Lin Biao incident

 

 

According to the Chinese government, Lin Biao was made aware that Mao no longer trusted him after the 9th Central Committee, and he harbored a strong desire to seize supreme power. In February 1971 Lin and his wife, Ye Qun (who was then a Politburo member), began to plot Mao's assassination. In March 1971, Lin's son, Lin Liguo (who was a senior Air Force officer) held a secret meeting with his closest followers at an Air Force base in Shanghai. At this meeting, Lin Liguo and his subordinates supposedly drafted a plan to organize a coup, titled "Project 571". In Chinese, "5-7-1" (Chinese: 五七一; pinyin: wǔqīyī), is a homophone for "armed uprising" (Chinese: 武起义; pinyin: wǔqǐyì). Later that March, the group met again to formalize the structure of command following the proposed coup.^[3]

Mao was unaware of the coup plot, and, in August 1971, scheduled a conference for September to determine the political fate of Lin Biao. On 15 August, Mao left Beijing to discuss the issue with other senior political and military leaders in southern China. On 5 September, Lin received reports that Mao was preparing to purge him. On 8 September, Lin gave the order to his subordinates to proceed with the coup.^[3]

Lin's subordinates planned to assassinate Mao by sabotaging his train before he returned to Beijing, but Mao unexpectedly changed his route on 11 September. Mao's bodyguards foiled several subsequent attempts on Mao's life, and Mao safely returned to Beijing in the evening of 12 September. By failing to assassinate Mao, Lin's coup attempt failed.^[4]

Realizing that Mao was now fully aware of his abortive coup, Lin's party first considered fleeing south to their base of power in Guangzhou, where they would establish an alternate "Party headquarters" and attack armed forces loyal to Mao. After hearing that Premier Zhou Enlai was investigating the incident, they abandoned this plan as impractical, and decided to flee to the Soviet Union instead. In the early morning of 13 September, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Lin Liguo, and several personal aides attempted to flee to the Soviet Union^[5] and boarded a prearranged Trident 1E (registered as PLAAF 256),^[6] piloted by Pan Jingyin, the deputy commander of the PLAAF 34th division. The aircraft did not take aboard enough fuel before taking off, ran out of fuel, and crashed near Öndörkhaan in Mongolia on 13 September 1971.^[4] Everyone on board, eight men and one woman, was killed.^[5]

The exact circumstances surrounding Lin's death remain unclear, due to a lack of surviving evidence. Many of the original government records relevant to Lin's death were secretly and intentionally destroyed, with the approval of the Politburo, during the brief period of Hua Guofeng's interregnum in the late 1970s. Among the records destroyed were telephone records, meeting minutes, personal notes, and desk diaries. The records, if they had survived, would have clarified the activities of Mao, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing, and Wang Dongxing relative to Lin, before and after Lin's death.^[2] Because of the destruction of government documentation related to Lin's death, the Chinese government has relied on alleged confessions of purged officials close to Lin to corroborate the official narrative, but non-Chinese scholars generally regard these confessions as unreliable.^[7]

Since 1971, scholars outside of China have been skeptical of the government's official explanation of the circumstances surrounding Lin's death. Skeptics assert the official narrative does not sufficiently explain why Lin, one of Mao's closest supporters and one of the most successful Communist generals, would suddenly attempt a poorly planned, abortive coup. The government narrative also does not sufficiently explain how and why Lin's aircraft crashed. Skeptics have claimed Lin's decision to flee to the Soviet Union was illogical, on the grounds the United States or Taiwan would have been safer destinations.^[7]

Western historians have contended Lin did not have either the intention or the ability to usurp Mao's place within the government or the Party.^[4] One theory attempted to explain Lin's flight and death by observing that he opposed China's rapprochement with the United States, which Zhou Enlai was organizing with Mao's approval.^[8] Because the Chinese government never produced evidence to support their report that Lin was on board the aircraft, Western scholars originally doubted Lin had died in the crash. One book, published anonymously using a Chinese pseudonym in 1983, claimed Mao had actually had Lin and his wife killed in Beijing, and Lin Liguo had attempted to escape by air. Other scholars suggested Mao ordered the Chinese army to shoot down Lin's aircraft over Mongolia.^[9]

