Nonetheless, Mao could feel the force of the sentiment of the 7,000, and felt compelled to produce a “self-criticism” in front of them, on 30 January — his first ever since coming to power in 1949. Although he characteristically made it sound as if the disasters had been other people’s fault and that he was rather altruistically accepting the blame, using carefully slanted formulae like “I am responsible … because I am the Chairman,” he had to admit that there was much to be blamed for. Having made this admission, Mao had to swallow a policy change. He was forced to abandon the lethal scale of food levies planned for 1962 and onwards. As a result, tens of millions of people were spared death by starvation.
AS SOON AS the conference was over, on 7 February, Mao stormed off to Shanghai to be among his cronies, under local boss Ke Qing-shi. He had to take a back seat while Liu and his other colleagues, mainly Chou En-lai, Chen Yun and a rising star, Deng Xiao-ping, made major changes to his policies. Requisitioning was greatly lowered. Costly and unrealistic projects like nuclear submarines were suspended, although the basic nuclear program was unaffected. Spending on arms factories was enormously scaled down, while consumer goods industries received unprecedented funding. In a blow to the promotion of Maoism, overseas aid was slashed drastically — to virtually zero for the year. Mao’s extravagance had been extremely unpopular with officials who knew about it. The man who ran military aid later wrote: “Every time I saw foreigners’ smiling faces after signing yet another aid agreement, my heart would be filled with guilt towards my own people.”
Investment in agriculture rose sharply. In many places, peasants were allowed to lease land from the commune, and effectively were able to return to being individual farmers. This alleviated starvation and motivated productivity. It was in defense of this practice that Deng Xiao-ping quoted an old saying, which became his most famous remark: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a yellow cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice.” In the cities, working hours were reduced so that the malnourished population could recover some energy, and this also allowed more private time and family life. In less than a year people’s lives improved perceptibly. By and large, deaths from hunger stopped.
The regime even allowed a number of people to leave the country. Normally, people trying to escape abroad were sent to labor camps, but now the authorities opened the fence to Hong Kong for a few days to let some 50,000 people flee. Border guards even lent a hand to lift children over the barbed wire.
The year 1962 was to be one of the most liberal periods since Mao’s reign had begun. That spring, Liu and his colleagues rehabilitated wholesale those condemned following the purge of Peng De-huai in 1959, who totaled a staggering 10 million. Some “Rightists” (victimized in 1957–58) were also rehabilitated. In the arts and literature a host of creations burst forth. It had taken tens of millions of deaths to bring this degree of relief to the survivors. It was also in this year that the Panchen Lama felt able to write to Chou En-lai, chronicling the brutality the Tibetans had suffered. There was some relaxation in Tibet; some monasteries were restored and religious practices tolerated.
BEING FORCED TO change policy by his own Party — without the backing of Moscow — was the biggest setback Mao had suffered since taking power. First he had been outsmarted by the seemingly ultra-cautious Liu. Then he had effectively been given the thumbs-down by virtually all of the stratum that ran the country. From this moment on, Mao nurtured a volcanic hatred for Liu and the officials who had attended the conference — as well as for his Party, which these people obviously represented. He was out for revenge. The president of China and the backbone of his Party were his target. That is why, a few years later, he launched his Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution, in which Liu and most of the officials in that hall, and numerous others, were to be put through hell. As Mme Mao spelled out, Mao had “choked back this grievance at the Conference of the Seven Thousand, and was only able to avenge it in the Cultural Revolution.” Of course Mao was not just in quest of revenge, savage and devastating though that was. It was obvious to him that this set of officials was not prepared to run the country the way he wanted. He would purge them and install new enforcers.
Quite a few left the conference with a sense of foreboding for Liu. Liu himself knew that this was the biggest turning-point in his life, but he had decided that his priority was to fend off more tens of millions of deaths. During this period the normally reserved Liu was unusually passionate and vocal about the plight of the Chinese people, who had suffered so terribly at the hands of the regime of which he was a leading member.