Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
own up to the errors of the Great Leap Forward, but Mao excused
himself for them with the banal observation that everyone makes
mistakes. He then moved with a vengeance against Peng Dehuai
and denounced him as a traitor to China who had done a foreigner's
bidding. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Peng's supporters
(including Deng Xiaoping) abandoned him, and he alone took the
fall for his impolitic criticisms of Mao. Peng, who was dismissed as
Minister of Defense and replaced by Lin Biao, was hounded during
the Cultural Revolution over his confrontation with Mao and eventu-
ally died in a prison of cruel neglect in 1974. Today, however, Peng's
reputation has been posthumously rehabilitated, and he is admired
even in Taiwan for his courageous and forthright criticisms of Mao's
policies.
Mao decided to learn the truth about the Great Leap by traveling to
his home village of Shaoshan in Hunan. There he would encounter
no carefully staged performances or artificially inflated agricultural
production figures. He could trust his fellow provincials and home
villagers to speak forthrightly and honestly with him. His trip there
awakened him to the horrible reality of the Great Leap Forward, but
even then he still did not want to do anything to dampen the enthusi-
asm of the masses. His basic confidence in the movement remained
unshaken. His confidence was not fully undermined until 1960:
Mao of course was immune to the tribulations of famine, and everyone
tried to shield him from its effects, but he knew the severity of the crisis.
The documents he received every day now allowed him no escape from
the truth. Reports were coming in from all over the country, and by the
summer of 1960, he had become so depressed that he took again to his
bed. He seemed psychologically incapable of confronting the effects of
the famine.
(Li 1994, 339)
Mao did, however, finally did make one concession to the famine: He
stopped eating meat. “Everyone is starving. I can't eat meat,” he said
(Li 1994, 340).
Mao never did admit that his Great Leap Forward was a complete
failure. He was finally forced to admit that at least some of the respon-
sibility for the disaster was his, but it came across as insincere and
even staged. He was distressed that party and state began operating
independently of him. He became depressed and took to his bed during
his disgrace within the party during the early 1960s, all the while
craving popular approval and adulation and plotting his next political
