A MATTER OF MAO OR LESS
Jonathan Mirsky on why China can understand what the Clinton fuss is about
THE CHINESE diplomat's smile was a mixture of puzzlement and condescension. I sensed that what I said would become a little note in the next transmission to Bei- jing. He had just said that what baffles Chinese officials about the Clinton scandal is that the most powerful national leader in the world is unable to keep his private life secret. 'Everyone knows everything about him. Why is that? Doesn't he have any control over his subordinates?'
He wasn't shocked at the President's admitted past and alleged present behaviour. Sexual gossip about leaders has always been a mainstay of Chinese conver- sation. But it never gets into the newspa- pers or official remarks — until that leader is 'dragged out and smashed,' when every detail of their bedroom life becomes public property, although not in the press. Offi- cials merely take care to let everyone know, even foreign journalists who are usually kept far from the loop. This was the case last year with Politburo member Chen Xitong, after he was placed under house arrest for vast corruption, who, we learned was not only spectacularly venal, but shared a mistress with Wang Baosen, his deputy mayor, who either committed suicide or was murdered, just before Chen's detention. The same thing hap- pened in 1976 with Mao's widow, Jiang _Qing, who after the arrest of the Gang of Four was accused of voracious appetites for younger men, especially very fit ones like ping-pong champions. But it was her husband who had a Clin- tonian sexual drive. Two officials, chuck- ling slightly, delicately referred last week to Mao's life-long consumption of young women in large numbers. None of his four Wives (he probably never lived with the first one who was part of an arranged vil- lage marriage when he was young) was ever enough. When he was at Yanan, his guerrilla headquarters before the Commu- nist victory in 1949, he had two wives, He Zizhen and Jiang Qing, and in between shared a sleeping-bag with Lily Wu, movie star. He Zizhen was so angry when she dis- covered this liaison that according to an American journalist who was a witness, she Punched Mao and called him an imperial- ist. This didn't stop the Chairman for long; defying the advice of the Politburo he took up with the starlet Jiang Qing, who was introduced to Mao by Kang Sheng, his ter- rifying security chief, who had probably already had an affair with her. Mao liked to exile his wives to Moscow for 'medical treatment' when he wearied of them. He did this with both He Zizhen and Jiang Qing. After 1949 he increased his con- sumption of much younger women in his official residences in Beijing and in his vil- las during national tours. These habits were well known to Jiang Qing, political colleagues and domestic staff, including his bodyguards, who often procured young women for the Chairman and instructed them how to satisfy his needs.
One such ex-companion told me last year in Hong Kong, 'We were told that during our dances at his residence, if the chairman said he was going to "take a rest", and asked one of us to "bring me some tea", this was the sign that she was that night's choice.'
But while many of Mao's entourage wrote of their experiences, not until his doctor, Li Zhisui, published a detailed and explicit account in the United States, where he had emigrated, was the Chair- man's private life made public. Doctor Li described Mao's total lack of personal hygiene, his transmission of venereal dis- eased to his women, and his brushing aside advice to protect himself and them by replying, 'I wash myself inside them.'
The doctor's book was smuggled into China in both its English and Chinese ver- sions and sold widely. But even intellectu- als who had suffered at Mao's hands often condemned Dr Li for embarrassing China by telling embarrassing stories to foreign- ers. But almost all China's most famous party and army leaders were married `That was no wife, that was my spouse.' many times. Mao had four wives, President Liu Shaoqi six, and Deng Xiaoping three. Deng's second wife ran off with a more senior leader in the early Thirties. Doctor Li alleged in his book that Deng made one of his nurses pregnant in 1959. Premier Zhou Enlai is admired for staying married to the same woman for 50 years.
A woman party member told me that when she entered government service in the early Fifties it was normal for senior officials to make sexual advances to young female subordinates. 'They almost all did it, but if you said no right away, they never did it again and you could have normal relations with them. Of course there were always young colleagues who didn't say no.'
She remembered going to a tea planta- tion in central China where Mao main- tained a villa which he had visited the week before. The local party secretary was in a foul temper because his young pretty wife had accepted an invitation to Mao's villa where she stayed for three days.
`I don't think I thought about it at all,' the official said. 'I didn't feel sorry for the young woman or glad for her. Mao was Mao, like God. And the atmosphere in those years was that anyone in "the above", the higher levels, could have anything he wanted. That's how it was. I'm sure it's still true.'
The author was East Asia editor of the Times until January. He now lives in Lon- don and writes about China.
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