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Lin Biao incident
The Lin Biao incident (Chinese: 九一三事件; lit. 'September 13 Incident') was an aircraft accident at 2:30 a.m. on 13 September 1971 involving Lin Biao, the sole Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Everyone on board a PLAAF Hawker Siddeley Trident, including Lin and several members of his family, died when the aircraft impacted Mongolian terrain.
As Vice Chairman, Lin Biao had been the official heir to Chairman Mao Zedong since 1966. From 1970, a rift developed between on one side Lin and his power base in the Army and Politburo, and on the other side, Mao, his allies Jiang Qing and Zhou Enlai, and their PLA factions. Issues included Lin's growing power in the PLA and his prominent role in Mao's cult of personality, which Mao had criticized as excessive. The crash was a key event at the midpoint of the ten-year Cultural Revolution, following which the Gang of Four gained prominence.
According to the Chinese government, Lin Biao was attempting to defect to the Soviet Union after a failed plot to assassinate Mao Zedong, and the crash was caused by fuel starvation. Following Lin's death, there was skepticism in the West and the Soviet Union concerning the official explanation. Classified Soviet investigations in the immediate aftermath, including recovery of bodies, confirmed that Lin was among the dead, but that the aircraft had sufficient fuel to reach the USSR. An investigation by Western scholars in 1994 found that Lin Biao had made two attempts to contact the Kuomintang government in Taiwan.
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.
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.
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.
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 and boarded a prearranged Trident 1E (registered as PLAAF 256), 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. Everyone on board, eight men and one woman, was killed.
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. 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.
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Lin Biao incident
The Lin Biao incident (Chinese: 九一三事件; lit. 'September 13 Incident') was an aircraft accident at 2:30 a.m. on 13 September 1971 involving Lin Biao, the sole Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Everyone on board a PLAAF Hawker Siddeley Trident, including Lin and several members of his family, died when the aircraft impacted Mongolian terrain.
As Vice Chairman, Lin Biao had been the official heir to Chairman Mao Zedong since 1966. From 1970, a rift developed between on one side Lin and his power base in the Army and Politburo, and on the other side, Mao, his allies Jiang Qing and Zhou Enlai, and their PLA factions. Issues included Lin's growing power in the PLA and his prominent role in Mao's cult of personality, which Mao had criticized as excessive. The crash was a key event at the midpoint of the ten-year Cultural Revolution, following which the Gang of Four gained prominence.
According to the Chinese government, Lin Biao was attempting to defect to the Soviet Union after a failed plot to assassinate Mao Zedong, and the crash was caused by fuel starvation. Following Lin's death, there was skepticism in the West and the Soviet Union concerning the official explanation. Classified Soviet investigations in the immediate aftermath, including recovery of bodies, confirmed that Lin was among the dead, but that the aircraft had sufficient fuel to reach the USSR. An investigation by Western scholars in 1994 found that Lin Biao had made two attempts to contact the Kuomintang government in Taiwan.
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.
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.
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.
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 and boarded a prearranged Trident 1E (registered as PLAAF 256), 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. Everyone on board, eight men and one woman, was killed.
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. 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.