by Philip Short
66. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 19 (Jan. 26 1956).
67. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 99–109 and 149–51; see also Terrill, Mao, pp. 272–3.
68. See Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 203 and 233 (Dec. 8 1956 and Jan. 18 1957).
69. Ibid., pp. 158–95 (Nov. 15 1956). Like most of Mao's speeches in his later years, this is a discursive, rambling text, made the more so because it is available only in two (significantly different, but overlapping) Red Guard versions.
70. Ibid., p. 205, Dec. 8 1956.
71. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 178–9; Goldman, pp. 165–82; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 232–4.
72. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 223–4 (Jan. 12 1957).
73. Ibid., p. 243 (Jan. 18 1957); see also MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 168–9.
74. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 255 and 279–81 (Jan. 27 1957). He later backtracked on Chiang's works, saying that they should be published only in a restricted edition (ibid., p. 356, March 1 1957).
75. Ibid., pp. 260–1 and 290 (Jan. 27 1957).
76. Ibid., p. 256.
77. Ibid., p. 253.
78. Ibid., pp. 258–9 and 289.
79. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 121 (Feb. 16) and 241 (Mar. 8 1957).
80. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 303 (Feb. 16 1957).
81. Ibid., p. 258 (Jan. 27 1957).
82. Ibid., pp. 253 and 292 (Jan. 27). See also the revised version of Mao's February 27 speech (Ibid., p. 317).
83. This message is spelt out, in somewhat disjointed fashion, in Mao's two speeches on February 16 1957 (MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 117; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 302–5). See also Kau and Leung, p. 260 (Jan. 27 1957); and SW5, pp. 313–14 (Aug. 30 1956).
84. MacFarquhar, Origins 1, p. 184.
85. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 113–89 (Feb. 27 1957).
86. MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, Praeger, New York, 1960, p. 19.
87. Loh and Evans p. 222.
88. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 24–5.
89. Ibid., pp. 27–8.
90. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 156 (great progress) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 229–30 (untrustworthy) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 144 (loving their country) [Feb. 27]; p. 257 (nothing strange) [Jan. 27]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 173 (allowing poisonous weeds to grow) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 234 (fertiliser) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 144 (only very, very few) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 243 (resolutely suppressed) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 175–6 (disturbances) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 233 (expose and isolate) [Jan. 18].
91. Ibid., p. 256 (Jan. 27 1957).
92. Malraux, André, Anti-mémoires, Paris, 1968.
93. Roderick MacFarquhar discusses at length purported leadership differences over the Hundred Flowers campaign (Origins, 1, chs. 13–16), and many later writers have followed his lead. At the time his book appeared (1974), published Chinese statements were virtually the only source available and were subjected to Kremlinological analysis which all too often produced faulty conclusions. Today we know that a number of Mao's colleagues had reservations about the Hundred Flowers, but there was no leadership split and the doubters, as usual, went along with Mao's wishes.
94. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 321 (March 19).
95. Ibid., p. 359 (calm and unhurried) [March 20]; pp. 300 and 329–30 (‘In the past … who can they argue with?’) [March 18 and 19]; pp. 292–4 (think for themselves) [March 17]; p. 305 (vitality) [March 18]; p. 303 (sarcastic) [March 18]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 517 (scolded) [early April].
96. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 366–7 (April 30). See also p. 229 (March 8) and Kau and Leung, 2, p. 522 (early April).
97. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 351–62 (March 20).
98. Ibid., pp. 201 and 210 (March 6); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 517 (early April).
99. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 210, 240, 336 and 357 (March 6, 8, 19 and 20).
100. Ibid., pp. 50–2; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 515; and interviews with Wang Ruoshui, Beijing, June 1997.
101. Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 2, p. 398; JYMZW, 6, pp. 423–3.
102. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 365 (April 30); Wu Ningkun, A Single Tear, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1993, pp, 50–1.
103. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 519 (early April).
104. JYMZW, 6, pp. 417–18 (April 27).
105. Wu, p. 54.
106. Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution, pp. 8–9.
