How A Political Prisoner Figured Out Lin Biao Was No Longer Mao's Comrade By Reading Newspapers In Jail

(Jennifer’s note: This is an excerpt from my program yesterday. The full script is at members’ site: https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/scripts-audios/2021/12/18/seeing-through-the-black-box-of-the-ccps-politics-is-xi-jinping-in-danger

A true story during China’s Cultural Revolution. 

You might want to say, what’s the big deal here?

Perhaps in a normal country, this would not be a big deal. But in the CCP’s China, this IS a big deal.

Let me tell you a true story during China’s Cultural Revolution. 

Let’s look at this picture first.

Mao Zedong and Lin Biao

I think you all know who is the man on the left. Yes, it was the CCP’s first-generation leader Mao Zedong. The man on the right was Lin Biao. Lin Biao was one of the 10 most important marshals of the CCP and had fought several of the most important battles for the CCP during China’s civil war. So you can say he contributed a lot in terms of helping the CCP to drive Kuomingtang to Taiwan and establish the CCP’s own regime in Mainland China. He became the sole vice Chairman of the CCP in 1966, when the Cultural Revolution started. 

This is a picture of him reading Mao’s Little Red Book. He was very eager to show how loyal he was to Mao. 

Lin Biao reading Mao’s Little Red Book.

In 1969, he was officially selected as Mao’s successor. His position as Mao's "closest comrade-in-arms and successor" was even officially written into the CCP’s Party constitution. So he became the No. 2 most powerful man in China.

So during that time, whenever the CCP had a meeting, everybody would always say “Long Live our Great Leader Chairman Mao” first, and this would be immediately followed with, “May Great Leader Mao’s closest comrade-in-arms, Vice-Chairman Lin be in good health forever.” 

See, this is a propaganda painting at that time. The Chinese words under his picture are: “May Vice-Chairman Lin Stay healthy forever”. So sometimes people used “Healthy Forever” to refer to Lin Biao.

A propaganda painting during the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese words under Lin Biao’s picture are: “May Vice-Chairman Lin Stay healthy forever”.

So at that time, Lin Biao’s picture was even put on the title page of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.”

Lin Biao’s picture was put on the title page of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.”

So that’s how important Lin Biao was.

At that time there was a political prisoner called Luo Yushi (罗雨施), who was jailed for being a “counter-revolutionary”. 

On Sep. 15, 1971, he suddenly tore off Lin Biao’s picture from his copy of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong”, threw it on the ground, and stepped on it several times. 

Immediately, he was taken to the duty room, and the head prison guard asked him why he dared to do such a thing to Chairman Mao’s close comrade-in-arms. 

Luo Yushi calmly replied, "He is no longer a close comrade of Chairman Mao, nor is he the deputy commander anymore!" 

The prison guard was furious and ordered to put him in solitary confinement for daring to say that. The prison guard thought he was just crazy. 

Several days later, Luo Yushi was released from solitary confinement. It turned out that on Sep 13 that year, Lin Biao tried to escape from China, defect to the Soviet Union, but died on his way when the aircraft carrying him and several of his family members crashed in Mongolia. 

It was said that Lin had planned to assassinate Mao after he felt that Mao no longer trusted him, and that his life was in danger. But his coup attempt failed. So he tried to escape to the Soviet Union. It was said his aircraft was shot down by the CCP, and the real situation remains a mystery even today.

 Anyway, let’s go back to the story of the political prisoner Luo Yushi. When the prison guards released him from solitary confinement, they were very curious to know how he would know that Lin Biao was no longer Chairman Mao’s close comrade as early as just two days after Lin Biao’s death, as, at that time, his defection and death had not been made public yet. It was still a secret, even the prison guards knew nothing about it. 

Luo Yushi said it was an easy guess. On Sep 14, that was, on the following day of Lin Biao’s death, when he read a Xinhua report about an event in Beijing, he found that after everyone cheered “Long Live Chairman Mao”, nobody said “May Vice-Chairman Lin Stay healthy forever”. That sentence was missing. 

Also, when the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai gave a reception to a visiting delegation from Africa, he only said he welcomed the delegation on behalf of Great Leader Chairman Mao. He didn’t mention Vice-Chairman Lin at all. 

For a cautious person like Zhou Enlai, it was impossible for him to forget to mention Vice-Chairmen Lin if he should have been mentioned. 

Luo Yushi said, he also noticed that on the newspaper Sichuan Daily, Lin Biao’s inscription went missing on Sep 14. It had always been there on the top horizontal line of pages 2, 3 and 4 before Sep 13. But the inscription was gone on Sep 14. So that’s how he concluded that Lin Biao was no longer Mao’s comrade, and it was time to tear off his picture from Mao's Little Red Book. 

After his explanation, the prison guards really admired him and praised him for having such sharp eyes and such a high level of political awareness. 

Many years later, Luo Yushi said it was not that he had sharp eyes or a high level of political awareness. The reason why he read the newspapers so carefully in the prison was that he just wanted to know when the class struggle would end so that he could get out of the prison and go home.

12/17/2021 *

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