by Jung Chang
This war scare lasted nearly four months. The entire army was put on red alert, which involved moving 4,100 planes, 600 ships and 940,000 troops. The army now resumed serious military training, which had largely fallen into abeyance since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Zhongnanhai was dug up in order to build a giant underground shelter, linked by tunnels wide enough for four cars abreast, running to Tiananmen, the Great Hall of the People, a major hospital (Hospital 305, specially built for Mao and the top leaders, with all his security requirements, although he never set foot in it), Lin Biao’s residence, and the secret underground military HQ in the Western Hills. Tens of millions of civilians were corvéed to build underground shelters and tunnels in every city, at punishing expense. This whole scare, started by Mao’s miscalculation, cost China dearly.
In the end, the scare remained only a scare, which restored Mao’s confidence in his old belief that no country, Russia included, would really want to invade China. To make doubly sure, he set out to mollify the Russians. On May Day 1970 he made a point of greeting the deputy chief Soviet delegate to the border talks, who was present on Tiananmen Gate, and told him he wanted to be a “friendly neighbor” with Russia, and did not want war. Relations were restored to ambassadorial level, with a new Russian ambassador arriving in Peking in October, making a Soviet strike still more unlikely.
THOUGH CONFIDENT THAT there would not be a war, Mao continued scare propaganda inside China, judging that a war atmosphere was advantageous to the Superpower Program.
Becoming a superpower had remained Mao’s dearest dream. This was partly why he had carried out the Purge — to install new enforcers who were more in tune with his demands. After this process was complete, he started to accelerate the Program. To this end, in August 1970 he opened a plenum in Lushan, the mountain of volatile clouds, where the Central Committee had met twice before, in 1959 and 1961, both times for the same goal of pushing the Program ahead, resulting in nearly 38 million deaths from starvation and overwork.
On both those occasions Mao had met with considerable resistance. This time his new enforcers showed few qualms about obliging him, even though his latest plans involved investing as much in the nuclear program for the five years 1971–75 as had been expended in all the previous fifteen years. This was at a time when per capita income in China was lower than in dirt-poor Somalia, and calorie intake less than it had been under the Nationalists in 1930. But Mao met no opposition. Lin Biao and his coterie actually advocated that the question of whether or not the country could afford this level of spending should not matter. The new boss of Jiangxi, General Cheng Shi-qing, offered to cough up more than seven times as much food annually to the central government as the province was currently contributing — when the people of Jiangxi were already on the margin of survival. The new slave-drivers were willing to dragoon the population more harshly then ever before.
Mao was in a satisfied mood. As he drove up the mountain from the steaming plain, he itched for a swim. As soon as he arrived, he tore off his clothes and dived into the reservoir, ignoring the bodyguards who cautioned that the water was too cold, and that he had sweated too much. Laughing and joking, he swam for nearly an hour in water that made the young men around him shiver. At seventy-six, he was in excellent shape. His appetite impressed his chef and his housekeeper. He still had boundless energy.
But at this point, events took an unexpected turn. Mao and Lin Biao fell out. The post-Purge set-up began to unravel.
52. FALLING OUT WITH LIN BIAO (1970–71 AGE 76–77)
UP TO NOW, August 1970, the Mao — Lin partnership had worked extremely well. For the past four years Lin Biao had delivered the support from the army that Mao needed to purge the Party and reconstruct his regime. And Mao had done the maximum to satisfy Lin Biao’s thirst for power, basically handing the army to him, and writing him into the Party charter as No. 2 and successor. Lin’s wife had been brought into the Politburo (making her one of only two women members, along with Mme Mao), breaking a long-standing taboo against wife-promotion. Mao even tolerated a Lin mini-cult. Each day, when the chant went up: “May the Great Helmsman [etc.] Chairman Mao live for ever and ever!” accompanied by the brandishing of the Little Red Book, the homage was followed by: “May Vice-Chairman Lin be very healthy, and for ever healthy!”
