Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang

  During Mikoyan’s visit Mao curbed his annoyance. To Mikoyan’s astonishment, Mao did not complain about Russia’s 1945 treaty with Chiang Kai-shek, under which Russia had regained extraterritorial concessions; he even went so far as to call it “patriotic.” Mao wanted a lot from Stalin. His shopping list started with a request for a US$300 million loan — exclusively for military purposes — and moved on to a vast range of arms, including heavy tanks and anti-aircraft guns, plus advisers on reorganizing the army. Even more important was long-term help for factories to produce his own aircraft, tanks and other heavy weapons. Mao wanted Stalin’s help to become a major military power.

  Stalin had recently expelled Tito, the Yugoslav leader, from the Communist camp. Tito had shown too much independence and an inclination to carve out his own sphere of influence. In an earlier message to Stalin, Mao had referred to Tito’s experience, seemingly placing it alongside Russia’s as a possible model, and had been slapped down hard in return. Mao now made the right noises about Tito commending Stalin’s criticism of Yugoslav nationalism. This was Mao’s effort to reassure Stalin that he would not be another Tito.

  Mao also made a point of stressing to Mikoyan how much he regarded himself as Stalin’s subordinate. Toasting Stalin’s health, Mao “emphasised that … Stalin was … the teacher of the Chinese people and the peoples of the whole world,” Mikoyan reported to Stalin. Mao “emphasised several times that he was a disciple of comrade Stalin,” and “was awaiting instructions … and deliberately downgraded his own role … as a leader and as a theoretician … [saying] that he … had made no new contribution to Marxism, etc.” But the astute Mikoyan was not taken in. “This,” he told Stalin, “does not correspond to what Mao Tse-tung is in reality, nor to what he thinks about himself.”

  Indeed, when Mikoyan brought up the subject of “coordination” among Asian Communist parties, Mao was ready with his plan, which was to create an Asian Cominform, which he proposed starting to organize as soon as he had completed his conquest of China. He wanted the group to consist of “several” other Asian parties, listing the Koreans, the Indo-Chinese and the Filipinos, to begin with.

  Mikoyan then produced Stalin’s offer, which restricted Mao to China’s immediate backyard, saying that Mao should “head” a bureau of East Asian parties, consisting initially of only three members: China, Japan and Korea. “Later on,” he said, others “could also be involved gradually.”

  Stalin was conceding some ground. At the same time, he sent a signal for Mao not to push too hard. The day after the conversation about turf, Stalin sent Mikoyan a very strong cable telling him to order Mao to arrest an American working with the CCP called Sidney Rittenberg—“as a spy.” Stalin linked Rittenberg with Anna Louise Strong, the American whom Mao had sent abroad to promote himself; according to Stalin, Strong too was an American spy. (Mikoyan said Stalin had given him special orders to check for US and British “spies” in the entourage of the CCP leadership.) Rittenberg was duly arrested.

  Strong herself was at that moment stranded in Moscow, denied an exit visa for China. On 13 February, the day after Mikoyan returned to Moscow and saw Stalin, she was thrown into the Lubyanka prison. Most unusually, her arrest, on a charge of “espionage,” was reported in Pravda the next day, which made the warning more emphatic for Mao, and for Communist satellite regimes. After Strong was deported shortly afterwards, she wrote to a CCP intermediary: “Please tell Chairman Mao … that, so far as I could learn, it was my too persistent search into the road to China [sic] that the Russians finally attacked as ‘spying.’ ”

  One of Strong’s contacts in Moscow was Mikhail Borodin, Stalin’s main operative in China in the 1920s, who had been trying to help get her book promoting Mao published in Russia. Two weeks after Strong’s arrest, Borodin too was arrested and tortured for information about Mao.

  Though these arrests were shots across Mao’s bows, he was unruffled. Stalin was saying: Don’t mess with America, or Europe. But Mikoyan had already promised him East Asia. Mao was now demarcating turf with Stalin. So it was in a cheerful mood that he thought out loud on this subject to a pre-victory Central Committee plenum on 13 March 1949.

