Lin Biao (left) and Chen Boda (right) on the Tiananmen Tower.
However, on what basis was Lin Liguo, who had no military qualifications or war experience, established as a “Kangmand”? With the direct involvement of Lin Biao and Ye Qun, a god-making campaign was born to give their son the sacred aura of “super genius”.
On July 31, 1970, Lin Liguo gave a lecture on the study of Chairman Mao’s works to the leading cadres of the Air Force above the second level. The content was divided into “the relationship between politics and economy”, “China must be strong”, “learning and applying Mao Zedong Thought”, “air force operations A few specific problems” and “investigation and study and the method of learning the Chairman’s thought” five parts. This report was elaborated by the “small fleet” of showmen over a period of several months, and many of its contents were copied directly from the confidential documents of the strategic studies of the military experts of the Air Force, such as “The Use of the Air Force in the Future and Anti-Invasion”. This naturally gave a refreshing impression in the extremely closed Cultural Revolution.
As a result, Wu Faxian, Wang Fei, Zhou Yuchi, Wang Weiguo and other members of the “Little Fleet” immediately launched a powerful campaign to create a god, and Lin Liguo was touted as a “genius, all-rounder, and all-around talent, wise beyond his years, a political satellite”. “Comrade Liguo’s report is a treasure book, a route, a lighthouse, a direction, a battle, a nurturing, a pinnacle of the times! Comrade Liguo is an extraordinary genius, super genius, a pillar of talent, a national talent, a world talent; an outstanding politician, an excellent military man, an outstanding thinker, a genius theoretician, an outstanding scientist; his genius has just been exposed, in the past there were prodigies, talents, saints in books, now such people are standing in front of us; Lin Liguo is a world leader, in the future the world revolution has someone to lead. ” The “lecture report” referred to here, of course, refers to Lin Liguo in the air force organs above the second level of the leading cadres to do that lecture report on the study of Chairman Mao’s works. However, Lin Liguo did not stop there, he gave a report in the Air Force more than 5,000 people scale “three generations of the meeting”, and then play the recording layer by layer, published paperback, hardcover, gilt, pocket book and other versions, a total of 714,265 copies, the popularity of a moment close to the “quotations of Chairman Mao”.
Perhaps because of his eagerness to see his son become a dragon, Lin Biao had no qualms about directly participating in the campaign to create a god for Lin Liguo. In June 1970, Wang Weiguo, political commissar of the Fourth Air Force, came to Beijing and was received by Lin Biao. Wang touted Lin Liguo as a genius in front of Lin Biao. Lin Biao laughed loudly after hearing this. After Wang left, Lin Biao said to Lin Liguo: “I said you are a genius. Wang Weiguo said you are a genius, and Wang Weiguo is not simple.”
Lin Biao also physically created momentum for his son. For example, Lin Liguo grabbed several scientific research projects in a defense factory in Nanyuan, Beijing, and Lin Biao, who lived in seclusion and was afraid of wind and light and water, gladly went to inspect them. What is remarkable is that on Lin Biao’s right is Chief of General Staff Huang Yongsheng, and on his left is Lin Liguo, who looks like a “Major”.
In March 1969, when Lin Biao was determined to create the so-called “Yang Yu Fu Incident” to bring down the then acting Chief of General Staff Yang Chengwu, the fuse was that Yang had inadvertently offended Lin Liguo and members of his clique. At that time, Yang Chengwu received an anonymous letter exposing that members of Lin Liguo’s “research group” were playing with women and knocking up the waitress at the Beijing West Hotel, so he forwarded it to Lin Biao for investigation. If Lin Biao had ignored it, the matter would have gone through a bureaucratic formality. But this was seen by Lin Biao as a great provocation to his “successor” Lin Liguo. Lin Biao even forwarded the letter to the defendant’s target. After checking the handwriting, Zhou Yuchi and others believed that the anonymous letter was written by Shan Shichong, the secretary of Air Force Political Commissar Yu Lijin. So they started the revenge operation. On the pretext that Yang Yi, the eldest daughter of Yang Chengwu, who worked in the Air Force, and Shan Shichong might have had an “affair,” they imprisoned Shan Shichong and his wife to extract a confession.
On the night of March 23, 1968, Yang Chengwu was escorted to the Fujian Hall of the Great Hall of the People, where Lin Biao read out his three major charges, the third of which was: “Yang Chengwu branded Wang Fei, Zhou Yuchi, and Yu Xinno as counterrevolutionaries. Yang Chengwu will no longer be the Generalissimo, Huang Yongsheng will be the Generalissimo.” From this it is clear that Lin Biao would never allow any behavior within the military that threatened Lin Liguo’s position, even an unintentional disrespect was considered a challenge. It is conceivable that with a few years of development, Lin Liguo would not only be the “Emperor” of the Air Force, but would soon become the “Major” of the entire army. Thus, it is easy to understand why Lin Biao and Ye Qun to violate the central discipline, let Lin Liguo posing as a staff member of the Lin Office to attend the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee to Zhang Chunqiao’s fury. Because in their subconscious, I am afraid that this is not only the “successor” of Lin Biao to defend the war, but also the “successor” of Lin Liguo’s “successor” to the “successor” status of the war to defend.
