Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (16 page)

Beyond planning their successors, aged emperors also tended to focus on ensuring their historical legacy. Mao had always been concerned about his place in history. In 1945, when he went to meet Chiang Kai-shek, Mao wrote what would become one of his most famous poems. In it he asked: Who was the greatest leader in Chinese history? Was it one of the great emperors Qin Shihuang, Han Wudi, Tang Taizong, or Song Taizu? Mao's answer: “To find the greatest leader one must look to the present.” In megalomania and lust for power, Mao ranked high among world leaders. At his zenith, Mao was involved in a broad range of activities, but with his health waning and his years numbered, Mao began to focus even more on his place in history and on successors who would honor his legacy.

Mao also ranked high among world leaders in paranoid suspicions of others plotting to usurp power, but it was not unreasonable to worry that if Zhou Enlai were to survive him, he might abandon Mao's commitment to class struggle and the continuing revolution and reduce the glorification of Mao in the official history of the era.
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For his extraordinary skills and prodigious memory in managing government activities and foreign relations, Zhou was by then almost indispensable, especially to China's emerging relationship with the United States and other Western countries. It was well known in high circles that Mao did not like Zhou, but he needed him. Zhou Enlai had developed a large number of internal spies who worked under him in Shanghai in the 1930s and whose identity remained secret; they remained intensely loyal to Zhou, and Mao was cautious about removing someone who commanded such a large secret network of supporters. Zhou Enlai, unlike Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, had taken extraordinary care over the years not to threaten Mao's power. Nonetheless, by 1973, although it could not be said publicly, it was not difficult for Mao to discern that among many high-level officials, Zhou was thought of as the good leader—the one who struggled to keep order, show consideration for others, and rein in the wild schemes of the bad leader.

Mao's problem with Zhou was less a concern that Zhou might try to seize power, and more that Zhou's reputation might rise at the expense of his own and that Zhou might be too soft on the United States. These problems would be especially severe if Zhou were to survive him. Consequently, when Nancy Tang and Wang Hairong reported to Mao the lavish praise that the foreign press was heaping on “Zhou Enlai's foreign policy” for improving U.S.-China relations, Mao was livid.
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It should be known as Mao's foreign policy, not Zhou's. Starting around this time, then, Mao began finding ways to weaken Zhou's reputation and to ensure that the person who took over Zhou's work as his cancer advanced would be loyal to Mao, not to Zhou.
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Regardless of Mao's megalomania, eccentricities, and policy errors, his underlings acknowledged that in addition to being a brilliant national strategist he had a good eye for talent. The one political leader other than Zhou Enlai who in Mao's eyes had proven that he could skillfully manage a host of complex issues, including foreign relations, was Deng Xiaoping.
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Deng had worked closely with Zhou since their time in France half a century earlier, when Zhou had supervised his work. But Deng had bonded with Mao in the Jiangxi Soviet in the early 1930s and risen over the years because he was Mao's man, not because he was Zhou's man.
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In 1973, Zhou managed a broad
range of extraordinarily complex foreign policy issues. Deng thus had much to learn from Zhou Enlai when he became his apprentice in the spring of 1973. Mao, having been disappointed that Deng had grown distant from him and too close to Liu in the early 1960s, had reason to wonder whether Deng, if given an important position, would be less responsive to Mao than he had been in the years immediately before the Cultural Revolution and more responsive to Zhou. Was there a danger that Deng might criticize the Cultural Revolution, replace Mao's key appointments, and leave to history an evaluation of Mao that emphasized his errors?
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Throughout 1973, then, Mao observed Deng very closely.

The 10th Party Congress, August 1973

The 10th Party Congress, held August 24–28, 1973, was the first high-level large meeting since 1949 at which Mao, already seriously ill, did not personally make a speech. The First Plenum, held as usual immediately after the congress to announce the personnel appointments, was the last Central Committee meeting that Mao would attend. During the congress Mao could scarcely stand, and waited until the participants had left the hall before he himself departed so they would not see how difficult it was for him to move. Mao retained the power to set the overall direction and to approve important personnel appointments, but with Mao's illness, participants could not help but think about succession.

