The Tragedy of Lin Biao

"Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, both of whom teach in Australia, have produced a series of books looking back at the Maoist period and just after, trying to revisit ideas about what happened on certain major occasions, with access to Party historians and new materials. My own view, frankly, is that it’s probably a little early to write books, articles would have been better. But, nevertheless, they have done extraordinarily valuable work. In the case of Lin Biao, it’s this still very, very, murky episode when the chosen heir apparent, his name written in the Party constitution, allegedly plotted to assassinate Chairman Mao. Then, when fleeing in the direction of the Soviet Union, his plane crashed with his family in Mongolia. “The Chinese are always talking about the Japanese not coming to terms with what they did in World War II. But the Chinese themselves have not come to terms with the Cultural Revolution” The important thing about Teiwes and Sun, is, apart from the fact it’s a very, very judicious and well-researched work on this episode, is that they prove, I think conclusively, that the likelihood of Lin Biao plotting against the Chairman is very small – because it goes against all his previous behaviour in the Cultural Revolution. Lin Biao had always been very careful to wait and see what Mao did, and then to sign his name on the document after him. And not to push ahead. And in my view, the one time he really angered Mao, when he did push ahead, was when he thought he was fulfilling what Mao wanted. Mao was alleging in the summer and early fall of 1969 that the Soviet Union was going to launch a surprise attack on China and the words Pearl Harbor were bandied around. So Lin Biao, who was the executive vice-chairman of the Military Affairs Committee and Minister of Defence, decided, for the first time, to do what he was supposed to do – which is to get the country ready for the attack that Chairman Mao had predicted. And he did some inspections and made sure that the airfields were not going to have the planes in position so they’d be destroyed immediately by an attack, as happened at Pearl Harbor. And he did other things, so that hundreds of thousands of troops and ships and tanks and aircraft were moved around. It was a massive movement which was even detected in the US – and no one in America knew what was happening. And the whole thing was billed as Deputy Commander in Chief Lin Biao’s order number 1 and then there were order numbers 2, 3 and 4. Mao was apparently furious, and I think the reason he was furious was not because Lin Biao was doing what his duty was, to protect the country, but because Mao suddenly realised that his main bulwark of support throughout his career, the military, could be moved by someone else, and that therefore, conceivably, there was a threat to him personally. And I think it was from that time on that Mao started the process of pressuring Lin Biao in order to try to get rid of him. We don’t even know that, because it is said Lin Biao was asleep, having taken sleeping pills. His son and wife decided that the situation was dangerous, and it was the son who was supposedly entrusted by Lin Biao with an attempt to assassinate the Chairman. And the son and the wife hurried Lin Biao, half asleep, into a car, rushed off to the airport and took off. So we don’t even know what Lin Biao’s role was. We don’t know anything. The story is so obscure, even to this day. Some years ago there was an allegation that Lin Biao and his wife had their car rocket-attacked after they had had a pleasant dinner with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai in the Western Hills outside Beijing. And if someone, in this case a Chinese with an alias, can write that, then obviously there is much still to be discovered…"