Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao made this concession partly because a large number of big industrial projects were having to be closed down anyway as a result of the lack of essentials like steel, coal and electricity. Closing them down was a good idea, as they had caused stupendous waste, but the result was huge upheaval, in which over 26 million people lost their jobs. Most of these had been sucked into the cities in the past three years; now they were kicked back to their villages — the largest such yo-yo movement of population in human history. “How wonderful our Chinese people and our cadres are!” Mao exclaimed. “Twenty million people: we call and they come; we dismiss and they go.” He continued: “Which party can manage this except the Communist Party?” Once back in their villages, these people lost whatever borderline livelihood and welfare guaranteed them as factory workers. In addition, families were broken up if one spouse was accorded an urban job and did not wish to go and live as a peasant and face starvation. Such couples faced the prospect of living permanently apart, allowed only twelve days a year together.

But having conceded lower food levies in 1961, Mao warned his audience at Lushan: “We have retreated to the bottom of the valley,” meaning the only way requisitioning could go from there on was up. Next year, his managers were told, the levies would have to rise again.

To anyone in his court who might be contemplating drastic measures against him, Mao sent a warning signal through a somewhat unusual channel, the visiting retired British Field Marshal Montgomery. Quite unprompted, Mao told Montgomery: “I am prepared for destruction any time,” before launching into five possible ways he might be assassinated: “shooting to death by enemies, a plane crash, a train crash, drowning, and killing with germs. I have made preparations for all these five ways.” As it was standard procedure for Mao’s talks with foreigners to be circulated among top leaders, Mao was serving notice on his colleagues: Don’t try anything. I have taken precautions.

Mao had reason to worry. Even his Praetorian Guard, the people he relied on for his life, voiced bitter sentiments against him. “Where is all this grain that has been harvested?” one soldier said. “Is it Chairman Mao’s order that people should only eat grass?” asked another. “He can’t just take no notice of whether people live or die …” Yet another: “Now the folks in the villages don’t even have the food that dogs used to eat. In the old days, dogs had chaff and grain … And the commune members are saying: Does Chairman Mao want to starve us all to death?” The Guards were promptly purged.

A MORE URGENT CONCERN for Mao in September 1961 was the chance of losing power at a Party congress. Mao’s “biggest worry,” Lin Biao wrote in his diary, “is whether he can get the majority in a vote.” And a congress was due that very month. The previous one had been held in September 1956, and the Party charter stipulated one every five years. Mao had to fend off the threat of being deposed.

As far back as 1959, Mao had sensed profound discontent towards him among the top echelon. “If you don’t vote for me,” he had told a Party plenum then, “so be it.” Since then, officials had been shattered by the impact of the famine. At Party gatherings in the provinces, cadres would burst into tears when reporting what they had seen in the villages. Moreover, Mao’s policies had brought starvation to themselves and their families. Their monthly rations were about 10 kg of rice, a few ounces of cooking oil and a small lump of meat. In Zhongnanhai, officials like Liu’s staff grew wheat and vegetables outside their offices to supplement their inadequate rations. Hunger had made Mao’s officials almost universally yearn for a change of policy.

Mao tried to deflect dissatisfaction by his usual method of designating scapegoats. The people he picked on were first of all village cadres, whom he blamed for “beating people up and beating them to death,” and for “causing grain harvests to drop and people not to have enough food to eat.” Next he blamed the Russians, and his third scapegoat was “extraordinarily big natural calamities.” As a matter of fact, meteorological records show that not only were there no natural calamities in the famine years, but the weather was better than average. But even if cadres had no general picture, and half believed Mao, hungry officials still felt that something must be terribly wrong with the way their Party was running the country if the entire population, including themselves, was brought to such a state of wretchedness.