Mao Zedong was a terrific opposition leader for the Communists against the corrupt government of General Chiang Kai Chek and the marginally democratic Kuomintang government of China. He was honest, courageous, creative, kindly, wise, humane and even, up to a point, anyway, democratic. Really. The CP propaganda on this point isn't really propaganda at all, but a fairly accurate portrait of the Mao Zedong who kept the communist party alive during incredible trials and tribulations for decades, and this is confirmed by independent western observers at the time. Now, once he got into power, in 1949, we have a very different story, indeed!

So, what, exactly happened, to change Mao Zedong so much, and make him so much more brutal, and even incompetent, once he acquired supreme power in Communist China? I think we may get a hint of this from a comment Mao made, to the effect that the first emperor of China only killed a few hundred intellectuals, while he'd killed millions of them, so, that meant his regime was a much more progressive one! What Mao was referring to specifically is 焚書坑儒 fén shū kēng rú "Burn the books, and bury the Confucian scholars alive!", a standard phrase in Chinese culture for how to deal with members of the intelligentsia when they are obstructing necessary new approaches to dealing with social problems of one type or another. Apparently, Mao saw himself in the tradition of a Chinese emperor, and felt the need to act accordingly. Really! Or, perhaps, we could just say that the problems of actually running the whole of China were so overwhelming that, at least at first, it wasn't clear how to solve them without a very high degree of brutality, and by trying some approaches so off the wall that they could well be, and were actually, totally disastrous.

Now, of course, you could say, that as supreme leader, it was impossible to execute Mao Zedong, that the CCP simply couldn't do it. However, bear in mind just how disastrous The Great Leap Forward really was. Mao managed to exterminate tens of millions of his closest allies in the Chinese countryside, the farmers of China, the nation's lifeblood, simply because he thought they could produce more food than they possibly could, and because he thought they could simultaneously industrialize the nation through their own individual efforts. So, Mao had them melt down their hoes and rakes for scrap iron, and he confiscated all their food. If anyone objected, he had them tortured to death. Really! Mao managed to kill more Chinese for no possible practical reason whatsoever than the Japanese did in their systematic campaign of genocide in WWII!

Now, the CCP didn't execute Mao Zedong for this gross absurdity committed in the late 1950's. However, Mao was discredited to the point that he was removed from all control over economic and military matters. Instead, Mao was relegated to the role of culture and education minister. After all, what harm could Mao possibly do with young people and culture, right?

So, who was really in charge of China during most of the 1960's, with Mao largely discredited? I believe it was probably Lin Biao, the head of the People's liberation Army. After all, unlike Mao Zedong, Lin Biao had had a pretty good run of luck up to this point in time. He'd defeated the forces of the Kuomintang to bring the communists to power in China. He'd driven the Americans out of North Korea, and possibly forestalled an American invasion of China. He'd defeated India and its western backers to retake Tibet and incorporate it once more into China. He was in the process of defeating the Americans in Vietnam. He oversaw the ascension of China to the status of a nuclear power, and, potentially, to becoming a superpower. Not bad at all, right?

However, as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And, Lin Biao decided that what China really needed to do, was invade the Soviet Union, to retake much of Siberia for China. So, by the mid-1960's, Lin Biao and the Soviet Union were engaged in an undeclared, and steadily escalating border war.

And, this brings us back to Mao Zedong, "harmlessly" occupying his role taking care of culture and education. Mao rather skillfully makes a play for power again, using the enormous number of young people in China to stage a not so small scale civil war against Lin Biao and the rest of the CCP. Lin Biao suppresses it effectively with some difficulty, and, at the cost of millions of Chinese dead.

So, why exactly didn't they execute Mao for trying to overthrow the established CCP government and put himself back into power? I think it probably had something to do with what Lin Biao was doing at the border with the USSR. I suspect there were many members of the CCP who were, shall we say, somewhat uneasy about Lin Baio's leadership at this particular point in time. So, they thought it might be a pretty good idea to keep Mao around, just in case they might need him for something. After all, Mao was a very creative and effective kind of guy.

Now, towards the end of the 1960's, Leonid Brezhnev contacted Richard Nixon, and, asked quite casually how the Americans would feel about the Soviet Union launching an overwhelming nuclear first strike against communist China, given their current difficulties. Nixon said he wouldn't care for this at all, and this conversation led to the initiation of contacts again between communist China, and the U.S. And, it was Mao Zedong who really persuaded to CCP to accept the American offer of improved diplomatic relations -- which at the time scarcely existed at all -- between the American and Chinese governments.

In 1971, Mao Zedong invited Lin Biao and his wife to a friendly dinner at his heavily armed compound, known affectionately now as the "Last Supper". At the conclusion of a delightful and luxurious dinner, Mao bid his guests a fond farewell in their armored car, and then hit them with every rocket in his arsenal. They were reported to have died in a plane crash, and that's exactly what it would have looked like! And, until his death in 1976, Mao was once more the supreme leader of China.

So, what if Mao had been executed in either the early or the late 1960's for mismanagement? Given Lin Biao's determination to invade the Soviet Union and reconquer Siberia for China, probably with nuclear weapons at some point, I'd say a thermonuclear war between China and the USSR might have been very probable, whatever the American position might have been on this. Without Mao to counterbalance Lin Biao's power, and eventually to kill Lin Biao, there might not have been any way to stop him.

Thoughts?