Mao: The Unknown Story

Lin lauded Mao to the skies in public, although he felt no true devotion to Mao, and at home would often make disparaging and even disdainful remarks about him, some of which he entered in his diary. It was out of pure ambition that Lin stood by Mao and boosted him — the ambition to be Mao’s No. 2 and successor. He told his wife that he wanted to be “Engels to Marx, Stalin to Lenin, and Chiang Kai-shek to Sun Yat-sen.” With the Great Purge, which had Liu, the president, as its primary target, Lin Biao could expect his advancement.

The man who was about to rise to the top suffered from many phobias and looked like a drug addict. His most extreme phobias were about water and air. His hydrophobia was so acute that he had not taken a bath for years, and would only be wiped with a dry towel. He could not stand the sight of the sea, which kept his contact with the navy to zero. He had a villa by the seaside, but it was located among hills, so that he would not actually see the sea. His residences had numerous wind-sensitive devices hanging from the ceilings. One visitor was told by Mrs. Lin to walk slowly in Lin’s presence in case the stir of air when he moved triggered her husband’s breeze phobia.

Lin was a man, as his own wife observed in her diary, “who specialises in hate, in contempt (friendship, children, father and brother — all mean nothing to him), in thinking the worst and basest of people, in selfish calculation … and in scheming and doing other people down.”

The man Lin particularly hated as of 1965 was the army chief of staff, Luo Rui-qing, one of Mao’s long-time favorites, whom Mao fondly called Luo the Tall. Mao often routed his orders to the army via Luo the Tall, even orders to Lin himself, which was partly the result of Lin often being out of action nursing his phobias. Luo the Tall was super-energetic as well as able — and had incomparable access to Mao. He had been Mao’s top security man for years, and Mao had enormous confidence in him. “As soon as Luo the Tall steps closer, I feel very safe,” Mao said. These were words not spoken lightly. Lin felt overshadowed, and had been plotting to get rid of the chief of staff for some time. When he received Mme Mao’s call in November 1965, which signaled that Mao needed him for a major task, Lin Biao seized his chance. Four days later, he dispatched his wife to see Mao in Hangzhou (the Lins were staying nearby in the garden city of Suzhou), with a letter in his own hand, enclosing some extremely flimsy charges against Luo the Tall. Lin was asking Mao to sacrifice a highly valued retainer.

Mao had Lin Biao himself brought to Hangzhou, and on the night of 1 December the two men had an ultra-secret talk. Mao told Lin about his plans for the Great Purge, and promised to make Lin his No. 2 and successor. He told Lin he must make sure the army was fully under control — and be ready to assume a completely new role: to step in and take over the jobs of the huge number of Party officials Mao intended to purge.

Lin insisted that Luo the Tall must be purged as well. The fact that Lin drove such a hard bargain shows that both he and Mao understood his unique value. Without Lin, Mao could not bring off his Purge.

MAO HAD BEEN trying hard, without success, to have one particular period opera condemned. This was called Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, and was based on a traditional story of a mandarin who was punished by the emperor for having spoken up for the peasants. Mao accused it of being a veiled attack on what he (the “emperor”) had done to the purged defense minister Peng De-huai, and ordered it to be denounced, along with Marshal Peng himself. An article to this effect was written with Mao’s sponsorship, and published in Shanghai on 10 November 1965.

To Mao’s fury, the article was not carried anywhere else in China. Province after province, even the capital, Peking, ignored it. They were able to do this because the culture overlord at the time, Peng Zhen (no relative of Peng De-huai), blocked it from being reprinted. Peng Zhen was a loyal long-time follower, trusted enough to hold the vital strategic job of mayor of the capital, and few men were closer to Mao. But while his allegiance does not seem to have been in question, Mayor Peng, who had been made national overseer of culture in 1964, was strongly averse to Mao’s demands to annihilate culture. And being at the heart of things, he realized that this time Mao intended to use the field of culture to start a purge that would engulf the whole Party.