The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Today, Bill picks up where he left off in
last Friday's essay - with our sordid protagonist, Mao Tse-tung,
lolling
in his sedan chair, with scrawny, skin-kneed porters hauling him all
around China. Read on...

THE LATE, GREAT HELSMAN, PART II
by Bill Bonner

What a sight it must have been! As many as 80,000 soldiers backed the
communists under Mao when the Long March began. A rag-tag
band...walking
along...feared and reviled almost everywhere they went. And in the
midst
of it all went the litters carrying the people's top honchos and the
wives
of the people's top honchos. By the time the wandering was over - Mao
didn't especially want to arrive anywhere - he had managed to reduce
his
own ranks to only 10,000. The rest died along the way...were killed in
pointless battles...or ran off, as soon as they got the opportunity.

In reading about the life of Mao, the dominant emotion the reader
experiences is neither contempt nor outrage, but rather puzzlement. He
wonders how the big Chinaman got away with so much. How was it possible
that a nation of so many millions couldn't manage to figure out that
their
leader was an incompetent, self-interested fraud? Or find one person
who
would put an end to him?

Didn't Mao's early career as a bloody crime boss signal what was coming
next?

When he brought out his first torturers...and his policies of mass
starvation and working the peasants to death...

...or his proto-purges...his early assassinations...

...or when he got his hands on a little bit of ground where he could
set
up his model society, and it turned out to be a miserable prison for
everybody but its bosses...

...wasn't it clear where he would take the nation? An earnest communist
from Sweden later visited one part of the country - Yenan - and
wondered
why it was so poor. After all, it was the cradle of the people's
paradise.
It was such an important part of Marxist traditions. "What went wrong?"
he
wanted to know.

"Ah traditions...traditions..." Mao laughed heartily. He couldn't
believe
the Swede was so na«Áve.

Mao cared nothing for traditions...neither real Chinese traditions nor
instant Communist ones. What he cared for was power, and he exercised
it
ruthlessly, pitilessly, recklessly and absurdly.

What's troubling about Mao's life was not Mao himself, but the rest of
us
(he was merely a talented cutthroat, and a lucky slob). What's wrong
with
us? Normal, decent human beings repeatedly buckled under Mao...they let
him get away...or couldn't get organized to oppose him. When they were
ordered to persecute each other, they took up the task readily...even
knowing that their own necks could be next. When they were told to take
up
a new agricultural policy, for example - which every peasant knew in
his
bones was lunatic - they nevertheless put their backs to it. When they
were summoned to carry Mao on their shoulders...or procure women for
him...or embark on some suicidal military campaign...or build him
another
luxury villa...did any one of them raise a serious objection? Some did;
but the rest went along, usually taking the objector out to execute
him.

Mao worried about being murdered all his life. He took exaggerated
precautions to make sure no stranger could get close enough to put a
bullet in his brain. Cronies, henchmen and servants were kept under
surveillance and in a state of terror. Those who appeared likely to
cross
Mao were eliminated. Mao encouraged periodic purges...denunciations and
confessions. Even his most trusted and loyal bagmen - such as Chou En
Lai
- were required to humiliate themselves from time to time for the
chairmen.

Still, only one person was known to have tried to assassinate Mao -
Marshal Lin Biao's son, 'Tiger,' in 1971. The plot quickly
thickened...then dissolved altogether. Tiger and his wife died in an
airplane crash in Mongolia as they were making their getaway.

There must have been a hundred million people in China who would liked
to
have seen Mao dead, and hundreds of millions more if they had known
what
was going on. But Mao controlled the press, and had created such an
aura
of fear that people dared not talk, even to friends or relatives.

In the late '30s and early '40s, while Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist
forces fought the Japanese, Mao focused on killing and purging his own
troops, and supporting his strange kingdom by selling drugs. Even this,
Mao could not do well. Opium production soon expanded beyond what the
market would take up. By the time the first American officials arrived
on
the scene, Mao had filled his coffers with cash and was ready to
suppress
the trade. (The Russians estimated his opium sales at $640 million in
today's money).

Mao also experimented with central banking during this period. He
printed
his own currency, the bianbi. This too went in the predictable way.
Neither communists nor capitalists seemed able to resist the lure of
easy
money for very long. By 1944, the reds had printed so many bianbi that
the
price of matches was 25,000 times greater than its price in 1937.

During this whole time, Chiang had threatened to wipe out the
communists
several times...but he relented; Chiang's only son was being held
captive
in Moscow. Stalin told him that if he ever wanted to see his son again,
he
would have to ease up on Mao's troops.

Then, after the Japanese were defeated, Mao found another protector -
the
United States. Once again, Chiang was going after Mao, and by this time
the Nationalist forces were seasoned fighters - they'd been engaged in
serious fighting with the Japanese for years, while the Reds had been
doing nothing but preventing each other from escaping. When the two
forces
clashed, the outcome was inevitable - Mao's men were run off. Chiang
was
about to go after them and crush them completely when George Marshal
intervened, pressuring Chiang to lay off.

