed up, disgusted. They were coming to see the political campaigns for what they really were—naked high-level power struggles that had little to do with them. Now Jiang Qing and her faction were trying to overthrow Zhou Enlai and take control of the country—the party, government, and army. But the people refused to go along. Jiang Qing's “Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius” campaign was a flop.

Then Mao criticized Jiang Qing. On March 20, 1974, he wrote his wife to say, “It would be better for us not to see each other. For years I have advised you about many things, but you have ignored most of it. So what use is there for us to see each other? There are Marxist-Leninist books—and books by me—but you won't study them seriously. I am eighty-one years old and seriously ill, but you show hardly any concern. You now enjoy many privileges, but after my death, what are you going to do? You are also like those people who ‘do not discuss major policies with me but report to me every day on trivial matters.' Think about it.”

I was too busy to follow these events. My attention was focused on Mao. His health was deteriorating.