But at Lushan, it was brought home to Mao that he had let Lin grow too powerful, and that this now posed a threat to himself. It started with a seemingly innocuous dispute about the presidency, a post last occupied by Liu Shao-chi. Mao wanted the post abolished. Lin insisted that it should stay, and that Mao should be the president. The reason Lin stuck to his contrary position was because he wanted to be vice-president, which would make him the formal No. 2 in the state hierarchy. Among the top five (Mao, Lin, Chou, Kang Sheng and Chen Bo-da), the line-up was four in favor of Lin’s view, against Mao’s solitary one. This was an amazing sign of Lin’s power, as it showed that for Mao’s top colleagues, Lin’s interests overrode Mao’s wishes.
Mao was further enraged when Lin went ahead and announced his proposal to the conclave on 23 August without first clearing it with Mao. Immediately after Lin spoke, the head of the Praetorian Guard, Wang Dong-xing, backed him up, demanding in fevered language that Mao become president, and Lin vice-president—even though he, too, knew that this was diametrically opposed to what Mao wanted. The man on whom Mao relied for his life was also putting Lin’s wishes before Mao’s.
The reason the head of the Praetorian Guard acted this way was because he felt Lin’s patronage was essential. He had seen the fate that befell his de facto predecessor, Luo the Tall, who had been as close to Mao as it was possible to be, and yet whom Mao had sacrificed when Lin had demanded it. And now he saw Mao apparently making another similar sacrifice: Mao had just endorsed Lin’s request to victimize yet another man who had Mao’s deep trust, the Party No. 7, Zhang Chun-qiao.
The 53-year-old Zhang had been a middle-ranking functionary in Shanghai who had caught Mao’s eye with his ability to churn out articles that dressed up Mao’s self-serving deeds in Marxist garb. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mao had jumped him to the top to perform the crucial job of packaging the Purge in ideological phraseology. Zhang was the person largely responsible for the texts that caused many people in China and abroad to entertain illusions about the true nature of the Cultural Revolution.
Zhang was reticent and reserved, and wore a face that colleagues found hard to read. He had been dubbed “the Cobra” by Lin and his coterie, partly because he wore glasses, and partly because of his snakelike qualities. Lin Biao hated him because he was not one of his own cronies, and because Mao, ever one to sow discord among his underlings, had told Lin that the Cobra might one day succeed Lin when Lin got old. For some time, Lin had been trying to undermine the Cobra by sending Mao dirt on him. Just before delivering his speech at Lushan, Lin told Mao that he intended to condemn the Cobra in it, and Mao gave Lin the nod to proceed. After Lin’s speech, which was fierce, other participants piled in, demanding, in the brutal language of the day, that the Cobra be “put to the death of the thousand cuts.”
The lesson was clear: however close or important anyone was to Mao, that person had to have Lin’s blessing to survive. Mao’s favor on its own was not enough. This was a huge power shift. The thought that Lin’s patronage was now more critical than his own rocked Mao.
He set out at once to demonstrate that Lin was not omnipotent. He vetoed any possibility of having a presidency, and called a halt to attacks on the Cobra, and to any further discussion of Lin’s speech. Mao proceeded to show enormous displeasure towards Lin, and then condemned his old secretary Chen Bo-da, the Party No. 5, who had become too pally with Lin. As usual in such cases, Chen was put under house arrest, and then thrown into prison — an experience he described as like being “hit on the head by an atom bomb.”
Mao asked Lin to make a self-criticism in front of the top echelon and say that he had been
“deceived” by Chen. Lin declined. Until now, thanks to his special relationship with Mao, he had always avoided having to subject himself to this humiliating ritual. Even though Mao insisted, Lin refused to budge. There was an impasse. After four decades, the Mao — Lin relationship began to fall apart.
AFTER LUSHAN, which ended inconclusively on 6 September, Mao moved to reduce Lin’s power — and also to ensure his personal safety. He summoned trusted generals who were not in Lin’s coterie to take over the military command of Peking, and inserted them into the army leadership. He also cleaned up his own household, by dismissing some of his favorite girlfriends who had come from the air force’s song and dance troupe, a procuring service for Mao, which had links to Lin.