The Chinese government has no interest in re-evaluating its narrative on Lin Biao's death. When contacted in 1994 for its comment on fresh evidence that surfaced on the Lin Biao incident after the Cold War, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated: "China already has a clear, authoritative conclusion about the Lin Biao incident. Other foreign reports of a conjectural nature are groundless." Non-Chinese scholars interpreted China's reluctance to consider contradictory evidence of its "official" history as the result of a desire to avoid exploring any issue that might lead to criticism of Mao Zedong or a re-evaluation of the Cultural Revolution in general, which might distract China from pursuing economic growth.^[10]

 

A six-month investigation by Western scholars in 1994 examined evidence in Russia, Mongolia, mainland China, the United States, and Taiwan, and came to a number of conclusions, some of which were contrary to the official Chinese version of events. The study confirmed Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo were all killed in the crash. Lin's aircraft was travelling away from the Soviet Union at the time of its crash, making the exact sequence of events before Lin's death more confusing, and casting doubt on the possibility that Lin was attempting to seek asylum in the USSR. Lin's wife and son may have forced Lin to board the aircraft against his will. Several senior leaders within the Communist Party hierarchy knew Lin and his family would flee, but chose not to attempt to stop their flight. According to this study, Lin had attempted to contact the Kuomintang in Taiwan on two separate occasions shortly before his death.^[9] The findings of Lin's attempt to contact the Kuomintang supported earlier rumors from inside China that Lin was secretly negotiating with Chiang's government in order to restore the Kuomintang government in mainland China in return for a high position in the new government. The claims of Lin's contact with the Kuomintang have never been formally confirmed nor denied by either the governments in Beijing or Taipei.

The eyewitness account of Zhang Ning, who was Lin Liguo's fiancée before his death, and another witness who requested anonymity, indicate a sequence of events different from the official narrative. According to Zhang, Lin Biao had become extremely passive and inactive by 1971. When Lin Liguo informed Ye Qun that Mao was preparing to strip Ye of her Politburo seat, the two became convinced their family would be purged if they failed to act, and developed a plan to escape.^[11]

At 10 p.m. the night before Lin's party fled, Ye Qun announced the family would board an aircraft at 7 the next morning to fly to Guangzhou. Lin's 27-year-old daughter, Lin Liheng (known by the nickname "Doudou") opposed the escape plan, and contacted Lin's bodyguards to request they guard her father from Ye. Doudou then phoned Zhou Enlai,^[12] but was not able to contact him directly, and Zhou only received Doudou's report second-hand.^[13]

Zhou received Doudou's message shortly after Doudou's phone call, directly from the general office of the Central Committee responsible for guarding China's senior leaders. The message contained Doudou's warning that Ye Qun and Lin Liguo were attempting to persuade Lin Biao to flee the country using an aircraft currently being prepared at Qinhuangdao Shanhaiguan Airport. Zhou called Wu Faxian, the commander of the air force, who verified the aircraft's existence. Zhou then issued orders that the aircraft could not take off without the written permission of himself and several other senior military officials, including Wu Faxian, general chief-of-staff Huang Yongsheng, and the commander of the navy and general chief-of-staff, Li Zuopeng. At 11:30, Ye Qun called Zhou and informed him Lin Biao was planning to fly to Dalian, and denied they had prepared an aircraft at Shanhaiguan. Zhou then told Ye to wait for him to travel to see Lin before they left Beidaihe (where they were staying), issued orders to neutralize potentially disruptive officers close to Lin (Wu Faxian and Huang Yongsheng), and ordered two aircraft be readied in Beijing so he could fly to Lin's residence to personally deal with the matter.^[14]

Ye made an announcement that the party were to pack quickly. Two hours after Doudou contacted Zhou, soldiers had still not responded in any meaningful way. Ye and Lin Liguo woke Lin Biao and packed him into a waiting limousine. The party then drove to Shanhaiguan airport, 40 kilometres (25 mi) away from their residence in Beidaihe, where their aircraft was waiting. Lin's bodyguards told Doudou and another companion that they were ordered to take them as well, but Doudou and her companion refused.^[12]

One soldier shot at Lin Biao's limousine as it left Beidaihe, but missed. Most soldiers the party encountered on its way to the airport allowed the limousine to pass. According to the driver of Lin's limousine, there was no time to place mobile stairs next to the aircraft's entrance, so the party boarded via a rope ladder. Lin Biao was so weak he had to be lifted and pulled onto the aircraft.^[12]