  At this meeting, his old challenger Wang Ming, who by now had conceded defeat, curried favor instead, declaiming that Mao’s Thought was “the … development of Marxism-Leninism in colonial and semi-colonial countries.” Not East Asia, or just Asia, but all “colonial and semi-colonial countries.”

  Wang Ming had spelled out what Mao had in mind, and Mao was so delighted that he got rather carried away: “Comrade Wang Ming’s phrase gives off a smell of dividing a ‘market.’ Colonial and semi-colonial countries take up a very large part of the world. Once they come under us, doesn’t that mean Stalin only takes charge of the developed industrial regions, and [the rest of the world] is under our charge …?” Persisting with the royal “we,” Mao continued: “… we say colonial and semi-colonial countries belong to us. But what if one of them doesn’t buy our goods and goes straight to Moscow …?… Of course, let’s not be in a hurry to think too big; let’s fix China first.”

  Mao had begun to dream about dividing the world with Stalin.

  STALIN CLEARLY decided that if he allowed Mao stewardship over even a limited slice of turf his own power would be eroded. So when Liu Shao-chi visited Russia that summer and delicately broached the subject by asking Stalin whether China could join the Cominform, he got a taste of the Master at his slyest. “I think it is not really necessary,” Stalin replied. China should, instead, be “organising a union of Communist parties of East Asia.” But this seeming confirmation of his earlier offer was followed at once by: “Since the USSR is a country situated both in Europe and Asia, it will participate in [this] union.” The Master was not backing off at all.

  As before, Stalin served up sharp warnings to Mao by arresting a whole string of operatives who had been in China. While Liu was in Moscow, many of the key Russian agents who had been with Mao followed Borodin into the torture cells: Mao’s GRU doctor, Orlov, was recalled and savagely tortured by KGB chief Viktor Abakumov in person. Orlov was accused of links with “the American and Japanese spy” Mao. Orlov’s arrest was signaled to Mao, as the Russians approached Shi Zhe, Liu’s interpreter and Mao’s assistant, and asked him to inform on Orlov. These were signals that Stalin was preparing the ground to denounce Mao as a spy or a Titoist if it became opportune to do so.

  Stalin was baring his fangs. But Mao was not scared, and flexed his muscles on an issue of great importance to him: the first international Communist gathering scheduled to be held in his new capital, Peking. This was a huge trade union conference, which would be the springboard for putting Mao on the world map, as it covered not only the whole of Asia, but also Australasia, an advanced capitalist continent. It was also highly political, more like an international conference of Communist parties than a trade union gathering. Stalin tinkered with the idea of blocking it, or moving the venue, but Mao had Liu insist that it “should be held in China at the scheduled time.” Liu promised that it “would not carry out any work of organization,” meaning that Mao would not try to exploit it to set up his own international network.

  When the conference opened, on 16 November 1949, Mao had just founded his regime, on 1 October. In his keynote speech, Liu proclaimed “the Mao Tse-tung road,” and did not mention Stalin, or the Russian model, once. The theme of the conference was seizing power via the “Mao Tse-tung road” throughout Asia — and beyond: “The road that the Chinese people have followed is the road that the peoples of many colonial and semi-colonial areas should traverse …” Liu was categorical: “It is impossible for the revolutionary … people in such areas to avoid taking [this] road … [and] it will be wrong if they do so.” “Armed struggles,” he said, “should be the principal form of struggle.”

  This was strong stuff, and what followed showed how much headway Mao had made. When the Russian delegate complained that Liu’s speech was “ultra-left,” Stalin
denounced his own man as “a turncoat.” The hapless delegate, Leonid Solovyov, was obliged to admit error at a meeting chaired by Mao. This was a first for Mao — a senior Russian apologizing to him in front of his colleagues. Mao then grandly asked Stalin to “pardon” Solovyov.

  Even bolder, Mao reneged on his commitment that there would be no organizational follow-up to the conference. On 23 November, Liu Shao-chi announced that a Liaison Bureau would be set up, in Peking, through which the participating countries “can form their ties.” Mao was gearing up to give orders to foreign Reds. Stalin let it pass.

