Who Killed Lin Piao?—A Reconstruction

SOONER OR LATER the U.S. will attempt to take up serious business with Communist China. The process of detente begun under President Nixon should move on from the simple beginnings supplied by touring troupes of ping-pong players, acrobats, scholars, journalists, and businessmen scouts into the more exacting areas of political arrangements, the terms of trade and credit, and other matters calculated to give force to a useful modus vivendi. It was only three years ago, on May 20, 1970, after the brief and skimpy U.S. intrusion into Cambodia, that Chairman Mao Tse-tung promoted this country ahead of the Soviet Union as Red China’s “Number One Enemy” and called upon the revolutionary forces in the world “to unite and defeat the aggressors and all their running dogs.” Today China’s split with the Soviet Union and its recent swing toward improved relations with the U.S. have created a triangular power relationship on which the whole speculative design of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy pivots. It stands to reason that how well this new situation is exploited will depend upon how well we understand the strange circumstances that brought it to pass.

During the 24 years since the Communists became masters of the Mainland, the U.S. has twice been drawn reluctantly into wars started by China’s principal neighboring clients, North Korea and North Vietnam. Peking’s avowed objectives in those wars were to further the expansion of friendly Communist regimes and to hasten the expulsion of the American presence on the Asian continent. In the North Korean conflict massive Chinese armies intervened as “volunteers” to fight American forces in direct combat. During the past 15 years, Chairman Mao has twice flung the Chinese multitudes through political and social upheavals— the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1959, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1967—which, for sheer physical upheaval and turmoil involving hundreds of millions of people, have never been equaled in all human experience. The Great Leap sought to make China self-reliant industrially and militarily before the breach with the Soviet Union became complete, in 1960. In the Cultural Revolution, only seven years ago, mobs of rampaging Red Guards were turned loose to smash the moderates who had taken charge of the party and the state bureaucracy after the catastrophic failure of the first experiment. By then, Mao’s declared purpose was to rekindle the revolutionary fervor of the Chinese masses. But his ultimate target, and primary victim, was an old “comrade in arms,” Liu Shao-ch’i, Chairman of the regime, who from the first Communist wars against Chiang Kai-shek had been Mao’s intended successor as party head and leader of China. Seven years ago, Liu Shao-ch’i, in the words of his former comrades, was tossed upon “the garbage heap of history,” never to be mentioned again, or seen.

CM

About the Author

Charles J. V. Murphy

Featured Tags

SOONER OR LATER the U.S. will attempt to take up serious business with Communist China. The process of detente begun under President Nixon should move on from the simple beginnings supplied by touring troupes of ping-pong players, acrobats, scholars, journalists, and businessmen scouts into the more exacting areas of political arrangements, the terms of trade and credit, and other matters calculated to give force to a useful modus vivendi. It was only three years ago, on May 20, 1970, after the brief and skimpy U.S. intrusion into Cambodia, that Chairman Mao Tse-tung promoted this country ahead of the Soviet Union as Red China’s “Number One Enemy” and called upon the revolutionary forces in the world “to unite and defeat the aggressors and all their running dogs.” Today China’s split with the Soviet Union and its recent swing toward improved relations with the U.S. have created a triangular power relationship on which the whole speculative design of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy pivots. It stands to reason that how well this new situation is exploited will depend upon how well we understand the strange circumstances that brought it to pass.

During the 24 years since the Communists became masters of the Mainland, the U.S. has twice been drawn reluctantly into wars started by China’s principal neighboring clients, North Korea and North Vietnam. Peking’s avowed objectives in those wars were to further the expansion of friendly Communist regimes and to hasten the expulsion of the American presence on the Asian continent. In the North Korean conflict massive Chinese armies intervened as “volunteers” to fight American forces in direct combat. During the past 15 years, Chairman Mao has twice flung the Chinese multitudes through political and social upheavals— the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1959, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1967—which, for sheer physical upheaval and turmoil involving hundreds of millions of people, have never been equaled in all human experience. The Great Leap sought to make China self-reliant industrially and militarily before the breach with the Soviet Union became complete, in 1960. In the Cultural Revolution, only seven years ago, mobs of rampaging Red Guards were turned loose to smash the moderates who had taken charge of the party and the state bureaucracy after the catastrophic failure of the first experiment. By then, Mao’s declared purpose was to rekindle the revolutionary fervor of the Chinese masses. But his ultimate target, and primary victim, was an old “comrade in arms,” Liu Shao-ch’i, Chairman of the regime, who from the first Communist wars against Chiang Kai-shek had been Mao’s intended successor as party head and leader of China. Seven years ago, Liu Shao-ch’i, in the words of his former comrades, was tossed upon “the garbage heap of history,” never to be mentioned again, or seen.