On the Front Lines of the Cold War

by Seymour Topping

  In November, the Chinese press emphasized that the armed forces were under “the direct leadership and command of Chairman Mao.” Once again the slogan was revived: “The party commands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the party.” The death of Lin Biao, whatever the circumstances preceding it, provided the Maoists with the rationale for diminishing the army’s power in the provinces and control of the Defense Ministry by Lin’s Fourth Field Army faction. To replace Lin Biao as defense minister, Mao appointed a trusted old stalwart, Marshal Ye Jianying, whom I knew well when he was chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army and head of the Communist branch of Executive Headquarters in Peking. There lingers the possibility that the story about an assassination plot directed against Mao may have been simply concocted. Lin Biao may have been targeted for a purge to eliminate the possibility of a challenge by him and his Fourth Field Army loyalists to Mao’s authority. Lin may have fled in the Trident jet with his family in anticipation of a Maoist attempt to arrest him. I believe this to be a distinct possibility, and it remains a matter of very private speculation among some Chinese historians.

  At the Tenth Party Congress held in Peking August 24–28, 1973, Lin Biao was formally denounced and expelled from the party. There was no acknowledgment of his historic victories in the war with Japan or that he was the most effective field commander during the Civil War. Earlier, just after the death of Lin Biao in 1971, the two top generals who fought in tandem with him in the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s forces joined in the sweeping denunciations, obviously to please Mao. The famed “One-Eyed Dragon,” Liu Bo-cheng, by then totally blind, declared: “In all the decades I knew him, he never spoke the truth.” Chen Yi spoke of Lin’s “sinister conduct, double dealing, cultivation of sworn followers, and persistent scheming,” although he did concede: “I don’t want to deny that previously he did some useful things, under the leadership of the Chairman and the Party center.” Prior to the congress, the Central Committee distributed a confidential circular memo to key personnel of the party, government, and army all around the country laying out the accusations against Lin Biao. The memo came as a shock to many and for some put into question the stability of the leadership and the logic of the Cultural Revolution.

  Zhou Enlai, who delivered the principal indictment of Lin Biao at the congress as well as the Politburo’s Political Report, emerged as number two to Mao, but not necessarily his successor. With Mao’s prior agreement, Zhou brought Deng Xiaoping back from his exile in Jiangxi Province and appointed him as a vice premier.

  Ronning, Audrey, and our daughter Susan were present on October 14 when Deng made his first public appearance as the reinstated deputy to Zhou Enlai. The three were on a visit to Inner Mongolia when Zhou Enlai summoned Ronning to the Peking Railway Station for a reception in honor of Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. Trudeau was leaving on a tour of provincial cities of China. Deng Xiaoping was in Zhou Enlai’s entourage for the occasion as well as Li Xiannian, a member of the Politburo. Describing the meeting, Audrey said:

  We were back, arriving by train, from a cold two-week tour of Inner Mongolia and dad was wearing a coat lined with goat hair. We were met at the railway station by Zhou Enlai and escorted into a guest room where Li Xiannian and Deng Xiaoping were waiting. Zhou introduced Deng, a short, pale man of austere demeanor, as his great friend and colleague. We then were invited to take off our coats and pose for pictures. When dad took off his coat, we saw that the white goat hair of the coat’s lining had come off on his dark Sun Yat-sen tunic. “Oh!” said Zhou, “You can’t meet your prime minister looking like that.” Then Zhou and Deng began brushing off the hair. This was the moment, of course, for Trudeau to walk in and embrace his fellow Canadian. When they parted, Trudeau and the Chinese were covered with goat hair. Everyone laughed so loudly that the security people standing outside the door were alarmed and dashed in. When Deng laughed, he looked very different than when we first entered the room. He had become more relaxed, as if this incident had broken the ice.

  At the reception, Zhou told dad privately that Deng was the man to watch. He said he had just reinstated him as a vice premier and he was preparing him to be his successor.

  The previous month at a dinner in Peking for Iphigene Sulzberger, mother of the New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who was being escorted by Ronning and Audrey on a tour of China, Zhou indicated that he had a health problem. He had, in fact, been diagnosed on May 18, 1972, as suffering from bladder cancer. Despite his deteriorating health, Zhou accompanied Trudeau to the ancient city of Luoyang to visit the Buddhist caves at Longmen Temple. Ronning, who had another commitment, was not able to accept Zhou’s invitation to accompany them.

  At the Peking Railway Station, Zhou Enlai left the train vestibule to embrace Audrey on the station platform in farewell, saying: “I will never forget what you have done for China.” He had just looked over her new book on China, Dawn Wakes in the East. It was the last meeting for Audrey and her father with Zhou Enlai. Their next attempted contact with him was an intensely painful and mysterious one.

  In September 1975, Ronning was again in China, accompanied by Audrey; our daughter Lesley, a film editor; Richard Westlein, a nephew who worked as a television cameraman; and his mother, Meme, Audrey’s sister. The group was planning to do a documentary on the Yangtze River. During the trip Audrey filed to the New York Times the first news story on the spectacular archaeological unearthing, forty miles east of the ancient capital of Xi’an, of more than six thousand life-size terra-cotta sculptures of warriors with their horses, guardians of the tomb of the first emperor of China, Xin Shi Huangdi, founder of the Qin dynasty (221–207 B.C.), which unified China. Audrey’s articles and photos on the find became cover stories in the National Geographic and Horizon magazines.

  On arrival in Peking on September 29, Ronning asked to see his old friend Zhou Enlai, who had been hospitalized. Zhou had undergone surgery for his cancer on September 20 for the fourth time. The previous year, with Mao’s concurrence, he had turned over management of government affairs to Deng Xiaoping. Zhou remained peripherally involved, holding conferences at times at his bedside. Ronning was told by the Foreign Ministry that the premier would see him when he returned from his tour of China, which was to take two months. On an intermittent stopover in Peking during the tour, Ronning was given a similar reply when he once more asked to see Zhou. Ronning began to suspect that something sinister was involved. On November 9, the Ronning party returned to the Chinese capital. They checked into the Peking Hotel, where Ronning received a message from the Foreign Ministry stating that the premier was too sick to see him. It was conveyed to him by Zhu Qiusheng, a diplomat of the Foreign Ministry, who was an old friend and had traveled in China with the Ronnings.

  “Later, that same evening,” as Audrey related the incident to me,

  Zhu returned to our room in the hotel and in a hushed voice told us that Zhou wanted Chester and me to come urgently to see him in the hospital. Zhu handed dad a penciled note from Zhou written in Chinese on a small scrap of paper. I didn’t know exactly what it said, except dad was asked to come to the hospital to see him. Zhu nervously asked dad to destroy the note, which he did immediately. Zhu said that Zhou was in a nearby hospital. We didn’t understand the urgency, but we grabbed our coats and hurried out the door with Zhu. In the lobby two men in blue Mao suits, whose demeanors were those of security agents, accosted us and told us to return to our room. They said that the premier was too sick to see us. Dad protested, but Zhu said it was better that we go back to our room and that we could go in the morning. Zhu, a frail man, looked pale and shaken. The next morning, without waiting for Zhu, we set out again but we were stopped at the hotel entrance by two armed army guards who said firmly that no one could leave the hotel because there had been an accident in the street. We went back to our room, but then, Zhu returned and whispered: “Come, we can go now.” We hurried down but were again turned back in the lobby by t
he security agents. We didn’t want to get Zhu into trouble, so we turned back once again. But after Zhu left, we decided to try again. We got to the main entrance of the hotel, but we were stopped again by the armed guards. Dad argued with them in Chinese, saying we just wanted to go for a walk and then losing his patience shouted at them: “Out of our way!” At that, one of the guards pointed his bayoneted rifle at dad and ordered us back to our room. We had no choice. We never heard from Zhou Enlai again.