  Mao knew the cMaster was not going to swallow all this lying down. Some punishment was sure to result. But he now owned China, and with it a quarter of the world’s population. He had significantly increased the scope and weight of the Communist camp as a whole. Stalin could not afford to disown him. Mao fully intended to force Stalin to help him advance his own global ambitions.

  In America, the CCP had its own people operating inside the US Communist Party, and a powerful intelligence network with access to information unavailable to the Russians. When Moscow denounced US CP head Earl Browder, an old China hand, whose secret “China Bureau” had close links to Mao, Mao had very publicly continued to call him “comrade.”

  Mao learned from Stalin’s duplicity about conducting an open, even apparently friendly relationship with a government while secretly trying to overthrow that same government. When he came to power, he was to copy Stalin in his dealings with other countries.

  Many of Stalin’s agents with Mao were soon to die abnormal deaths. Orlov died shortly afterwards in a plane crash. Mao’s KGB doctor, Melnikov, vanished without trace after accompanying Mao on his trip in Russia in winter 1949–50. Borodin perished from torture in 1951. Vladimirov died at the age of forty-seven, in 1953—murdered by security overlord Lavrenti Beria with slow-acting poison, according to Vladimirov’s son, the post-Communist presidential candidate (and Olympic weight-lifting champion) Yuri Vlasov.

  33. TWO TYRANTS WRESTLE (1949–50 AGE 55–56)

  MAO’S PARAMOUNT requirement from Stalin was help to build a world-class war machine and turn China into a global power. The key to this was not how many weapons Stalin would provide, but the technology and infrastructure to manufacture armaments in China. At the time, China’s ordnance factories could only produce small arms. If Mao was to move at the tempo he desired — faster than Japan had done when building up an advanced arms industry from scratch in the nineteenth century — he needed foreign assistance. And Stalin was not just Mao’s best bet; he was his only bet. The Cold War had recently begun. There was no way the West could possibly help him achieve his goals without him changing the nature of his regime, which was out of the question.

  But Mao had a problem: he needed to persuade Stalin that his ambitions were manageable from Stalin’s own perspective. So he made ostentatious demonstrations of loyalty, lavishing praise on Stalin to the Master’s top envoy Mikoyan, and putting on an act for his liaison man Kovalev. The latter reported to Stalin that Mao once “sprang up, raised his arms and cried out three times: ‘May Stalin live ten thousand years.’ ” Along with the froth, Mao offered something very substantial — to cut China’s ties with the West. “We would be glad if all the embassies of capitalist countries got out of China for good,” Mao told Kovalev.

  This attitude was also motivated by domestic concerns. “Recognition would facilitate subversive activities [by] the USA and Britain,” Mao told Mikoyan on 31 January 1949. He feared that any Western presence at all would embolden liberals and give his opponents an opening, however slight. So he battened down the hatches, imposing a policy he called “cleaning house before inviting guests.” “Cleaning house” was a euphemism for drastic, bloody purges and the installation of an airtight control system nationwide, which included sealing off the whole country, banning Chinese from leaving, and expelling virtually all Westerners. Shutting out foreigners was also a way to ensure there were no outside observers to the purges. Only after he had “cleaned”—or rather cleansed — house, would Mao open the door a crack to admit a few closely controlled foreigners, who were always known as “guests,” not visitors.

  Given the kind of regime he had in mind, Mao had cause to feel worried. Western influence was strong in China. “Many representatives of the Chinese intelligentsia received their education in America, Britain, Germany and Japan,” Mao told Mikoyan. Virtually all modern educational institutions were either founded by Westerners (often missionaries) or heavily influenced by the West. “In addition to newspapers, magazines and news agencies,” Liu wrote to Stalin in summer 1949, America and Britain alone had 31 universities and specialized schools, 32 religious educational institutions and 29 libraries in China, as well as 2,688 schools, 3,822 religious missions and organizations, and 147 hospitals.