Mao had to tread very gingerly so as not to make Lin feel personally threatened. He could ill afford to break with Lin completely. Virtually the entire regime was staffed with people selected by Lin and his personal network. Mao wanted to neutralize him as much as possible without purging him. The interminable machinations needed to achieve this sapped Mao’s energy, and that winter he fell ill with pneumonia. It was now, at seventy-seven, that old age suddenly set in, and he who had enjoyed extraordinary good health began to be besieged by illness.
Meanwhile, Lin Biao continued to refuse to perform the self-abasement that Mao demanded. Always a loner, he became even more withdrawn, and spent most of his time pacing his room, occasionally watching war films. He dictated a letter to Mao, making it clear that in the event of his being purged, Mao would have to restaff the entire machine that Lin had installed; the only possible replacements would have to be the old Party cadres, and that would mean repudiating the Cultural Revolution. But at his wife’s urging, Lin did not send the letter. Mao would not tolerate being threatened in such a way.
A more realistic option for Lin was to cut and run, as past foes of Mao’s had done: Chang Kuo-tao to the Nationalists in the 1930s, and Wang Ming to Moscow in the 1950s. With his control of the air force, Lin could escape overseas. The obvious choice was Russia. He had spent over four years there altogether, and his wife spoke workable Russian, having had a Russian officer lover. It was a sign of Lin Biao’s mistrust of Communist regimes that Russia was only his fallback choice, and his preferred destination was the British colony of Hong Kong.
Lin’s plan was to fly first to Canton, which is very close to Hong Kong, and where the military were exceptionally devoted to him. To secure this escape route, he relied on his only son, Li-guo, whom he called “Tiger,” who was in his mid-twenties. In November 1970, soon after Lin’s breach with Mao at Lushan, Tiger started to see people from the Canton military. His intimates made frequent secret visits to Canton, got hold of small arms, radios and cars, and learned to fly helicopters. During all these extensive activities, no one informed on Tiger, who inspired loyalty.
Tiger had been a physics student at Peking University when the Cultural Revolution started. Unusually for a young man of his background, he only joined the Red Guards reluctantly, and quickly left, showing no inclination for violence, or for persecuting people. He seems to have been a decent person. He was something of a playboy, and had many girlfriends. His parents worshipped him, and his mother had sent agents all over China to look for the most beautiful young woman to be his wife. Tiger chose a sexy fiancée who was intelligent, and a character. With her he listened to Western rock music, which he adored, and told her: “There will be a day when I will let the Chinese know there is such wonderful music in the world!”
Being able to enjoy Western music was only one of Tiger’s many rare privileges as the son of Lin Biao. Another was access to Western science magazines, which he devoured, often expressing admiration for the advances being made in the West. (He was an avid inventor of military equipment, with some effective ideas of his own.) But above all, he was able to read some top-secret documents, with the result that he was exceptionally well informed.
Tiger came to be sharply critical of Mao’s tyranny. In March 1971, he and three friends put their thoughts on paper:
Senior officials feel anger but dare not speak up;
Peasants lack food and clothing;
Educated youth rusticated: prison labour in disguise;
The Red Guards were deceived and used at the beginning … as cannon fodder [and then] scapegoats …
Workers’ … wages have been frozen: disguised exploitation.
These words were part of a document called “Outline of Project 571.” Tiger chose the name because “571”—wu-qi-yi—has the same pronunciation in Chinese as “armed uprising,” and a coup was what the friends had in mind. The Outline was a razor-sharp indictment of Mao, describing China under his rule as “state rich, people impoverished,” which they wanted to change to “people rich and state powerful.” Their aim was “to give the people enough food and clothing and a peaceful life”—the antithesis of Mao’s goals.