Zhang Ning observed the aircraft after it left the airport. Lin's aircraft initially traveled southeast (in the direction of Guangzhou). The aircraft then returned twenty minutes later and circled the airport several times as if it were trying to land, but the runway lights had been turned off. Soviet officials and Mongolian witnesses reported the aircraft then flew north, over Mongolia and almost to the Soviet border, but then turned around and began flying south before it crashed. A Mongolian who witnessed the crash reported the aircraft's tail was on fire when it crashed.^[15] The crash occurred at around 3:00 AM.^[1]

None of Zhou's instructions prevented Lin's flight, and he learned Lin's aircraft had taken off before he, himself, could fly to see Lin. Zhou then ordered all aircraft nationwide grounded without the written permission of Mao, himself, and several senior military leaders. He rushed to Zhongnanhai to brief Mao of Lin's flight, and asked Mao if he wanted to order Lin's aircraft shot down, but Mao replied that they should "let him go". At 8:30 p.m., 13 September, the Mongolian Foreign Ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador to make a formal complaint about the unauthorized entrance of an aircraft into Mongolian airspace, and reported to the ambassador that the aircraft had crashed, killing all on board. The Chinese ambassador to Mongolia then phoned Zhou Enlai, who then instructed the ambassador to tell the Mongolians the aircraft had entered Mongolian airspace because it had gone off course.^[16]

 

 

Only members of the investigative team itself, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev were informed of the results of the forensic examination.

Mongolian investigators were the first to inspect the wreckage, arriving later the same day. They found an identity card belonging to Lin Liguo, confirming Lin Liguo's presence on the flight. Markings on the aircraft and surviving miscellaneous personal items confirmed the aircraft and passengers had originated from China, but the Mongolians were uncertain that any of the dead were either Lin Biao or Ye Qun. After inspecting the crash, the Mongolians buried the dead onsite.^[5]

Through the Chinese ambassador, Zhou requested and received permission for Chinese embassy staff to inspect the wreckage of Lin's aircraft, which they did on 15–16 September. The staff reported to Zhou that the aircraft had caught fire while attempting to land, and then exploded. Zhou then sent additional staff to interview Mongolian witnesses of the crash, and to perform a detailed technical assessment of the crash. The report concluded the aircraft had approximately 30 minutes of fuel when it crashed, but attempted to land without activating its landing gear or wing flaps.^[17]

Later in 1971 a Soviet medical team secretly traveled to the crash site and exhumed the bodies, which were by then modestly decomposed. The team removed the heads of two of the corpses suspected to be Lin Biao and Ye Qun and took them back to the Soviet Union for forensic examination. In 1972 the team concluded the heads belonged to Lin Biao and Ye Qun (the heads are still stored in Russian archives). In order to corroborate their findings the team returned to Mongolia a second time to inspect the body believed to be Lin Biao's. After exhuming the body a second time the team found remains of tuberculosis — which Lin had suffered from — in the corpse's right lung, confirming the Soviet identification. The Soviet team was not able to determine the cause of the crash, but hypothesized the pilot misjudged his altitude while intentionally flying low to evade radar. Judging from the fires that burned after the crash, the Soviets estimated the aircraft had enough fuel to fly to the Soviet cities of Irkutsk or Chita. All of the work and its results were kept secret from the public: outside of the investigative team, only KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev were informed. The report remained classified until the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War.^[18]

 

Lin Biao was survived by Doudou and one other daughter.^[19] All military officials identified as being close to Lin or his family (most of China's high military command) were purged within weeks of Lin's disappearance.^[4] On 14 September, Zhou announced to the Politburo that four of the highest-ranking military officials in China were immediately suspended from duty and ordered to submit self-criticisms admitting their associations with Lin. This announcement was quickly followed by the arrest of ninety-three people suspected of being close to Lin,^[20] and within a month of Lin's disappearance over 1,000 senior Chinese military officials were purged.^[7] The official purge of Lin's supporters continued until it was closed by the 10th Central Committee in August 1973.^[21] The incident marked the end of the myth within the Party that Mao had always been absolutely correct.^[4] The National Day celebrations on 1 October 1971, were cancelled.