At the congress, Wang Hongwen, then thirty-eight years old, was catapulted to leadership, making it clear to leaders at home and abroad that Mao had chosen him to be the leading candidate to succeed him as head of the party.
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Wang's importance had already become obvious to party leaders two months earlier, when Wang had been named head of the Election Preparatory Committee that would nominate the new members of the Central Committee. He had also been put in charge of preparing a new constitution and at the congress he delivered the report on it, a responsibility that Deng had held at the 8th Party Congress in 1956, when he was the promising candidate to succeed Mao as party leader.
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At the First Plenum, Wang Hongwen was also named vice chairman of the party, ranking him third in command behind Mao and Zhou. Other leaders, foreign diplomats, and the foreign press also began to treat him as Mao's likely successor.
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Deng's role at the party congress could not compare with Wang's. He was readmitted as a member of the Central Committee, but he played no leadership
role. Compared to a usual party congress, this 10th Party Congress was rushed in order to provide the new leadership structure after the death of Lin Biao and the elimination of his closest followers. The congress lacked the comprehensive overview of issues discussed at the 8th Party Congress of 1956 and even of the 9th Party Congress, where Lin Biao played the key role. It lasted five days compared to the twenty-four days of the 9th Party Congress, and the two major speeches, by Wang Hongwen and Zhou Enlai, together lasted less than one hour, far shorter than a typical party congress speech.
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This congress represented the end of the Lin Biao era with a new Central Committee membership but not yet a new program. The congress focused on three topics—criticism of Lin Biao, the rectification campaign following the fall of Lin, and the 1973 economic plan.
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Almost half of Zhou Enlai's political report criticized Lin Biao. The economic plan, however, was not discussed in detail because the economy was still in a chaotic state and the leadership did not have time to make a detailed presentation of the remaining two years, 1974 and 1975, of the current five-year plan.

Perhaps the most important change at the party congress was the return to the Central Committee of so many senior officials, for they would provide the backbone of support for Deng when he was given more power at the end of 1973. They replaced the many military officials who had been brought in at the 9th Party Congress led by Lin Biao. Among the 191 members of the new Central Committee, some forty were senior officials who had been brought back after being criticized during the Cultural Revolution.
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Among those whom Mao allowed to return were vice premier Tan Zhenlin, one of the commanders under Deng Xiaoping's front command during the Huai Hai campaign, who in February 1967 had boldly objected to the Cultural Revolution; Wang Zhen; and Deng Xiaoping. Already by mid-July Deng, who until then was only allowed to sit in on meetings with foreigners, had begun participating in the discussions.
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Mao's decision to elevate a rebel leader as young and inexperienced as Wang Hongwen was an outrage to senior officials. On August 21, during the last Politburo meeting prior to the congress, senior officials dared to raise objections to Wang Hongwen's appointment. General Xu Shiyou spoke for less daring senior officials when he said that one vice chairman, Zhou Enlai, was enough. When pressured, Xu responded that Kang Sheng and Marshal Ye Jianying could be added.
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In the end, however, Mao persisted; Wang Hongwen was appointed and so was Kang Sheng, who had played a sinister role in
selecting high officials for attack during the Cultural Revolution. The other two vice chairman, however, Zhou Enlai and Marshal Ye Jianying, could provide experienced and moderate leadership.

Although Zhou Enlai was allowed to present the political report to the congress, it was drafted by two of Jiang Qing's supporters, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, who had also drafted key documents for the 9th Party Congress. Therefore, while the documents criticized Lin Biao, they basically affirmed the radical outcome of the 9th Party Congress, when Lin Biao was in charge. Indeed, Politburo membership after the 10th Party Congress was still dominated by the radicals. There were four radicals on the new twenty-one-member Politburo—Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan; they were not working together as a team but their views were similar and later they became infamous as the “Gang of Four.” Other Politburo members—including Wu De, Chen Xilian, and Ji Dengkui—although less radical, still leaned toward the left. Mao tried to balance the senior officials who were returned to the Central Committee with “mass representatives,” peasants and worker representatives. Even if, as Mao acknowledged, “their intellectual level was a little lower,” they could be counted on to support the radicals who favored continuing the revolution.