It is said that women in love are the most stupid, in fact, the power field of men, the degree of stupidity is definitely not much. Lin Biao and Ye Qun’s excessive connivance, direct authorization and participation in the creation of gods not only clearly violated the taboo of the relationship between the imperial power and the crown prince in the politics of Chinese imperial princelings, but also was absolutely treacherous in terms of the so-called “party discipline and state law” of the Chinese Communist Party.
The transfer of supreme power in China’s feudal imperial power is non-violent, mainly hereditary and Zen transfer, of which the hereditary system is the mainstream and smoother form. Mao did not have a son who could succeed him in power. His two sons: one died in the Korean War (Mao Linying) and the other was a psychopath (Mao Anqing). Thus, a smoother (though certainly not a good) form of transmission of supreme power in the feudal autocracy was lost. Moreover, whether Mao was willing or unwilling to do so, the supreme power of the state could only be passed on to someone outside his family in the form of a “Zen transfer”. By mistake, this allowed Mao to occupy the moral high ground of so-called “meritocracy” rather than “cronyism”.
The transmission of supreme power in Mao’s era was in fact a process in the form of Zen transfer and in the substance of the unique feudal hereditary establishment of the Crown Prince. In this process, the supreme leader had the absolute power to create or depose a candidate based on personal preference, which was beyond that of the emperor in the hereditary system. Unlike the ordinary feudal imperial power, this extraordinary power often decided not only the choice of the first generation of the crown prince, but also the recommendation and designation of the second generation of the successor under the banner of “ensuring that the revolutionary cause of the proletariat will remain unchanged for a thousand generations. Lin Biao, as the successor, made all kinds of moves to give his son the supreme power of the country once he ascended the throne, knowing that Mao’s preferred second-generation successor was Zhang Chunqiao, which was really a series of faint moves. This is because it not only puts himself (the crown prince) in open confrontation with Mao (the highest imperial power), but also violates the CCP’s so-called “meritocracy” policy and line. What’s more, it may also greatly offend the deepest taboos of Mao, who has no son to succeed him.
In traditional Chinese princely politics, the emperor generally allowed the crown prince to legally open a court and build a palace, establishing a team of civil servants and military generals in the eastern palace, a second center of power ready to take over at any time. At the same time, the prince of the Eastern Palace in feudal dynasties generally had his own private armies. However, one of Mao Zedong’s objectives in launching the Cultural Revolution was to oppose Liu Shaoqi’s second power center. He certainly would not have approved of Lin Biao’s establishment of his own civil and military leadership under his watch. With this view, it is easy to understand why Mao Zedong hated Chen Boda, who was in Lin Biao’s camp, and did not hesitate to frame trumped up charges, and after the Lushan meeting, he was severely beaten as a “Kuomintang anti-Communist, Trotskyist, traitor, agent, and revisionist”, which was more than Liu Shaoqi’s charges. Because Chen Boda joined the group, Lin Biao’s military group began to have heavy-weight civilian officials, and a prototype of an eastern prince’s palace emerged.
Lin Biao himself was unable to establish this second power center, but he connived and helped Lin Liguo to establish such a potential center. Whether it was the “Research Group” around Lin Liguo or the “United Fleet” that was later expanded, or the “Shanghai Group” that Lin Liguo established in various places, the “Teaching Team” of the Fourth Air Force and the “Guangzhou Army”. “teaching team” and the “combat squad” in Guangzhou, etc., all of them are closely around the left arm and right arm of this “Major” Lin and his personal armament. Here Lin Liguo violated another of Mao’s bigger taboos – the secret organization of getting involved in the army and establishing an “army of armies”.
In order to tighten his grip on the army, Mao had to seek his personal approval to move even one platoon of troops during the Cultural Revolution. But Lin Liguo wanted to build a sizeable army within the army, loyal only to him and Lin’s own army and private army, and prepared to use it for an armed coup, which was a heinous crime of usurping the army (Party) and seizing power. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong also practiced nepotism, using his daughter (Li Ne) and nephew (Mao Yuanxin) to cooperate with his “strategic deployment”, and finally acquiescing to their promotion to provincial and military positions. But he never provided them with a special auxiliary team, let alone allowed them to establish private armies. I am afraid that Lin Biao is the first person among the top cadres of the Communist Party who condoned and supported his sons to do such a taboo thing.