The news of Lin's death was announced to all Communist Party officials in mid-October 1971, and to the Chinese public in November. The news was publicly received with shock and confusion. Mao Zedong was especially disturbed by the incident: his health deteriorated, and he became depressed. At the end of 1971, he became seriously ill; he suffered a stroke in January 1972, received emergency medical treatment, and his health remained unstable. Mao became nostalgic about some of his revolutionary comrades whose purging Lin had supported, and backed Zhou Enlai's efforts to conduct a widespread rehabilitation of veteran revolutionaries, and to correct some of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution (which he blamed on Lin Biao).^[22] In the aftermath of the purge of Lin's supporters, Zhou Enlai replaced Lin as the second most powerful man in China, and Jiang Qing and her followers were never able to displace him. Without the support of Lin, Jiang was unable to prevent Zhou's efforts to improve China's relationship with the United States, or to rehabilitate cadres who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution.^[23] The clause in the Party constitution indicating that Lin was Mao's successor was not officially amended until the 10th Central Committee in August 1973.^[21]

The position of the Chinese government on Lin and the circumstances of his death changed several times over the decade following 1971. For over a year, the Party first attempted to cover up the details of Lin's death. The government then began to issue partial details of the event, followed by an anti-Lin Biao propaganda campaign. After Mao's death, in 1976, the government confirmed its condemnation of Lin and generally ceased any dialogue concerning Lin's place in history.^[24] Throughout the 1970s, high-ranking leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, including Hua Guofeng, spread the story to foreign delegates that Lin had conspired with the KGB to assassinate Mao.^[25]

In 1973 Jiang Qing, Mao's fourth wife and a former political ally of Lin's, started the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign, aimed at using Lin's scarred image to attack Zhou Enlai. Much of this propaganda campaign involved the creative falsification of history, including (false) details about how Lin had opposed Mao's leadership and tactics throughout his career.^[26] Lin's name became involved in Jiang's propaganda campaign after flashcards, made by Ye Qun to record Lin's thoughts, were discovered in Lin's residence following his death. Some of these flashcards recorded opinions critical of Mao. According to Lin's writings, Mao "will fabricate 'your' opinion first, then he will change 'your' opinion – which is not actually yours, but his fabrication. I should be careful of this standard trick." Another critical comment of Lin's states that Mao "worships himself and has a blind faith in himself. He worships himself to such an extent that all accomplishments are attributed to him, but all mistakes are made by others".^[27] Lin's private criticisms of Mao were directly contradictory of the public image cultivated by Lin, who publicly stated following the Great Leap Forward that all mistakes of the past were the result of deviating from Mao's instructions.^[28]

Like many major proponents of the Cultural Revolution, Lin's image was manipulated after Mao's death in 1976, and many negative aspects of the Cultural Revolution were blamed on Lin. After October 1976, those in power also blamed Mao's supporters, the so-called Gang of Four. In 1980, the Chinese government held a series of "special trials" to identify those most responsible for the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the government released their verdict: that Lin Biao must be held, along with Jiang Qing, as one of the two major "counter-revolutionary cliques" responsible for the excesses of the late 1960s.^[4] According to the official Party verdict, Lin and Jiang were singled out for blame because they led intra-Party cliques which took advantage of Mao's "mistakes" to advance their own political goals, engaging in "criminal activity" for their own self-benefit.^[29] Among the "crimes" he was charged with was the ouster of China's head of state, President Liu Shaoqi. Lin was found to be primarily responsible for using "false evidence" to orchestrate a "political frame-up" of Liu.^[30] Lin has been officially remembered as one of the greatest villains of modern China since then. Lin was never politically rehabilitated, so the charges against him continue to stand.^[4]

For several decades, Lin's name and image were censored within China, but in recent years a balanced image of Lin has reappeared in popular culture: surviving aides and family members have published memoirs about their experience with Lin; scholars have explored most surviving evidence relevant to his life and death, and have gained exposure within the official Chinese media; movies set before 1949 have made reference to Lin; and Lin's name has re-appeared in Chinese history textbooks, recognizing his contributions to the victory of the Red Army.^[24] Within modern China, Lin is regarded as one of the Red Army's best military strategists. In 2007, a big portrait of Lin was added to the Chinese Military Museum in Beijing, included in a display of the "Ten Marshals", a group considered to be the founders of China's armed forces.

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