Deng was not yet given responsibilities to go with his new position, but to shrewd political observers it was clear that Mao was beginning to think of Deng and Wang Hongwen working together. Mao sent them together on an inspection trip so they would get to know each other.
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Mao Attacks Zhou Enlai, November–December 1973

In February 1973, when Henry Kissinger met Mao for the first time, he found Mao upset with the United States for cooperating with the Soviet Union at the expense of China. By November of that year, when Kissinger again went to Beijing, Mao not only complained about U.S. cooperation with the Soviet Union but also about Zhou Enlai for being too soft in dealing with the United States. During the summer months, Mao complained bitterly that the United States was “standing on China's shoulders,” using China to get agreements with the Soviet Union. Mao's suspicions heightened further in June 1973 when Brezhnev visited the United States and met with Nixon in San Clemente, California, to celebrate ratification of the Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Immediately after Brezhnev's U.S. visit, the Chinese delivered a formal note to the White House complaining that by
helping the Soviets present a posture of peace, the U.S. was enabling the Soviet Union to mask its expansionism.
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Mao suspected that the United States and the Soviet Union were forging an agreement that would leave the Soviet Union free to aim its weapons toward China without any response from the United States.

Mao accused Zhou Enlai and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of being too conciliatory toward the United States, allowing China to be used to improve relations with the Soviet Union. Mao was also upset that the United States was doing nothing to weaken ties with Taiwan or to normalize relations with China. Nixon had promised to normalize relations with China in 1976 and now, whatever the explanation (that the Watergate investigation weakened Nixon's power so he could not get normalization through Congress), the United States was using China to improve relations with the Soviet Union.

When Kissinger arrived in Beijing in November 1973, he found Zhou's power much reduced by Mao. Zhou was so sensitive to accusations of being a Confucian (being too moderate, not fighting for China's national interests) that when Kissinger said China was still influenced by Confucius, Zhou flew into a rage, the only time that Kissinger recalls Zhou becoming angry in all their dozens of hours of meetings. Clearly Zhou was under pressure, and the two ladies would report his behavior to Mao. By the time Kissinger arrived, the United States had just appointed a new high-level ambassador, Leonard Unger, to Taiwan and had agreed to supply Taiwan with new military technology. Mao was furious.

In November, after the first day of discussions between Zhou and Kissinger, Zhou and Nancy Tang reported to Mao. Zhou told Mao of Kissinger's suggestion that Washington might be able to win Congressional approval to advance toward normalization of the U.S.-China relationship if the Chinese could be somewhat more flexible than in the Japan formula and allow Washington to maintain closer relations with Taiwan. Nancy Tang chimed in at that point, telling Mao that it sounded like a “two-China policy.”
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(Zhou later confessed to Kissinger that “when we were with the Chairman, I dared not explain the statement, but she dared to make an explanation.”) When Mao heard that Zhou was seriously listening to Kissinger's proposals allowing the United States to keep a stronger relationship with Taiwan as well as with the mainland, Mao, the elemental patriot, was furious at Zhou.

Kissinger told Zhou that “the growth of Chinese nuclear capability was unacceptable to the Soviet Union.”
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Kissinger also proposed the establishment of a hotline so the United States and China would immediately exchange
information in case of possible Soviet action (“to lessen the vulnerability of your forces and to increase the warning time”). Zhou told Kissinger that if an agreement were reached on the sharing of intelligence, “it would be of great assistance to China” and on the last morning of Kissinger's visit (November 14) they exchanged drafts of documents about the sharing of intelligence.
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