As reports of mass famine turned from a trickle to a flood in 1960, the leadership slowly realized that the party had made a mistake of historical proportion. According to Ministry of Public Security data, 675 counties and cities had death rates exceeding 2 percent of population in the early 1960s, compared to the normal 1 percent or so. In forty counties, mainly in Anhui, Sichuan, Henan, Guizhou, and Qinghai, the death rates exceeded 10 percent of the population (Yang et al. 2012: 395). Economists and demographers estimate that the Great Leap Forward caused sixteen to thirty million unnatural deaths in the early 1960s (Kung and Lin 2003). The policy of using confiscated grain to finance a rapid buildup of industrial capacity championed by Mao and his colleagues had led to one of the greatest man-made disasters in the twentieth century.

During his ascent to power in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Mao had “packed” the CCP upper echelon with people who had sided with him in the many internal power struggles in the party, especially those who had served with him in the First Front Army. Yet even this strategy was insufficient to maintain Mao’s absolute power in the party. When the unexpected shock of the Great Leap Forward led to a precipitous fall of Mao’s prestige within the party, a rival coalition composed of Mao’s former allies emerged to sideline him. Even a formerly loyal protégé such as Deng Xiaoping began to display streaks of independence.

Authoritarian regimes must grapple with a fundamental source of instability that a significant redistribution of power, often unseen or only partially observed, can radically alter the incentives of regime insiders and overturn initially stable equilibria (Acemoglu et al. 2008). Although institutional features such as authoritarian legislatures and a ruling party can alleviate the incentives to usurp the incumbent leader to some extent, especially among lower-level officials (Gandhi 2008; Svolik 2012), they cannot fundamentally remove the incentives to grab power forcefully in the top echelon of these regimes. For one, one-party states by design entrust enormous power in the hands of the top few officials or even in the hands of one person. For ambitious officials just one layer below the very top facing a low probability of ordinary promotion, the reward for achieving an extra step upward can be enormous and can justify a risky gamble, especially if an external shock leads to a significant redistribution of power. Even for those who are already in the top echelon of the ruling party, a gamble to break the existing power-sharing equilibrium can reap enormous rewards as the power and resources of authoritarian colleagues are consolidated into one’s hands. Knowing the dangers of these possibilities, authoritarian leaders also have the incentives to preempt potentially threatening colleagues by removing them from power with coercive measures. In the absence of credible constitutional frameworks or electoral pressure to stop the actions of the top leadership, the stable façade of authoritarian politics can quickly descend into coups, purges, and assassinations.

In mid-1975, a sickly Mao had one of the last meetings with the Politburo. During the meeting, Mao shook hands with the entire Politburo, probably for the last time in his life. When he greeted alternate Politburo member and Vice Premier Wu Guixian, Mao confessed, “I don’t know who you are.” An embarrassed Wu said, “Chairman, we met in 1964 during the national day parade.” Mao compounded her embarrassment by responding, “I didn’t know that” (Mao 1975).

Chapter Five discusses two things. First, it looks at the aftermath of the Futian Rebellion and at Xiang Ying’s efforts to calm things down. Xiang’s efforts were soon reversed by the arrival of the “three person group,” which implemented the radical new line coming out of the Comintern. Zhou Enlai would later try to control the sufan movement, but new leadership (Bo Gu) and the pressing need for soldiers and money would reignite efforts to suppress so-called counterrevolutionaries. Second, the chapter looks briefly at the Eyuwan Revolutionary Base Area, north of the Yangzi river, to show that the same logic of sufan applied there as well.

Chapter 1 focuses on the key role played by Dutch communist and founding member of the Soviet Comintern Henricus Sneevliet (alias Maring) in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai in 1921. Background is provided on the challenging political and economic circumstances of Republican-era China, and two concepts promoted by Sneevliet with lasting significance for the CCP: the need for a disciplined, Leninist party, and the necessity of allying with the broader Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) movement, known as the “United Front.” Chinese resistance to Sneevliet’s second concept, led by student activist Zhang Guotao, who advocated the immediate establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, was a factor in Sneevliet’s low opinion of the CCP as a viable political party. This contrasts with his favorable impression of Sun Yat-sen and the KMT in the south, which led to a debate in the Comintern over the viability of mass party strategy. Eventually, Chen Duxiu, the Party’s current leader, ordered CCP members to join the KMT, but Sneevliet was replaced by Russian Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin.