Author: sjalesho
Date: 09-16-03 15:33
Mao and Zhou: Behind the smiles
A new book by a dissident portrays relations between China's two communist greats as fraught with tension, even hate
By Terence Tan
A NEW book has shed light on the uneasy relationship between two of China's most revered communist giants, chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976).
Contrary to the official line that they remained close comrades till death, it says Mao developed an intense dislike for Zhou in his later years, and even forbade doctors from treating the latter when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Not surprisingly, the book, entitled Zhou Enlai's Later Years and written in Chinese by dissident Gao Wenqian, now based in New York, has been banned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Mr Gao, a CCP member before he left China in the wake of the Tiananmen government crackdown on June 4, 1989, reportedly spent 10 years researching his controversial biography of Zhou.
He claims that much of the book's contents are based on classified documents to which he had access when he was working for the CCP's Party Literature Research Centre as head of its Zhou Enlai biographical committee.
Though there is no way anyone outside the CCP's innermost circles can vouch for the book's accuracy, several China-watchers who have read it regard it as credible.
Among some of the more startling revelations in the book - excerpts of which are available on the Internet - is the claim that Mao barred doctors from treating Zhou and even kept the latter in the dark about his own condition, after Zhou contracted bladder cancer in May 1972.
Doctors had submitted a request to the CCP Politburo for Zhou to undergo immediate treatment but Mao allegedly ordered them to 'keep it a secret, do not conduct any more health checks, do not operate, just put him under intensive care and give him better nutrition'.
A year later, when the then United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger called for US-China military cooperation at a meeting with Zhou during a visit to China, Mao was incensed when Zhou failed to report this to him on time.
The writer says in his book that Mao accused Zhou of being afraid of what was then the Soviet Union and agreeing to US nuclear protection without party approval, on the one hand, and, on the other, of harbouring a desire to take over the CCP in the event of a Russian invasion.
Mao later launched a vitriolic attack on Zhou at a Politburo meeting, which the book says 'took its toll on the latter both mentally and physically' and from which Zhou never really recovered.
According to the writer, Mao's love-hate relationship with Zhou can be traced to the 1920s, when Zhou, acting on the CCP Central Committee's instructions, stripped Mao - then his subordinate - of his party position during a power struggle.
Mao had fallen out of favour with party leaders over differences about the role of peasants in the communist revolution and Mao's use of guerilla tactics in fighting the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) government.
But Zhou threw in his lot with Mao at a party conference at Zunyi in Guizhou province in 1935 when he acknowledged the supremacy of Mao's guerilla strategy after the Red Army was routed by KMT troops in conventional warfare.
Mao, however, never truly forgave Zhou.
Mr Gao writes that when Zhou died in January 1976, Mao allegedly lit firecrackers at his official residence in Zhongnanhai and even refused to attend his memorial ceremony.
Mao was said to have told party members: 'I have the right not to attend.'
Mao, who still enjoys godlike status in China as the founder of the communist republic, is cast in a poor light by anecdotes like these, scattered throughout the book.
Zhou, on the other hand, is portrayed as an opportunist who had no qualms about siding with Mao in his persecution of fellow communist leaders during the Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, for self-preservation.
The author claims that Zhou collaborated with Mao in getting rid of senior party officials like Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao, Peng Dehuai and He Long when Mao felt these people posed a threat to his leadership.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the book, published in Hong Kong by Mirror Books earlier this year, was recently banned by the CCP.
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