They described Mao as “the biggest promoter of violence,” who “sets … people against people,” “a paranoid and a sadist,” and “the biggest feudal tyrant in Chinese history.” They accused him of “turning the Chinese state machine into a meat grinder, slaughtering and crushing people.” These observations were truly remarkable for the times. Tiger dubbed Mao “B-52” after the US heavy bomber, referring to the fact that Mao, as he put it, had a big stomach full of evil thoughts, each one like a heavy bomb that would kill masses of people. Tiger’s attitude to Mao was completely different from that of Mao’s opponents among the old guard. He saw right through Mao, whom he regarded as evil, and unfit to run the country. He also realized that with him no dialogue or compromise was possible. In this sense, he was the nearest thing China produced to a Claus von Stauffenberg, the German officer who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
Tiger and his friends began to talk about assassinating Mao when Tiger saw that Mao was coming after his parents. The friends mooted many ideas, but all in very general terms, like “using poison gas, germ weapons, bombing …,” and there is no sign that they ever got as far as actually preparing any of these. Mao had the most stringent rules on arms and troop movements, and phenomenal security. Moreover, as Tiger’s group themselves observed, “the blind faith of the masses in B-52 is very deep” (thanks partly, ironically, to Tiger’s father), and so they did not dare to reveal their project to most of their friends, or to Lin’s major cronies at the top of the military. Tiger left a copy with his parents, but Lin was non-committal.
IN MARCH 1971, some seven months after the rift with Lin erupted at Lushan, Mao decided to convene a conference for about a hundred of the elite to hear Lin’s wife and major army cronies perform their self-abasements. Mao sent Chou En-lai in person to ask Lin, in unusually strong terms, to appear and “say a few words.” Lin refused. This was a huge snub to Mao’s authority, and he went berserk. He ordered Chou to deliver a blistering denunciation of Lin on 29 April (though not naming him), saying that the army leadership had been “following a wrong political line.”
A furious Lin retaliated. Two days later was May Day, when the leadership traditionally gathered on Tiananmen Gate. Protocol was very important in the Communist world, and any absence could be interpreted as signifying discord at the top. On the night, however, there was no sign of Lin. Chou stared anxiously at the empty seat facing Mao and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, next to the prince’s wife, while frantic phone calls were made to Lin’s home. A dejected-looking Lin eventually appeared, long after the fireworks display had begun.
The official photographer, Du, described the scene to us:
When I saw Lin Biao sitting down, I snapped a shot. I didn’t intend it to be published at all. I wanted to wait for [Mao and Lin] to start talking … But they didn’t even look at each other … Then Lin Biao got up and left. I thought he had gone to the toilet, but half an hour later and he was still not back. I wondered how come Vice-Chairman Lin took so long in the toilet. In fact, he had left. We were all dumbfounded. As soon as the show was over, Premier Ch
ou asked me: “Did you take a photo of Vice-Chairman Lin?” … I said: “One.” He said: “What about film and television?” I said I didn’t know. The premier had the crews fetched, and gave them a dressing-down those old guys remember today as if it had been yesterday.
Lin had stayed less than a minute, and had greeted no one, not the Sihanouks, not Mao.
Lin knew that Mao would not forgive him for what happened. After this, Tiger went to Canton to check out the Hong Kong escape route. He went right up to Lowu, the main crossing-point into Hong Kong, getting so close to the actual border that his entourage was worried the Hong Kong police might open fire.
Lin would soon defy Mao again, in June, when Romania’s tyrant duo, the Ceau?escus, came to town. Lin declined to come to a meeting with them, claiming that he was “sweating,” and Mrs. Lin had to go down on her knees to get him to go. Lin did finally show up, but left the room after Mao made a few digs at him, and went and sat outside the door in a slouching posture, his head lolling. Shortly afterwards, Tiger made another recce of the border with Hong Kong, by helicopter.
By mid-August, a year after Lushan, Mao was ready to purge Lin. On the 14th he left Peking to prepare provincial leaders. He had to make sure that these men, most of them Lin appointees, would not side with Lin in a showdown. During his tour, Mao made repeated damning remarks about Lin, like: “He wants to split the Party and can’t wait to seize power.” Although Mao told his audiences not to report to Lin on what he said, a few of Lin’s followers disobeyed. Mao’s words reached the Lins at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, east of Peking, on 6 September. The Lin villa occupied a whole hill, well shielded from the sea by luxuriant vegetation, as Lin could not stand the sight of water, though he liked the sea air. For kilometers there was not a soul around, except guards and staff.