Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (14 page)

Mao Turns to Zhou and Party Elders, September 1971–May 1973

Had Mao been able to control the pacing of his plan to depose Lin Biao, he would have prepared his replacement. The sudden plane crash, however, upset Mao's plans to win acceptance in high party circles for his decision to depose Lin. When the person whom Mao had embraced as his successor and “closest comrade-in-arms” was suddenly recast, after his still-mysterious death, as a renegade trying to usurp power, even ordinary people had questions about Mao's judgment. Mao, sick and depressed, scarcely rose from his bed for two months.
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Afterward he did gradually begin to get up, but on February 12, 1972, he fainted. His lung problems had already affected his heart. They also made sleeping difficult due to frequent coughing, so Mao slept on a sofa. Though he could not move easily, at least at some points, on the big issues, his mind remained clear.
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Officials who had suffered under Mao and who grieved over the disasters he had perpetrated understood that the cult of Mao was so powerful that the country would be thrown into even greater chaos if Mao were attacked directly. In December 1958, when his errors in charging ahead during the Great Leap Forward had become all too obvious, Mao had made policy concessions and granted other leaders more leeway to make decisions—even as he maneuvered to remain at the helm. After Lin's death, Mao again made concessions in policies and gave others more decision-making authority, but remained in charge.

Mao needed to move quickly to establish a new post-Lin party leadership and the 10th Party Congress was not scheduled until 1974—five years after the 9th Party Congress. Mao, however, put the new leadership structure in place
in less than two years, enabling him to hold the 10th Party Congress in August 1973, one year ahead of the scheduled date. To make this happen, Mao had to reach beyond his closest inner circle, for although he could rely on his wife, Jiang Qing, and her associates to criticize others, they lacked the experience, good judgment, and the ability to gain the cooperation of others to govern the country. Mao had no realistic choice but to turn to experienced senior officials, most of whom had been victims of his Cultural Revolution. They had risen to their positions before the Cultural Revolution at least in part because of their proven abilities to lead, and Mao once again needed their seasoned managerial skills.
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When Zhou Enlai reported to Mao on the fate of many of these senior officials, Mao said he had been unaware that many had been so badly treated.

At this point, there was in fact only one person in place who could manage the party and the government and who, due to deeply ingrained attitudes, would not threaten Mao's power: Zhou Enlai. Of the five people who had been on the Politburo Standing Committee in August 1970, Lin Biao was dead, his ally Chen Boda was in prison, and Kang Sheng was incapacitated by cancer, thus leaving only Mao and Zhou. With so few alternatives, Mao allowed Zhou Enlai more leeway to restore order to the party and the government; he assigned Zhou to chair not only the Politburo, but also the government and the party structure.

Some observers thought Zhou Enlai would have been jubilant over the death of Lin Biao, but in fact Zhou was deeply upset. Zhou was known to have powerful control over his own emotions, but shortly after Lin Biao's crash, when he explained the country's difficult predicament to Vice Premier Ji Dengkui (see Key People in the Deng Era, p. 730), he not only wept but had to pause to try to regain control; despite his efforts, he continued sobbing as he spoke. It is said that Zhou cried only three times in his life: when he was belatedly told of his father's death; after the death of Ye Ting, a fellow revolutionary from the 1920s; and after the death of Lin Biao.

There were probably several reasons for Zhou's emotional reaction to Lin's death. Zhou knew that despite Lin's reputation as a radical, he had been pragmatic, concerned about order, and, for Zhou, easy to work with. In addition, Zhou, who had exhausted himself for decades trying to manage affairs under Mao, grieved for the country, which after the devastation of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution was now confronting yet another upheaval. He was acutely aware that any move forward would be a monumental task.
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Some believed that Zhou also wept for himself. Until that point, he had been able to avoid the suspicion and wrath of Mao that had led to the death of two number twos, Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao. He had managed to remain number three, but now he was number two, and he knew Mao would be suspicious. Indeed, within two years Mao would attack him.

