The Lin Biao Incident: More Than Twenty Years Later

Abstract

THE twentieth anniversary of the Lin Biao Incident, an important event that remains one of the foremost enigmas in the history of the People's Republic of China, passed quietly some time ago. That this was the case and that we still know so little about the incident are matters of curiosity. This is particularly so inasmuch as the Cultural Revolution itself is by now a fading bad memory that has been thoroughly repudiated (the Lin Biao Incident was one of the principal debacles of that unhappy era). Moreover, Mao Zedong himself is long dead and has recurrently been subjected to varying degrees of criticism (Mao's elimination of Lin did as much as any other single act to wreck the chairman's credibility) although there is still an effort to go easy on Mao, needful in part to shore up the legitimacy of the present regime in Beijing. But it surely is time to uncover more of the facts of this important unresolved historical issue. Perhaps sometime soon people with integrity who have evidence regarding the issue might step forth and help clear the record. Such information might surface from among party stalwarts who have been privy to information about the affair or it could come from members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which is in need of refurbishing its once estimable reputation. Making such disclosures, however, is not easy. Consider the fate of Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zhenlong who was arrested in 1990 for having written the book Snow White, Blood Red, published in China (in Chinese) in August 1989. Colonel Zhang's fast-selling, 618-page book about the civil war in Manchuria made disclosures about Chinese Communist atrocities in the siege of Changchun. The book was banned when aged hardliner Generals Yang Shangkun and Wang Zhen took exception to it. Yang, then president of the PRC, charged that it insulted the Communist Party. Wang Zhen, who was then vice-president and who died earlier this year, was said in the book to have smuggled opium during the civil war. But what seems to be of special concern to such elderly hardline veterans, some of whom remain in power today, is that the book's reversal of verdict on Lin Biao may pose a threat to the fragile unity of the army that has been built up since the June 1989 military crackdown