Word: lin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...iron will, the invincible conviction of his own righteousness. Political analysts harp on two words: "speed" and "struggle." Mao had acquired the lust for speed in the last year of the revolution. In the fall of 1948 the commander in chief of his Manchurian strike forces, Marshal Lin Biao, had seized the key city of Shenyang (Mukden); but so many of Chiang Kai-shek's combat divisions were still at large in Manchuria that Lin Biao preferred to move with caution. Mao overruled him. Strike for the escape ports of Manchuria, he said, now. Cut them off. Field success vindicated...
...then, after the street violence of the Red Guard youngsters had subsided, and Lin Biao had been eliminated, it became worse. All power fell into the hands of the palace court that surrounded...
...tried to bring Hu to personalities. Peng had been too proud and stubborn, he said. Lin Biao had been too ambitious, a careerist, sucking up to Mao, then trying to kill him. Finally he came to Jiang Qing. Here Hu's anger burst. "If you were to write a biography of Mao, she would be the tragedy of his life." Then, an anecdote about Jiang Qing escorting Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines, on a visit to Tianjin. The state cavalcade roared through the peasants, ran one down and killed him. Stop, said Imelda. No, said Jiang Qing...
...much for the public account. Enter Yao Ming-Le, the mysterious author of this book's version of events. Drawing on an impressive familiarity with the intimate workings of China's armed forces and security services, Yao offers a tale of conspiracy and bungled planning: Lin never died in the plane crash in Mongolia. He and his wife were murdered on Mao's orders. The executions took place, in Yao's version, after a dinner of sea cucumbers and tiger's tendons at a secret military hideout reserved for China's top leaders outside...
Moreover, Yao's tale raises even more questions than it answers. Could Lin, one of China's greatest generals, really have been as reckless and incompetent, just at the point of starting the coup, as he appears in this book? What plausibility is there in the statement that Lin Liguo planned to blow up Mao's train, traveling at 70 m.p.h., with ground-to-ground missiles guided from more than 90 miles away? Even less credible is Yao's theory that the Trident, with Lin Liguo aboard, was hit by missiles while still in Chinese airspace...