In addition to relying on Zhou, Mao called on Ye Jianying, a respected senior military statesman who was not personally ambitious, to bring order to the military. Without fanfare, Mao also began to allow some of the others who had been pushed aside in 1966–1967 to return to work. While resting during the two months after Lin Biao's crash, on several occasions Mao acknowledged that many senior officials had suffered too much. He explained this mistake by claiming that he had wrongly heeded allegations made by Lin Biao.
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On November 14, 1971, two months after Lin's crash, there were more signs of Mao's shift in perspective. On that day, he received a delegation that included Marshal Ye Jianying, who was already beginning to rebuild the army leadership structure. In a gesture that was an encouraging signal to high-ranking victims of the Cultural Revolution, Mao pointed to Ye Jianying and said to the delegation, “Don't call him part of the February Counter-Current [when three vice premiers and four marshals in February 1967 had criticized and tried to stop the Cultural Revolution].”
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He further said that the unrest had been directed by Lin Biao and that the term “February Counter-Current” should no longer be used.
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In this way, Mao tried to distance himself from the 1967 attacks on those accused of taking part in the “February Counter-Current.” He also issued directives to correct the treatment of Tan Zhenlin, Chen Zaidao, and other leading officials who had been criticized in 1967.

The memorial service held on January 10, 1972, for Marshal Chen Yi provided Mao an excellent opportunity to reconnect with some senior officials who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution. A few hours before the memorial service was to take place, Mao let it be known that he would attend. It was his first public appearance since the Lin Biao crash four months earlier. Chen Yi, Deng's partner in the Huai Hai campaign, the first mayor of Shanghai during the early days after the Communist takeover, and a onetime foreign minister, was one of the nation's most beloved leaders. Years later, his statue, erected on the Bund in Shanghai, would symbolize the public's high regard for him. Yet during the Cultural Revolution, he was brutally attacked. Although he did finally receive medical care at a military hospital, it
was too late: he died from a lack of proper medical attention. Further, many of China's leading military leaders had visited Chen Yi during his last days and knew well how Mao's Cultural Revolution had contributed to his death.

At the memorial service, Mao bowed three times to show his respect for Chen Yi and said, “Comrade Chen Yi was a good man, a good comrade.... If Lin Biao had succeeded in his plot, he would have destroyed all of us veterans.” Thus Mao passed on responsibility for the mistreatment of Chen Yi to his one-time “closest comrade-in-arms.” Mao, dressed in pajamas, covered by an overcoat, on a cold day, was obviously ill and his legs wobbly. His frailty and message were compelling for those attending the service. What better way for Mao to pave the way for reconciliation with the victims of the Cultural Revolution attacks than by coming in such a condition to offer apologies and pay his respects to a favorite comrade?

All of the Chinese high officials knew that Chen Yi would not have been criticized without Mao's approval. But for the time being, they were willing to accept the fiction that it was Lin Biao who had caused Chen's problems. They could not expect Mao to acknowledge his errors, and it was in their interest to take advantage of Mao's changed stance toward his old comrades. Mao put politics before economics, but he never gave up wanting to improve the nation's economy. Moreover, he may have had an extraordinary emotional hold over the Chinese people, but he still needed competent party leaders. Even the leaders whom Mao had retained throughout the Cultural Revolution recognized that, for stability and growth, the country would need the firm hand of those officials who had served before the Cultural Revolution. By 1972, Mao was ready to bring back these experienced senior officials—and to start returning to their barracks the military officers, most of whom had been ineffective in the civilian positions they had occupied during Lin Biao's tenure in the late 1960s. Soon thereafter, in March 1972, Zhou Enlai submitted a list of more than four hundred senior officials to the party Organization Department to be rehabilitated, and Mao promptly approved their return.
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In 1975, and again in 1978, these senior officials would play a key role in helping Deng to restore order and unity.

In May 1972, Zhou was diagnosed with bladder cancer, but for the remainder of 1972 and into early 1973, he continued his heavy work schedule.
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During the chaotic period after Lin Biao's crash, Zhou had used his unparalleled close relations with other officials to keep the country from falling more deeply into chaos.
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Extremely knowledgeable and virtually tireless in spite of early stage cancer, Zhou continued to find ways for people of diverse
backgrounds to work together. In situations requiring delicate personal diplomacy, no one could achieve more than Zhou.
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Zhou continued to seek Mao's approval on major appointments and sensitive issues, and he tried to make decisions that Mao would support. But Mao's withdrawal and recognition that a readjustment was required allowed Zhou to resolve a larger range of issues more forcefully than before. He threw himself into managing the relationships among senior officials, restoring order to the economy, curbing leftist excesses in the countryside, and expanding diplomatic contacts with the West.
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He even made it possible for the distinguished physicist and president of Peking University, Zhou Peiyuan, to put forth plans to promote theoretical research.
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These efforts by Zhou Enlai to craft order from chaos foreshadowed the broader initiatives that Deng Xiaoping would launch in 1975. It should have come as no surprise, then, that Mao's criticism of Zhou in late 1973 foreshadowed his criticism of Deng in early 1976.

Unlike Deng, who focused on the important and put aside the less important, Zhou Enlai, with his amazing command of details, dealt with matters both large and small. When Mao gave him the leeway, he used his prodigious memory to show extraordinary consideration to many who had been victimized in the Cultural Revolution. Those victims and their families remained enormously grateful to Zhou Enlai for saving their lives and easing their pain. Zhou extended this same interest to Deng Xiaoping and his family. In December 1972, when Zhou felt Mao would allow it, he prodded Wang Dongxing to speed up the process of giving Deng an assignment.

Zhou's attempts to help the victims of the Cultural Revolution, however, were limited by his fear of enraging Mao. His concern seems to have been well founded. After a Politburo meeting in 1956, Zhou upset Mao when he told him privately that he could not in good conscience support some of his economic policies. After being criticized then, Zhou went to extraordinary lengths for the next fifteen years to give Mao no reason to doubt his total commitment to carry out the Chairman's wishes.
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Even so, in January 1958, Mao exploded at Zhou, saying Zhou was only fifty meters away from being a rightist, an accusation that led Zhou to back down.

Zhou had exhausted himself during the Cultural Revolution by painfully carrying out Mao's directives, while also trying to shield those whom he felt he could protect.
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He was a virtuoso at balancing these competing interests in an emotionally charged environment. Perhaps no one was better than Zhou in intuiting what Mao was thinking but did not say. Some lionize Zhou
for his combination of political skills, tireless dedication to the party and country, unfailing poise and gentlemanly demeanor, and devotion to assisting victims. Many who knew the situation well believed that Zhou did everything he could to moderate Mao's excesses. Not everyone, however, felt that Zhou Enlai was a hero. Chen Yi's family members, for example, were upset that Zhou did not protect Chen Yi, and families of other victims who had not received help from Zhou expressed similar sentiments. Still others considered him an accomplice who was in a pact with the devil, implementing the Cultural Revolution with all its horrors. Is it not possible, some asked, that the horrors would have ended sooner had Zhou Enlai not prevented the regime from falling apart?

Regardless of one's views on Zhou and the Cultural Revolution, it was clear that no one else could have so skillfully managed what was then high on Mao's agenda—the opening of relations with the United States. Zhou first met U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on July 9, 1971, just two months before Lin Biao's crash. In October 20–26, 1971, only a month after the crash, Kissinger returned to Beijing to plan for the visit, which took place the following February. Kissinger later wrote that he considered Zhou to be one of the two or three most impressive men he had ever met. John Holdridge, a Kissinger aide, described Kissinger's mood before meeting Zhou as the anticipation of one of the world's two grand chess masters on his way to the championship match.
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