Which just goes to show why U.S. public officials have no business
meddling in foreign affairs. When the first Americans arrived at Mao's
headquarters, the communists put on a show designed to win them over.
With
an apparently straight face, Chou told Marshal that Mao preferred
America
to Russia...and Mao let it be known that he was even considering
dropping
the word 'communist' from their party name! Marshal must have fallen
for
it. Because Chiang was pulled off the chase...and the commies got away
to
Manchuria.

The mistake proved fatal to the Nationalists. Out in the northwest, the
Reds linked up with the turncoat Chinese "Manchukuos" who had supported
the Japanese during the war...and were also closer to their supply
lines
from Russia. With these supports, not to mention a clandestine campaign
against poor Chiang, they were able to boot the Nationalists out of the
country and turn the whole place into the largest Auschwitz in history.

I say that not to exaggerate. It is not merely an analog guess but a
digital comparison. In the Nazi concentration camp, inmates received
between 1,300 and 1,700 calories per day, as they were worked to death.
In
the famine Mao forced on China in the late 50s and early '60s, the
average
calorie intake was only about 1,200. Mao, of course, thought the
peasants
had too much to eat. He was determined to squeeze the grain out of them
so
it could be shipped overseas, to help pay for his crackpot
modernization
programs. His agents went about their work with the same zeal they has
shown in his earlier famines and purges. Chang and Halliday report, in
their book, "Mao":

"The cadres' job was to stop the peasants 'stealing' their own harvest.
Horrific punishments were widespread; some people were buried alive,
others strangled with ropes, others had their noses cut off. In one
village four terrorized young children were saved from being buried
alive
for taking some food only when the earth was at their waists, after a
desperate plea from their parents. In another village, a child had four
fingers chopped off for trying to steal a scrap of unripe food; in
another, two children who tried to steal food had wires run through
their
ears, and were then hung up by the wire from a wall...."

People starved to death by the millions.

One of the lessons we take from these stories is that the people who
want
to force their ideas on you, are always the same people whose ideas are
idiotic. Mao had more than his share of them. He had peasants digging
up
the soil by hand, down to a depth of half a meter. Then, he figured
that
planting seeds closer could enhance crop yields...while actually
reducing
the amount of fertilizer applied. He had the whole country launched on
a
goofy program of making steel in backyard furnaces. And then, he
decided
that sparrows were eating too much of the nation's harvest...so he got
the
peasants to shoo away the birds and kill them. As the sparrows
disappeared, along came the bugs and insects that they had kept under
control, in such numbers that they soon threatened the entire harvest.
Secretly, the Chinese government finally had to ask the Russians for
aid:
please send sparrows, in the name of socialist internationalism!

Yes, there are funny parts to the Mao story. So eager were the Maoists
to
industrialize that they completely neglected quality control. Chinese
planes couldn't fly. Tanks couldn't drive in a straight line (on one
occasion, a Chinese made tank swerved around and charged at a group of
VIPs, say the "Mao" authors). Chinese ships were more of a danger to
their
crews than to the enemy. And when a Chinese helicopter was presented to
Ho
Chi Minh, the manufacturers detained it at the border because they were
afraid it might crash.

But mostly, the Mao story raises question marks about our whole race.
Western readers may be appalled by the murders, betrayals (Mao would
set
up his own troops, in the thousands, to be killed by the enemy...just
to
give himself an excuse to break an agreement or avoid following
orders),
famines, and tortures. But they will surely find Mao's attitudes to sex
reprehensible too. The modern citizen of a western democracy feels he
is
entitled to sex, above all else. At least, that is the idea you get
from
reading the press or watching TV.

But Mao was a humbug on sex, as on everything. Workers were expected to
follow orders and put the party and its rules above all else. There was
little privacy...and, with people dressed in those tawdry, gray Mao
outfits, and crowded into tiny, charm-less tenements, there was neither
the time, the energy nor the place for romance - or sexual congress.
Couples were often posted to different cities...and allowed to see each
other only 12 days per year. The rest of the time they were not allowed
any outlet for sexual feelings - if they had any. Even masturbation was
outlawed.

Meanwhile, Mao himself lived it up in his luxurious villas - dozens of
them spread all over the country - complete with in-door swimming
pools.
He ate like a pig and had his agents scour the countryside to find
young
women - 'imperial concubines' for the Chairman. Singers, dancers,
nurses,
house staff - they were all available to Mao as he pleased.

But Mao was fat and repulsive. He never bathed in 27 years, according
to
reports. And his teeth, which he never brushed, went black. How did he
get
women to sleep with him? Ah, dear reader, that is just another mystery
of
our race; people seem willing and able to do just about anything.

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning