However much Chiang hated the Communists, he did not carry out a scorched-earth policy when he fled. He took most of China’s civil aviation — and many art treasures — but only tried to move a small number of factories, mainly electronics plants, to Taiwan. This attempt was blocked by a senior Nationalist official, and virtually all significant industrial facilities were preserved and taken over by the Communists, including sixty-eight ordnance factories. Chiang did far less damage in industrial terms in the entire Mainland than the Russians did just in Manchuria. Mao did not inherit a wasteland in 1949; in fact, he was bequeathed a relatively intact, albeit small, industrial structure, no fewer than 1,000 factories and mines — as well as a functioning state. Chiang was not nearly as ruthless as Mao. As a critic of both regimes observed, “Old Mr. Chiang was not like old Mr. Mao. Perhaps this was why Chiang was beaten by Mao.”
THAT SPRING, Mao floated into the outskirts of Peking amidst pear blossoms from Xibaipo, where he had been staying for the past year. Peking had been the capital of China for many dynasties from the twelfth century, and he had decided to make it his capital. In the heart of the city, a huge imperial compound called Zhongnanhai, Central-South Lake, with waterfalls, villas and pavilions, became the main official residence and workplace for him and the rest of the leaders, the equivalent of the Kremlin, which the Russians sometimes called it.
While Zhongnanhai was being prepared, Mao stayed for several months in a beauty spot on the western outskirts called the Fragrant Hills. The inhabitants were moved out, and the whole mountain cordoned off for the leaders, the Praetorian Guard, and some 6,000 staff. To preserve secrecy, a plaque was hung at the entrance bearing the words “Labour University,” but this drew so many young people wanting to enroll that another sign had to be put up saying: The Labor University is not ready; consult the newspapers for enrollment dates.
Mao moved into Zhongnanhai in September. There, and anywhere else he might set foot, the grounds were swept by Russian mine-detectors — and Chinese soldiers walking shoulder-to-shoulder as human minesweepers. An extraordinary but unobtrusive security system was installed, for which the watchword was
And yet, with all his watertight security, on the eve of his inauguration as supreme leader of China, deep fear was lurking in the recesses of Mao’s mind. A friend from the past, Mrs. Lo Fu, described visiting him and Mme Mao at this time. Mao was “in high spirits … When I asked about his health, Jiang Qing said he was all right, except he would tremble when he saw strangers. At first I didn’t understand … and I said: But he looks all right today! Chairman Mao interjected with a smile: You are an old friend, not a stranger.” It seems Mao knew that his terrorization had produced not only mass conformity, but quite a few would-be assassins.
On 1 October 1949, Mao appeared standing on top of Tiananmen Gate, a stone’s throw from Zhongnanhai, in front of the Forbidden City, and inaugurated the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This was his first-ever public appearance before a large crowd of hundreds of thousands. The crowd was well organized, and very distant from the Gate high above. From now on Mao would ascend the Gate on special occasions, a practice he modeled on Soviet leaders mounting Lenin’s tomb in Red Square, which was far lower and less grand. On this occasion Mao made the only speech he ever delivered from the Gate in his entire reign of twenty-seven years. (On other occasions when he appeared there, he would at most mouth a slogan or two.) He cleared his throat every other sentence, in the manner of a nervous speaker rather than a rousing orator. Moreover, the content was extraordinarily flat, mainly a list of appointments. Its most salient feature was what he did
The crowd of over 100,000 cried “Long live Chairman Mao!” Mao appeared excited, waving as he walked from one end of the magnificent Gate to the other, and occasionally shouting into the microphone: “Long live the people!” He had that day established himself as the absolute ruler of some 550 million people.
Even the watered-down official CCP figure for civilian deaths from starvation in Changchun was 120,000.