107. This was Gu Zhen.
108. The following is taken from MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 44–109, esp. pp. 51–3 (Chu Anping); 87–9 (economics lecturer); 65 (dog-shit) and 68 (no one dares).
109. JYMZW, 6, pp. 455–6.
110. Ibid., pp. 469–76; see also SW5, pp. 440–6.
111. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 524.
112. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 130–73.
113. SW5, p. 447 (May 25).
114. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 94–5, 108–9 and 145–61.
115. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 566–7.
116. Ibid., pp. 562–4.
117. SW5, p. 412.
118. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 592–6.
119. Ibid., p. 596.
120. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 203 and 247 (March 6 and 8).
121. Mao's statements for the next six months were riddled with inconsistencies. In the editorial of July 1, for instance, he accused the Rightists of trying ‘to unseat the Communist Party and take its place themselves’, but then insisted: ‘We can be lenient and not mete out punishment … We should allow them to retain their own views. [They] will still be allowed freedom of speech’ (Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 593 and 595). A few days later, he wrote of an ‘irreconcilable, life-and-death contradiction’ with the Rightists, but then stated that ‘some of them’, perhaps a majority, would be able to reform (pp. 654 and 659). In October, he was still ambivalent, declaring that ‘there are bothersome problems. This business of revolution is troublesome’ (p. 742).
122. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 204 (March 6). Mao said: ‘Now it's an ideological struggle, it's different … We should not over-estimate the enemy and under-estimate ourselves.’
123. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 510 (April 30), 524 (April, undated) and 631 (July 9).
124. Mao's claim in July that ‘we had anticipated these things’ was fictive (ibid., p. 602).
125. The clearest indication of this came in Mao's editorial of July 1, where he wrote that a new round of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had been ‘independent of people's will. That is to say, it [was] unavoidable. Even if people wanted to avoid it, it couldn't be done. The only thing to do then was to follow the dictates of the situation and obtain victory’ (Ibid., pp. 594–5). See also his insistence, later the same month, that ‘blooming and contending’ should not be completely abandoned (p. 640).
126. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 639 (July 17); MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 167–70 (June 6 and 7).
127. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 654–5 and 662 (July).
128. In October, Mao drew an explicit comparison with earlier campaigns, declaring: ‘We are not going to handle them the way we did the landlords and counter-revolutionaries in the past’ (ibid., p. 732).
129. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 300–20.
130. Wu, pp. 72–173.
131. Liang and Shapiro, pp. 9–15.
132. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 596 (July 1).
133. Ibid., p. 655 (July).
134. A well-informed oral source dates the move to November 1949. Li Zhisui, who later became Mao's physician, says it occurred in February 1950, after the Chairman's return from Moscow (Private Life, p. 52). For Li's description of Zhongnanhai, see pp. 76–80.
135. Quan Yanchi, pp. 84–9; Li Zhisui, p. 60.
136. Li Zhisui, pp. 56–8.
137. Ibid., pp. 140–5, 187–8 and 190; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, pp. 254–62.
138. Li Zhisui, p. 85.
139. Quan Yanchi, pp. 10
7 and 134–41.
140. Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan, pp. 239–42.
141. Mao, Nineteen Poems, p. 30 [translation amended]. See also the version in Terrill, Mao, pp. 276–7. For Mao's meeting with Chen Yuying, see Peking Review, Oct 14 1977.
142. Van Gulik, Robert, Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period, privately published, Tokyo, 1951 [Taiwan Reprint], p. 39.
143. Oral sources; see also Li Zhisui, pp. 355–64, and Salisbury, New Emperors, pp. 134, 217–19, 221. Some of those who worked with Mao in the 1950s and ’60s, including Wang Dongxing and Lin Ke, have sought publicly to cast doubt on Dr Li's account, alleging that it is exaggerated and sometimes inaccurate. Minor details apart, however, his version has been confirmed, under conditions of anonymity, by several of the Chairman's former partners. Its essential veracity is not in doubt.
