Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao’s main worry was America. To deter it he tried hard to deal himself some cards. His options for stirring up trouble in the US itself or in its immediate vicinity were limited. Shortly after the Test Ban Treaty, he had fired off a statement on 8 August 1963, to support the blacks in America. However, it only amounted to what he himself later called an “empty cannon.” The black American radical whom Mao credited with urging him to issue the statement, Robert Williams, told us that Mao “didn’t understand a lot of things about blacks in America.” Williams compared Mao unfavorably on this score with Ho Chi Minh. Mao issued more statements supporting anti-American movements in countries near the US, like those in Panama and the Dominican Republic. These were just words.

There was one spot, though, near China, where there were Americans, and that was Vietnam. By the end of 1963 there were some 15,000 American military advisers in South Vietnam. Mao’s plan was to create a situation whereby America would send more troops to South Vietnam, and even invade North Vietnam, which bordered with China. This way, if Washington were to strike his nuclear facilities, the Chinese army would pour into Vietnam and engulf the American troops as they had done in the Korean War. To try to make this happen, in 1964 Mao started pressing the Vietnamese hard to step up the war in Indochina. Their fighting, he told them, had “made no great impact and was just scratching the surface … Best turn it into a bigger war.” “I’m afraid you really ought to send more troops to the South.” “Don’t be afraid of US intervention,” he urged; “at most, it’s no worse than having another Korean War. The Chinese army is prepared, and if America takes the risk of attacking North Vietnam, the Chinese army will march in at once. Our troops want a war now.”

Mao asked the North Vietnamese to escalate fighting in other countries which were neighbors of China: “Better also send several thousand troops to Laos,” he said. Laos “has been fighting for several years; but nothing has come of it. You should think of a way: get 3,000 or 4,000 men and … train them so they stop believing in Buddhism and become tough combat troops …” He particularly urged the Vietnamese to help build up a guerrilla army in Thailand, where America had military bases.

Hanoi’s policy, in fact, was to get the USA to de-escalate, and the Vietnamese told Mao they did not want to “provoke” America. Mao nonetheless ordered 300,000–500,00 °Chinese troops deployed along the border with Vietnam, ready to pour in. Chou En-lai paid a visit to China’s South Sea fleet and told its commander to get ready to attack South Vietnam. Funds were allocated to move the fleet much closer to Vietnam, to the port of Zhanjiang.

Mao’s agenda, as Chou En-lai later spelled out to Egypt’s President Nasser, was to draw the maximum number of American troops into Vietnam as “an insurance policy” for China against a possible US nuclear attack,

because we will have a lot of their flesh close to our nails.

So the more troops they send to Vietnam, the happier we will be, for we feel that we will have them in our power, we can have their blood …

… They will be close to China … in our grasp. They … will be our hostages.

Chou also told Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere that to protect its nuclear facilities, Peking would act in Vietnam regardless of what the Vietnamese themselves wanted. “Tell the US,” Chou said, that if America attacks China’s nuclear facilities, Peking will “respect no borders” and will go into North Vietnam “with or without the consent of the Vietnamese.”

MAO DID NOT worry only about air strikes on his nuclear facilities, he feared that all his arms-centered industries could be targets. As a lot of these were situated in coastal plains, he decided to move them to China’s mountainous hinterland.

In June 1964 he ordered this massive relocation, which he described to his inner circle as a nationwide “house-moving” of industries to cope with “the Era of the Bomb.” The undertaking went by the general name of the “Third Front” (coastal and border areas were “the First Front”; “the Second Front” was the rest of China). No fewer than some 1,100 large enterprises were dismantled and moved to remote areas, where major installations like steel and electricity plants had to be constructed. Some nuclear facilities were even duplicated. Mountains were hollowed out to make giant caves to accommodate them. The upheaval and cost were colossal. Over the decade the Third Front was being built, it cost an astronomical 200 billion-plus yuan, and at its peak it sucked in at least two-thirds of the entire nation’s investment. The waste it created was more than the total material losses caused by the Great Leap Forward.