  The incident occurred at a moment when the Politburo was mired in an ideological struggle whose outcome could determine who would rule China after Mao. The Chairman was ill, suffering from a number of critical health problems, Parkinson’s disease among them. The struggle as to who would succeed him was very much in play. Deng Xiaoping, who had been returned to power as vice premier by Zhou Enlai, was under attack by Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four. As pretext, they were citing criticism which Mao had leveled against Deng that had stemmed from a debate as to how the Politburo should evaluate the Cultural Revolution, which was nearing its end. Mao was pressuring the Politburo to assess the Cultural Revolution in a formal resolution as 70 percent successful and 30 percent as a failure. Deng Xiaoping, an early victim of the Cultural Revolution, was balking at adopting any such resolution. The Gang of Four was mounting a campaign on university campuses accusing Deng of seeking in opposition to Mao to discredit the Cultural Revolution. By implication, they were also denouncing his mentor, Zhou Enlai. A Politburo meeting was to take place on November 20 to resolve the issue, but in the interim, Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four with the sanction of the sickly Mao was reigning as the dominant political force in Peking. Mao was also being urged by the Gang of Four to replace Zhou as premier with one of its members, Zhang Chunqiao.

  At the time of the hotel incident on November 10, Ronning and Audrey were very aware of these political tensions and the aggressive role of Jiang Qing, although they did not have specific knowledge of what was transpiring within the Politburo. But it seemed to them that being barred from seeing Zhou Enlai was part of a plot by Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four to isolate their political adversary, Zhou Enlai. This view was shared by Huang Hua, one of the premier’s closest associates and friend over many years, and his wife, He Liliang, who told us that they too had been barred from entering the hospital to see Zhou. The Ronnings speculated that Zhou Enlai was trying to get a message out through his friends, likely one expressing support for his ally, Deng Xiaoping. A month earlier, on September 7, Zhou had received a delegation of Communist officials from Romania in the hospital. At that meeting he had voiced his support of Deng Xiaoping and expressed his conviction that Deng, to whom he had already turned over his official duties, would continue to carry out the policies he had set forth. It was entirely likely that Zhou wanted to meet with his trusted friend Chester Ronning and Audrey, the journalist, so as to have them reveal his support of Deng to the world. There was no indication that the Romanians, possibly not wishing to meddle in internal Chinese Communist Party affairs, had told others of Zhou’s endorsement of Deng. Huang Hua and the Ronnings also anxiously wondered whether Zhou Enlai was being given the medicines and the other necessary medical care he needed to survive.

  Two months later, at dawn on January 9, the Peking Radio announced that Zhou Enlai had “died of cancer at 09:57 hours on January 8, 1976, in Peking, at the age of seventy-eight.” China was plunged into mourning, and unprecedented homage was paid to him both within the country and abroad for his role in the Chinese revolution and conduct of international affairs. At the Congregational Church in Scarsdale, New York, Chester Ronning, at the request of the congregation, delivered a eulogy in tribute to his old friend.

  I too was personally saddened by the death of Zhou Enlai. I felt that he had served the Chinese people extremely well as a statesman and government leader. True, he had been involved or simply remained silent when Mao committed some of his worst abuses as party chief, but it had been a matter of survival not only for himself but for the nation so that he could carry on effectively and serve to moderate Maoist policies where possible, which he did at great risk. In Peking, I would years later view an inscription on a bronze plaque in front of the Yonghegong Tibetan Buddhist Temple, which said in part: “The Temple survived ten turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution thanks to Premier Zhou Enlai.” His action in preserving the largest lamasery in Peking, built in 1964, was typical of what Zhou Enlai did to safeguard the Chinese heritage.

  On January 15, at the memorial service for Zhou Enlai, which was not attended by Mao, Deng Xiaoping delivered the eulogy. Deng had already been effectively stripped of power by Mao’s criticism of him at Jiang Qing’s urging, and it was his last public appearance for a year. As late as May 1976, the Chinese press was still denouncing him “for crimes of trying to subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism.” Several days after the Zhou funeral, the Politburo appointed Hua Guofeng, one of its members, as acting premier. He was a compromise choice acceptable to all the factions.

