"During the autumn, preparations for [Richard Nixon's] visit to Beijing moved rapidly, assisted by a dramatic tilt in China’s internal politics. On September 13 a plane carrying Lin Biao, his family and entourage crashed in Mongolia. The story remains murky but officially it was claimed that the army leader was fleeing after a failed coup. His son certainly seems to have concocted an inept assassination plot. The death of Mao’s handpicked heir amid accusations of betrayal was a damaging blow to his image of infallibility. This sparked a crisis of faith among millions of Chinese about the “continuous revolution” to which they had been subjected so brutally for two decades. A foreign policy triumph was now even more important for Mao. Lin was supposedly an opponent of détente with the United States. Certainly his death and disgrace strengthened Zhou Enlai, even though strong opposition remained to Nixon’s visit from Mao’s estranged wife, Jiang Qing, and from radicals in Shanghai. Zhou pushed ahead with arrangements and in October Kissinger paid a second visit to China—this time in public—to agree the agenda and draft the all-important communiqué."
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Anti-fascistsPhilosophers from ChinaAnti-imperialistsNon-fiction authors from ChinaSociologists from China
Original Language: English
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Sources
David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Changed the Twentieth Century (2007), p. 242
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lin_Biao
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Lin Biao
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