Mao: The Unknown Story

When the Cultural Revolution started and Mao revved up his campaign to be the leader of the world revolution, he wanted to show the world that he was the true master of the colony, by making the British “go down on their knees” and publicly offer “unconditional surrender,” in the words of Chinese diplomats at internal meetings. The only way this could be achieved was to put the British in the wrong — and that needed a massacre of Chinese.

So Peking seized on a labor dispute in May 1967, and urged Hong Kong radicals to escalate violence, especially to break the law in a confrontational manner. To spur them on, Peking hinted strongly and publicly that it might take the colony back before the lease expired in 1997, and activists there were given to understand that this was Peking’s intention.

Mao’s real line was the one he imparted to Chou En-lai, in secret: “Hong Kong remains the same”—i.e., it stays under British rule. Chou’s assignment was to stir up enough violence to provoke reprisals, and then a kowtow, from the British, but not so much violence that it “might lead to us having to take Hong Kong back ahead of time,” which Chou privately made clear would be disastrous.

In the riots that ensued, Hong Kong police killed some demonstrators; but the number of deaths fell short of a massacre and the colonial authorities refused to apologize. Peking then incited Hong Kong radicals to kill policemen. “Do to them [the police] as they have done to us,” urged People’s Daily. “Those who kill must pay with their lives.” As the Hong Kong rioters were unable to kill policemen, Chou had to infiltrate soldiers into the colony. These men slipped across the border on 8 July, dressed in mufti, and shot dead five police. Chou expressed his satisfaction with the results, but vetoed any more such operations in case the situation evolved to a point where Peking’s bluff might be openly called. Instead, Peking fostered an indiscriminate bombing campaign, and over the next two months there were about 160 bomb incidents, some fatal.

But the British refused to resort to a massacre, and focused on methodically rounding up activists, quietly, at night. Mao’s hope of getting Britain to kowtow collapsed. In frustration, he fell back on hooliganism on his own turf. On 22 August a crowd of over 10,000 torched the British Mission in Peking, trapping the staff inside and almost burning them alive, and subjecting women to gross sexual harassment.

THE MISSIONS OF a score of other countries also found themselves on the receiving end of Mao’s fury. In 1967, violent assaults were made on the Soviet embassy, followed by the embassies of Indonesia, India, Burma and Mongolia. These attacks had official sanction, with the Foreign Ministry telling the mobs which missions to assail, and how intensely. The “punishments” ranged from million-strong demonstrations besieging the missions, unfurling giant portraits of Mao, and blasting insults through loudhailers, to breaking in, setting fire to cars, manhandling diplomats and their spouses and terrorizing their children, while yelling slogans like “Beat to death, beat to death.”

This treatment was even meted out to North Korea, as Kim Il Sung had declined to submit to Mao’s tutelage. Mao had over the years tried to subvert Kim, for which he had once been obliged to apologize. At the Moscow Communist summit in November 1957 he waylaid Kim to mend fences, to forestall Kim spilling the beans to other Communist leaders. According to an official Korean report that was relayed to a large meeting in Pyongyang, Mao “repeatedly expressed his apologies [to Kim] for the Chinese Communist Party’s unjustified interference in the affairs of the Korean [Party].” Kim seized the chance to reduce Mao’s clout in Korea by demanding the withdrawal of all the Chinese troops still there, to which Mao had to accede.

Mao did not give up. In January 1967, his man in charge of clandestine missions abroad, Kang Sheng, told the Albanians: “Kim Il Sung should be overthrown, so that the situation in Korea can be changed.” Unable to fulfill this wish, Mao directed crowds to swamp the Korean embassy, denouncing “fat Kim.” Kim retaliated by renaming Mao Tse-tung Square in Pyongyang, closing the rooms commemorating China’s role in the Korean War Museum, “re-sizing” the Russian and Chinese war memorials in Pyongyang, and drawing much closer to Russia.

By the end of September 1967, China had become embroiled in rows with most of the forty-eight countries with which it had diplomatic or semi-diplomatic relations. Many of these countries lowered their level of representation, and some closed their embassies. National Day that year saw only a sprinkling of foreign government delegates on Tiananmen. Mao later blamed his debacles on “extreme leftists.” The truth is that China’s foreign policy was never out of his hands.