  China was short of educated people, especially skilled personnel, and Mao needed these people to get the country working, particularly the cities. Contrary to common assumption, it was the cities he cared about most. If we can’t run the cities, he told top officials in March 1949, “we won’t last.” His aim was to scare the educated class out of their liberal Western attitudes. This would be much easier to achieve if potential dissidents knew there were no Western representatives in the country to whom they could appeal, or any foreign media to tell their story.

  Mao was also concerned about the appeal the West had inside his own Party. His army loved American weapons: his own bodyguards compared Soviet sub-machine-guns contemptuously with US-made carbines. “The [US] carbines are so light and accurate. Why can’t we have more carbines?” they pleaded with Mao. American cars positively inspired awe. One CCP official in the Russian-occupied port of Dalian had a shiny black 1946 Ford: “It was great to show off with,” he recalled, “and roused the interest of the highest command of the Soviet army,” who asked to borrow it for a day, which put him one up on the Russians. Mao’s aim was to nip in the bud any chance of the West exerting any influence on his Party, in any field, from ideas to consumer goods. In this Mao was more thorough even than Stalin.

  Control was one key reason Mao decided to shun Western recognition. But his primary purpose was to show Stalin that the new China was committed 100 percent to the Communist bloc. This was the main reason Peking did not establish diplomatic relations with America and most Western countries when the regime was founded. It is widely thought that it was the US that refused to recognize Mao’s China. In fact, Mao went out of his way to make recognition impossible by engaging in overtly hostile acts. When the Communists captured Shenyang in November 1948, there were three Western consulates there (US, British and French), and the local CCP was friendly towards them at first. But orders soon came from Mao to “force [them] out.” Chou was explicit to Mikoyan: “We created intolerable conditions for them in order to get them to leave.” On 18 November, US consul general Ward and his staff were put under house arrest. Ward was later accused of spying and expelled. In the same aggressive spirit, Red troops broke into the residence of US ambassador J. Leighton Stuart in Nanjing in April 1949 when they took the Nationalist capital.

  Mao was equally hostile to the British. When the Communists were crossing the Yangtze in late April, moving south, there were two British ships on that stretch of the river, HMS Amethyst and HMS Consort. Mao ordered that “all warships which get in the way of our crossing may be bombarded. Treat them as Nationalist ships.” Forty-two British sailors were killed, more than all other Western military deaths in the entire civil war. Consort got away, but Amethyst became grounded. Back in Britain, enraged sailors beat up CP chief Harry Pollitt, who landed up in the hospital. Winston Churchill, then leader of the Opposition, asked in Parliament why Britain did not have “in Chinese waters one aircraft carrier, if not two, capable of … effective power of retaliation.”

  The incident greatly alarmed Stalin, who placed Soviet forces throughout the Far East on full alert — the only time this occurred in connection with the
Chinese civil war. Stalin was worried that the West might intervene militarily and involve Russia, and he cabled Mao urgently to play down their relationship: “We do not think now is the right moment to publicise the friendship between the USSR and Democratic China.” Mao had to tone down his aggressiveness and issued new orders to “avoid clashes with foreign ships. No firing at [them] without the order of the Center. Extremely, extremely important.” He told his commanders to “protect … especially diplomats from America and Britain,” “or else big disaster could happen.” On 27 April he suspended the advance on Shanghai, which was the most important economic and financial center in the country, and the focus of Western interests — and therefore the most likely place where the West, which had sizable military forces there, might make a stand.

  To lessen the risk of Western intervention, on 10 May Mao took diversionary steps by authorizing talks with US ambassador Stuart, who had stayed on in Nanjing after the Nationalist government had left. Stuart was an “old China hand” who wishfully thought he could bring Washington and Mao together. Decades later, Mao’s then negotiator and future foreign minister, Huang Hua, spelled out Mao’s intent: “Mao and Chou … were not looking for friendly relations. They had but one concern: to forestall a major American intervention which might rescue the Nationalists at the eleventh hour …”