Day 237: Mao

In August 1966, Mao toppled Liu Shao-chi. On the 5th, after Liu met a delegation from Zambia in his capacity as president, Mao had Chou En-lai telephone Liu and tell him to stop meeting foreigners, or appearing in public, unless told to do so. That day, Mao wrote a tirade against Liu which he himself read out to the Central Committee two days later, in Liu’s presence, breaking the news of Liu’s downfall (the general population was not told). Just before this, on the 6th, Mao had had Lin Biao specially fetched to Peking to lend him weight, in case there was unmanageable opposition. Lin Biao formally replaced Liu as Mao’s No. 2.

Mao’s persecution of the man he hated most could now begin. He started with Liu’s wife, Wang Guang-mei. Mao knew that the two were devoted to each other, and that making Guang-mei suffer would hurt Liu greatly.
Guang-mei came from a distinguished cosmopolitan family: her father had been a government minister and diplomat, and her mother a well-known figure in education. Guang-mei had graduated in physics from an American missionary university, and had been about to take up an offer from Michigan University to study in America in 1946 when she decided to join the Communists, under the influence of her radical mother. People remembered how at dancing parties in the Communist base in those civil war days, Liu would cross the threshing-ground that served as a dance floor with his characteristic sure steps and, bowing, ask for a dance, in a manner unusual for a Party leader. Guang-mei had elegance and style, and Liu was smitten. They were married in 1948, and the marriage was an exceptionally happy one, particularly for Liu, who had had a string of unsuccessful relationships (and one wife executed by the Nationalists).

From the moment it was clear that Mao was coming after Liu, from the Conference of the Seven Thousand in January 1962, Guang-mei encouraged her husband to stand up to Mao. This was in vivid contrast to the behavior of many leaders’ wives, who urged their spouses to kowtow. In the ensuing years, she helped Liu to entrench his position. In June 1966, when Mao was fomenting violence in schools and universities, Liu made a last-ditch attempt to curb the mayhem by sending in “work teams,” and Guang-mei became a member of the one sent to Qinghua University in Peking. There she came into collision with a twenty-year-old militant called Kuai Da-fu. Kuai’s original interest in politics had been sparked by a sense of justice: as a boy of thirteen in a village during the famine, he had petitioned Peking about grassroots officials ill-treating peasants. But when, in summer 1966, the Cultural Revolution was presented by the media as a “struggle for power,” Kuai developed an appetite for power and led riotous actions to “seize power from the work team.” He was put under dormitory arrest by the work team for eighteen days, which Liu authorized.

In the small hours of 1 August, Kuai was woken up by cars screeching to a halt to find before him none other than Chou En-lai. Kuai was completely overwhelmed. He could not make himself sit properly on the sofa, but perched on the edge. Suavely putting him at his ease, Chou told him he had come on behalf of Mao, and quizzed him about the work team—and the role of Mme Liu. Even though he had a stenographer with him, Chou took notes himself. The session lasted three hours, until after 5:00 AM, when Chou invited Kuai to come to the Great Hall of the People that evening. There they talked for another three hours. Mao used Kuai’s complaints as ammunition, and from now on Kuai was Mao’s point man against the Lius.

On 25 December, the eve of Mao’s seventy-third birthday, on the orders of the Small Group, Kuai led 5,000 students in a parade through Peking with trucks fitted with loudspeakers blaring “Down with Liu Shao-chi!” This unusual demonstration was a step towards preparing people for the fact that the president of China was about to become an enemy, and even though it was not announced in the media, it made Liu’s fall known to the nation. Kuai and his “demonstration” also enabled Mao to make it seem that Liu’s downfall was by some sort of popular demand.

From here on, the Lius were tormented in countless ways. At dawn on New Year’s Day 1967, Mao sent New Year greetings to his old colleague by getting staff in Zhongnanhai to daub giant insults inside the Lius’ house. Similar menaces followed, all choreographed—except one.

This was on 6 January, when Kuai’s group seized the Lius’ teenage daughter, Ping-ping, and then telephoned Guang-mei to tell her that the girl had been hit by a car and was in a hospital, which needed consent to perform an amputation. Both parents raced to the hospital, which discomfited the Rebels.


~~Mao: The Unknown Story -by- Jung Chang