It is also worth mentioning that in the regime change of China’s feudal dynasties, the movement of creating gods and goddesses to create personal superstitions was not always in the service of usurping the supreme power. Mao Zedong sang a double act of personal worship with Lin Biao on the eve and early stage of the Cultural Revolution in cooperation with the ruler and his subjects, also to seize power from Liu Shaoqi and other first-line leaders of the central government and to establish his personal absolute divine authority. Throughout history, in order to justify and legitimize their retrograde usurpation of power, conspirators have often resorted to the “Mandate of Heaven” theory. For example, the famous Wang Mang, who usurped the Han Dynasty in the name of “Zen transfer”, had created the public opinion that he was “under the Mandate of Heaven” beforehand. Mao Zedong was suspicious and credulous, and he was familiar with history books like “The Twenty-four Histories” and “Zizhi Tongjian”, so of course he knew very well the ultimate purpose of Lin Liguo being touted as a “super genius” by Lin Biao’s group. This also turned Mao’s appetite for the cult of genius that Lin Biao had made of him, and the expression “super genius” made Mao intolerable: Lin Biao only touted Mao as a “genius” and a “third milestone” in his campaign to create a god for Mao. “The third milestone”, but Lin’s son, who was only twenty years old, was hailed as a “super genius” and the “fourth milestone” beyond Mao. This was a great irony and even insult to Mao, so much so that Mao made a rare criticism soon after Lin Liguo’s lecture report. The Chronicle of Mao contains the following account.
On July 31 (1970), Lin Liguo, son of Lin Biao, made a “lecture report” on learning Mao Zedong’s thought at an Air Force cadre meeting. After listening to the recording, Lin Biao said, “Not only does he think like me, he also speaks like me. Wu Fa Xian called Lin Liguo’s lecture report “a political satellite, a genius”. Zhou Yu-chi, Wang Fei and Chen Li-xun said that this was the “fourth milestone” and that Lin Liguo was “an all-round talent, a handsome talent, a super talent, a third-generation successor” and so on. After Mao Zedong learned about this, he said, “You can’t hail a person in his twenties as a “super genius”, it does no good.
Lin Biao apparently did not realize that Mao’s touting of his “genius theory” after Lin Liguo’s “report on use” had reached the point of annoyance. In the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee, he still repeated the same old tune, using the “genius theory” as a theoretical weapon against Zhang Chunqiao. At the Lushan meeting, in addition to the Marxist-Leninist quotations on genius selected for Lin Biao’s attack, Chen Boda also compiled eight speeches by Lin Biao on “genius”, called “Instruction of Vice Chairman Lin”, all of which were famous passages from Lin Biao’s touting of Mao Zedong at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, such as “Chairman Mao Chairman Mao is much higher than Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Now there is no one in the world who can match the level of Chairman Mao” and “There is only one genius like Chairman Mao in the world for hundreds of years and in China for thousands of years. Chairman Mao is the greatest genius in the world.”
It can be imagined: these eight quotations of Lin, which used to be very pleasing to the eye, in the eyes of Mao Zedong at the Lushan meeting, but all of them seem alarming, because they are the theoretical basis for Lin Liguo’s “by the mandate of heaven”, and he became a “super genius” who was not yet dry The “super genius” played with the foundation. For this reason, Mao Zedong was furious, and in his counter-attack on Lin and Chen’s “My Little Opinion” (August 31, 1970), which turned out to be also a tearing and naming of Lin Biao, Mao wrote: “I am saying that the main thing is not due to people’s genius, but to their social practice. (Chen Boda quoted Comrade Lin Biao’s words as many as eight, as if he had won a treasure)”. Later, he deleted the crucial sentence in brackets out of his strategy of dividing and conquering Lin Chen.
In fact, Mao never let down his guard against Lin Liguo, the second-generation successor of Lin Biao. Only from some historical materials that are publicly disclosed today, it can be proved that Mao had been monitoring him. For example, shortly after Lin Liguo gave his “report on the use of the air force,” Zhang Chunqiao’s men in Shanghai secretly provided the Central Committee with a copy of the report. Mao also kept track of the movements of Lin Liguo’s extremely “small fleet” through his spies in the Air Force Command. For example, soon after Lin Liguo’s report, Mao Zedong’s office notified Wu Faxian to prevent the further operation and publication of Lin Liguo’s “report on use” in the military.
The author once interviewed an air force cadre who was beaten as a peripheral member of Lin Liguo’s “small fleet”, and he commented: “Mao Zedong was not afraid of Lin Biao, because Lin’s health was not likely to take over. What Mao was worried about was Lin Liguo. In order to prevent Lin Liguo from taking over, he also had to get rid of Lin Biao”. This statement is still quite insightful. The son of the old son, Lin Liguo’s dream of being a “super genius” marshal is undoubtedly an extremely important factor that triggered Mao Zedong’s determination to depose Lin Biao’s “successor” status.
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