144. Li Zhisui, p. 363.
145. Quan Yanchi, pp. 12 and 137.
146. Ibid., pp. 88 and 153–5.
147. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, p. 306.
148. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 255 and 262 (Jan. 27 1957).
149. MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 59–61, 86–91 and 126–9. Wu Lengxi quoted Mao as saying later, ‘Why should I read something which insults me’ (Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinshen jingli de ruogan lishi shijian pianduan, Xinhua chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, p. 57).
150. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 159 and 179–80 (Nov. 15 1956).
151. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 293–4 and 2, pp. 2–4, 19, 40 and 179–80; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 660 (July) and 702 (Oct. 9 1957). Although Mao began emphasising the need for a corps of proletarian intellectuals from the summer of 1957 onward, he did not entirely abandon the possibility of utilising the skills of the bourgeoisie, and this idea resurfaced at intervals throughout the late 1950s.
152. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 280, 285, 288, 301, 308, 352, and especially 371. Liu Shaoqi would later be accused of having fabricated this notion in his report to the Eighth Congress (MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 119–21 and 160–4). However, Mao did not object at the time either to Liu's report or to the Congress resolution. On November 15 1956, he told the Second Plenum of the Eighth CC: ‘In today's China, the class contradiction has already been basically resolved, and the primary domestic contradiction is the contradiction between an advanced social system and backward forces of production’ (Kau and Leung, 2, p. 184). This corresponds precisely to the incriminated section of the resolution Liu drafted. Mao emphasised from the start that ‘basically’ meant ‘not yet entirely’ (ibid., p. 197, Dec. 4 1956), but this was also made clear in Liu's report, which stated that class struggle would continue until socialist transformation was completed (see text in Bowie and Fairbank, p. 188). It was only after the spring of 1957, when Mao began to revise his ideas about the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that the position taken at the Eighth Congress was put in question.
153. SW5, p. 395 (June 19). For intermediate formulations as the new line was emerging, see Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 566–7 (June 8) and p. 578 (June 11 1957).
154. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 809–12 (undated, but probably September 1957).
155. Ibid., pp. 696–713. Mao's vision of future plenty led him to imagine a time when a peasant could feed himself from ‘several fen of land’ (p. 700); a fen is one sixtieth of an acre, or an area roughly eight yards square.
156. Klochko, Mikhail A., Soviet Scientist in Red China, International Publishers, Montreal, 1964, p. 68.
157. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 23.
158. I cannot, alas, pretend to have invented this magnificent neologism: the term is Roderick MacFarquhar's, but it deserves wider currency, which is my excuse for borrowing it here.
159. Ibid., p. 10; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).
160. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 16; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 702 (Oct. 9 1957).
161. MacFarquhar, ibid; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 787 (Nov. 18 1957).
162. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 783 and 786.
163. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 17–19.
164. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 377–91 (Jan. 3–4 1958).
165. Miscellany of Mao Zedong Thought, 1, pp. 80–84 (Jan. 13 1958).
166. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, p. 639. Yanhuang chunjiu, No. 2, 2000, pp. 6–11; Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2012, p. 107.
167. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 36–41.
168. Miscellany, 1, p. 89 (Apr. 6 1958).
169. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 34. The original target had been to irrigate seven million acres in 12 months.
170. Miscellany, 1, pp. 95–6 (May 8 1958).
171. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 43.
172. Miscellany, 1, p. 105 (May 17 1958).
173. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 33, 82, 85 and 90; Miscellany, 1, p. 123 (May 18 1958). Before the Leap, Mao had predicted it would take fifty years for China to reach US production levels.
174. Ibid., p. 115 (May 23 1958). See also MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 409 (Aug. 19 1958).
175. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 432 (Aug. 30 1958).
176. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 84. More than 50 years later, most if not quite all of Tan Zhenlin's vision has been realised in China, with the one difference that it is available not ‘according to needs’ but ‘according to ability to pay’. Even Mao's call for French city planning has found an echo: gated housing estates all over China now boast French-style villas and gardens. Whether Tan would regard it as conforming to his conception of communism is another matter.
177. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 430 (Aug. 21 1958).
178. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 740 (Oct. 13 1957).
179. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 85.
180. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).
181. See, for instance, Miscellany, 1, p. 113 (May 20 1958).
182. Ibid., p. 96 (May 8 1958); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).
183. Vogel, ‘Chen Yun: his life’, p. 753.
184. JYMZW, 6, pp. 457–8; MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 173–80.
185. The ‘small groups’ were established on June 10 1958 (Chung, Yen-lin, ‘The CEO of the Utopian Project: Deng Xiaoping's Roles and Activities in the Great Leap Forward’, China Journal, No 69, January 2013, pp. 154–73).
186. Miscellany, l, pp. 120–1 (May 18 1958).
187. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 77.
188. Ibid., pp. 78–80. Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 365–8 (March 18 1926).
189. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 81; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 273.
190. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 274.
191. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 103.
192. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 414 (Aug. 21 1958).
193. Ibid., p. 419. See also MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 104.
194. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 812 (September 1957). See also MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 130–1.
195. Speech to the leading party group of the All-China Women's Federation, June 14 1958, quoted in Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, pp. 175–6.
196. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 419 (Aug. 21 1958).
197. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 103–8, 115–16, 119–20, 137–8 and 148–9.
198. See Mao's Beidaihe speeches (MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, especially pp. 434–5).
199. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 67-8, 75–6 and 100–2.
200. Rittenberg, Man Who Stayed Behind, p. 231.
201. Karnow, Stanley, Mao and China: A Legacy of Turmoil, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1990 (3rd rev. edn), p. 93.
202. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 115.
203. Ibid., p. 114.
204. Ibid., pp. 86 and 119–27.
205. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 403 (Aug. 17 1958).
206. ‘A summary report … regarding food shortages and riots’, April 25 1958, in Zhou Xun, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962, Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 10–16.
207. The best account of the famine provoked by the Great Leap is Yang Jisheng's Tombstone (an abridged version of the two-volume Chinese edition, Mubei: Zhongguo liushi niandai da jihuang jishi, C
osmos Books, Hong Kong, 2008), from which many of the details in the following pages are drawn. Much useful information is also to be found in Zhou Xun's documentary collection, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962. See also Dikötter, Frank, Mao's Great Famine, Bloomsbury, 2010, and Becker, Jasper, Hungry Ghosts, John Murray, 1996.
208. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 484–6 (Nov. 21) and 502–5 (Nov. 23 1958); MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 121–2 and 128–30; Miscellany, pp. 141, 144–5 and 147 (Dec. 19 1958).
209. Yang, Tombstone, pp. 249–51.
210. Speech to the Sixth Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, December 1958, in https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_23.htm
211. Internal party communiqué, April 29 1959, cited in Yang, Tombstone, pp. 205–6.
212. On May 26 and June 11 1959, cited in ibid., p. 208.
213. Speech to Sixth Plenum, supra; Speech at Zhengzhou, February 27 1959, in https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_27.htm. See also Yang, p. 180.
214. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 449–50 (Nov. 6 1958).
215. Ibid., pp. 474–5 (Nov. 10 1958).
216. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 13 (Jan. 20 1956).
217. Schram, Political Thought, p. 253 (April 15 1958).
218. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 7–15.
219. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 788–9 (Nov. 18 1957).
220. SW5, p. 152 (Jan. 28 1955).
221. CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 155–9 (July 22 1958). When Yudin first told Mao of Khrushchev's proposal the previous day, the Chairman assumed that it was a quid pro quo for Soviet aid in modernising the Chinese navy, which was then under discussion. This may have been partly Yudin's fault, for in his presentation he implicitly linked the two. Mao concluded, wrongly, that ‘their real purpose is to control us.’ He later repeated this publicly, accusing Khrushchev of ‘unreasonable demands designed to bring China under Soviet military control’ (Wu Lengxi, Shi nian lunzhan, pp. 158–61; Li Zhisui, Private Life, p. 261; The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965, p. 77). See also John Garver (‘Mao's Soviet Policies’, pp. 203–10).