On 13 September 1971, the aircraft transporting Lin Biao, the sole vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, crashed near Öndörkhaan, Mongolia. Lin and several members of his family were travelling on board a Hawker Siddeley Trident jetliner of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). All nine people on board were killed in the crash.
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 People's Liberation Army (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, but failed to sufficiently fuel the aircraft for the intended trip, resulting in a crash. 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.
Events
Official Chinese narrative
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 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 power base 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.
Pre-1994 international view of official Chinese explanation
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.
Since 1971, scholars outside of China have been skeptical of the government's official explanation of the circumstances surrounding Lin's death. Skeptics assert the official narrative does not sufficiently explain why Lin, one of Mao's closest supporters and one of the most successful Communist generals, would suddenly attempt a poorly planned, abortive coup. The government narrative also does not sufficiently explain how and why Lin's aircraft crashed. Skeptics have claimed Lin's decision to flee to the Soviet Union was illogical, on the grounds the United States or Taiwan would have been safer destinations.
Western historians have contended that Lin did not have either the intention or the ability to usurp Mao's place within the government or the Party. One theory attempted to explain Lin's flight and death by observing that he opposed China's rapprochement with the United States, which Zhou Enlai was organizing with Mao's approval. Because the Chinese government never produced evidence to support their report that Lin was on board the aircraft, Western scholars originally doubted Lin had died in the crash. One book, published anonymously using a Chinese pseudonym in 1983, claimed Mao had actually had Lin and his wife killed in Beijing, and Lin Liguo had attempted to escape by air. Other scholars suggested Mao ordered the Chinese army to shoot down Lin's aircraft over Mongolia.
The Chinese government has no interest in re-evaluating its narrative on Lin Biao's death. When contacted in 1994 for its comment on fresh evidence that surfaced on the Lin Biao incident after the Cold War, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated: "China already has a clear, authoritative conclusion about the Lin Biao incident. Other foreign reports of a conjectural nature are groundless." Non-Chinese scholars interpreted China's reluctance to consider contradictory evidence of its "official" history as the result of a desire to avoid exploring any issue that might lead to criticism of Mao Zedong or a re-evaluation of the Cultural Revolution in general, which might distract China from pursuing economic growth.
Subsequent scholarship and reliable eyewitness accounts
A six-month investigation by Western scholars in 1994 examined evidence in Russia, Mongolia, mainland China, the United States, and Taiwan, and came to a number of conclusions, some of which were contrary to the official Chinese version of events. The study confirmed Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo were all killed in the crash. Lin's aircraft was travelling away from the Soviet Union at the time of its crash, making the exact sequence of events before Lin's death more confusing, and casting doubt on the possibility that Lin was attempting to seek asylum in the USSR. Lin's wife and son may have forced Lin to board the aircraft against his will. Several senior leaders within the Communist Party hierarchy knew Lin and his family would flee, but chose not to attempt to stop their flight. According to this study, Lin had attempted to contact the Kuomintang in Taiwan on two separate occasions shortly before his death. The findings of Lin's attempt to contact the Kuomintang supported earlier rumors from inside China that Lin was secretly negotiating with Chiang's government in order to restore the Kuomintang government in mainland China in return for a high position in the new government. The claims of Lin's contact with the Kuomintang have never been formally confirmed nor denied by either the governments in Beijing or Taipei.
According to numerous scholars who had studied archives and records over the subsequent years, including eyewitness accounts of others involved, indicated a sequence of events different from the official narrative. The whole series of events likely began on the night of 6 September 1971, when Lin Biao and his family first received word while in Beidaihe that Mao had made critical remarks of Lin during his trip in Southern China, and concluded that Mao was determined to purge them in the upcoming National Congress scheduled in October 1971.
On 7 September, Liguo confided in his sister Lin Liheng (known by the nickname "Doudou") that it is "better for us...to wage a struggle than wait for our doom." Liguo presented three possible courses of action: to assassinate Mao, to fly to Guangzhou where they could establish an alternate central committee in opposition to the central authorities in Beijing, or to flee to the Soviet Union. Liheng rejected all of her brother's proposals and suggested that their father resign from all of his positions to avoid trouble, to which Liguo retorted that their father would be detained regardless and would likely die in custody due to his waning health. After their conversation, Liheng immediately contacted the leaders of PLA Unit 8341 (Central Guard Unit), the unit responsible for her father's security, but was unsuccessful in convincing them that her brother and mother pressured her father into leaving Beidaihe for an unknown destination against his wishes. It was well-known among the security detail that the Lin family were dysfunctional.
On the night of 12 September, Lin Biao and Ye Qun were attending Liheng's engagement party in Beidaihe. Liguo, on hearing of Mao's early return to Beijing, immediately commandeered an Air Force Trident from Beijing to Beidaihe, where he arrived around 8 p.m., just as the Lin family was about to spend the evening watching films with the newly engaged couple and their friends. Lin Biao had retired to his room after taking sleeping pills when Liguo arrived at their residence. Liguo told Liheng that they had to leave for "Dalian or Guangzhou or Hong Kong: anywhere depending on the situation". Ye Qun was overheard trying to convince Lin Biao to head to Guangzhou, but Lin had "remained silent" and later went to bed. Convinced that Ye Qun and Liguo were manipulating her father, she slipped away to warn the head of security to report to Beijing on the situation unfolding in Beidaihe, to which the head of security agreed.
Premier Zhou Enlai was attending a meeting at the Great Hall of the People when an urgent telephone call came in informing Zhou that an Air Force jet was at Beidaihe without authorization and conveying Liheng's message that Lin Biao was about to be taken to an unknown destination, possibly against his will. Zhou immediately called Wu Faxian, the head of the Air Force, and issued orders to ground the aircraft. When the news reached Beidaihe, it is likely that Ye Qun and Lin Liguo made the impromptu decision to escape.
In an attempt to dispel suspicion, at around 11:30 p.m., Ye Qun called the Premier and informed him that Lin Biao was planning to fly to Dalian the next morning, and denied they had prepared an aircraft at Shanhaiguan. Zhou then told Ye to wait for him to travel to see Lin before they left Beidaihe (where they were staying), issued orders to neutralize potentially disruptive officers close to Lin (Wu Faxian and Huang Yongsheng), and ordered that two aircraft be readied in Beijing so he could fly to Lin's residence to personally deal with the matter.
Ye then made an announcement that they were to pack quickly and head to the airport immediately. Ye Qun and Liguo packed the semi-conscious Lin into an armored limousine. At around midnight on 13 September, they pulled away from their residence, sped past a cordon of guards and headed straight for Shanhaiguan airport, 40 kilometres (25 mi) away, where their aircraft was waiting. Along the way, Lin's chief bodyguard leapt from the vehicle and was shot and wounded. The chief bodyguard later claimed that Lin had asked along the way to the airport how long it would take to reach Irkutsk. There were unresolved questions surrounding the events at the residence, such as the actions of Unit 8341, who had already been notified of the situation by Liheng and were likely under the instructions of Beijing the entire time, yet made no attempt to stop Lin and his family for the next few hours. At one point, the head of Unit 8341 even mysteriously told Liheng to accompany Lin and his entourage to the airport, stating that the "Party Centre" had ordered her to do so, which she and her fiancee refused to heed.