Mao's Heir

He wrote the foreword to the little red book and the lyrics to the song that hails Mao as "the Great Helmsman"; he is a skillful politician and a brilliant general as well. His name is Lin Piao, Defense Minister and Deputy Premier of China. He has been chosen by Mao Tse-tung to carry on his thoughts after Mao's death. For the past two years, Lin has in fact been Mao's No. 2 man.

He has thrived on chaos all his life, and Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution provided plenty of that. Mao first singled out his comrade for the succession in 1966, largely because Lin had instilled the partially demoralized People's Liberation Army with genuine political fervor. So impressed was Mao by the reversal in the army's spirit that he made the PLA the model for the hoped-for political transformation of China over the next several years. In August 1966, at a mass rally in Peking's Tienanmen Square, Lin appeared at Mao's side in place of the relatively moderate President Liu Shao-chi. That marked the end for Liu, and the beginning for Lin. When the revolution got out of control, Mao was forced to call on Lin and the army to halt the violence.

Born in Hupei province, Lin has the middle-class background common to many Chinese Communist leaders. The son of a small textile-mill operator, he received a fair elementary education and, choosing a military career, enrolled at Canton's Whampoa Military Academy--where his headmaster was an officer named Chiang Kaishek. His rise was swift; he took command of an army corps at 22. Lin was a leader of the Long March of 1934-35, in which the Communist army escaped destruction in southern China at the hands of Chiang Kais-hek's Kuomintang forces by fighting its way more than 6,000 miles to the safety of the Yenan redoubts. During World War II, Lin fought against the Japanese invaders in China, later helped defeat Nationalist troops in the civil war. Supposedly, he was wounded in Korea, perhaps by a U.S. bomb. If so, the injury may help explain his poor health and frequent absences from political life for medical treatment.

Little is known of his personal life and habits. Reportedly, he has two grown children from an earlier marriage. His present wife, plump and fortyish Yeh Chun, was named twelfth in the order of those attending the congress. She is the best friend of Chiang Ching, Mao's wife.

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