  But even in death Zhou Enlai continued to exercise profound influence on events shaping the future of the country. On March 19, during the Qingming Festival, when traditionally Chinese sweep the graves of their ancestors, a wreath honoring Zhou Enlai was laid by the Cow Lane Primary School on the Monument to the Revolutionary Martyrs in the center of Tiananmen Square. When word spread that wreaths in tribute to Zhou Enlai were being placed at the monument, it inspired numerous marches to the square, embracing people from every sort of institution as well as ordinary folk who wished to render tribute. Almost 2 million people were said to have passed through the square on April 4 in organized demonstrations or simply to view the hundreds of wreaths, inscribed manifestos, and poems stacked around the monument in dedication to Zhou Enlai and his principles. For some, hailing Zhou Enlai was by implication support for Deng Xiaoping. There was also an outpouring of condemnation by ordinary folk of Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four. In placards and poems the Gang of Four was denounced for bringing about the savagery and disruption of the Cultural Revolution. Jiang Qing was accused of ambition to become the ruling queen of China.

  Alarmed by the uncontrolled mass demonstrations, the like of which had not been seen in the capital since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, with Mao’s approval, Hua Guofeng acted to restore order. In the early morning hours of April 5, Peking garrison troops cleansed the square of wreaths and posters. This served only to induce protest demonstrations by thousands of people before the Great Hall of the People. In the evening, thousands of troops and police stormed through the square once again to clear it of the last stubborn demonstrators. Deng Xiaoping, who did not visit the square, was spirited away with his wife to a small villa in Peking, where for the next three months they were in effect under house arrest. But this second purge was not lasting and ended with the death of Mao on September 9, 1976.

  Two days after the death of Mao, Hua Guofeng became alarmed when the Gang of Four made a number of moves within the party bureaucracy that indicated its members were positioning themselves for an outright seizure of power. Drawing on a study of Chinese archives, Professors Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals described in their book Mao’s Last Revolution what transpired in the next weeks. Working secretly with Wang Dongxing, a senior member of the Politburo and a key security official influential in party affairs, and Marshal Ye Jianying, now the secretary-general of the Central Military Affairs Commission, Hua Guofeng readied a countercoup. On October 6, Hua summoned a Politburo meeting to take place in Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai, the secluded enclave behind the walls of the Forbidden City where the offices of State Council, the party’s Central Committee, and the residences of the leadership were located. Three members of the Gang of Four, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan, as they arrived for the meeting, were in turn seized by guards. Jiang Qing was also arrested in her Zhongnanhai residence. All were charged with plotting a coup to seize power.

  With Jiang Qing�
��s arrest, the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution had come to its end. The Gang of Four, accused of attempting to subvert the state in plots against Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, and the torturous persecution of Liu Shaoqi, were put on trial on November 26, 1980, before thirty-five judges and six hundred selected spectators arrayed in the Ceremonial Hall of the Public Security compound on Peking’s Street of Righteousness. It was more of a show trial than a legal proceeding, since the process and the subsequent conviction and sentencing were likely dictated not by the judges but secretly by the Politburo. At the conclusion of the trial, which lasted until January 1981, Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao were sentenced to death with two-year reprieves. The sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1983. Wang Hongwen and Yao Wenyuan, who had written the article denouncing Wu Han’s play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, the opening gun in the Cultural Revolution, also received lengthy prison sentences.

  Jiang Qing never confessed or repented, insisting that all she did was on the command of Mao. “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. Whoever he asked me to bite, I bit,” she was quoted as saying at the trial. While confined in Qincheng Prison, notorious for its cruel maltreatment of inmates during the Cultural Revolution, she was diagnosed sometime during the mid-1980s with throat cancer. She declined an operation. Her next years were divided thereafter between detention in prison and house arrest in the Public Security Hospital. She was in the hospital on May 14, 1991, when she committed suicide by hanging herself in her bathroom. When her death at the age of seventy-one was announced briefly in the Chinese media, I thought of that evening in Yenan forty-five years earlier when I saw her chatting and laughing gaily sitting beside Liu Shaoqi in the front row of the Peking Opera House, then only housewife to Mao Zedong.