Chou Speaks

Premier Chou En-lai was in an expansive mood last week when he greeted 22 touring journalists from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Peking's Great Hall of the People. During a wide-ranging, 3-hr. 40-min. conversation, Chou cracked a joke about Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger ("He can talk to you for half an hour and not give you one substantive answer") and gave a bit of news about China's birth control campaign (researchers are widely testing a once-a-month contraceptive pill). China's second-in-command also raised a few editorial eyebrows by expressing his belief that Lee Harvey Oswald alone did not kill President Kennedy, mysteriously adding, "the [identity of the] principal culprit, the man who planned the assassination," has never been divulged.

Asked who will eventually succeed 78-year-old Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Chou declared that the party will turn to a collective leadership. China watchers were intrigued, however, that Chou, 74, singled out one emerging party leader as an example of the experienced younger men who could eventually take over the government: Yao Wenyuan of Shanghai, one of the three Politburo members who head the Communist Party's radical wing. Yao, fortyish, who is officially listed as No. 6 in the party hierarchy, is also rumored to be Mao's son-in-law. According to the story put about by the Soviets and Nationalist Chinese and never denied in Peking, Yao is married to Hsiao Li, Mao's daughter by his third wife Chiang Ching. The far-left Chiang Ching happens to be a close political ally of Yao's. There have been serious ideological differences between Chou and Yao, and some Washington experts believe that the wily Premier may have been singling out the younger man now as a first step toward putting him down later.

Being named as a potential heir apparent to Mao is a parlous honor in China today. That was the position held by the late, disgraced Lin Piao, who, according to Chou, promoted the heresy of "the naming of only one successor." Chou confirmed publicly for the first time the story of the former Defense Minister's death last year in a plane crash in Mongolia (TIME, Nov. 22) and threw in some previously undisclosed details. As Chou told it, Lin had plotted to assassinate Mao and seize power in 1971, after he came under criticism in the party for trying to gain permanent army control over civilian institutions. Lin "didn't believe that he could really succeed to the leadership," but "afraid that his designs had been exposed," he then had his son Lin Li-kno, deputy head of the air force's operations department, send a British-made Trident aircraft to Peitaiho, a resort town some 150 miles from Peking.

Secret Documents. The secret order was reported to the party leadership and specifically denied by Lin's wife when she was asked about it. That "showed he was up to something," said Chou, "but at the time we were not sure how big the scheme was." So all airplanes in the country were ordered grounded, and Lin "fled in great haste, fearing that he might be caught if he fled too late. Actually, we did not at all think of arresting him. We only wished to know what he wanted that plane for."

Lin and a few fellow conspirators took off in the Trident, but without the navigator and radio operator, who refused to disobey the order grounding all aircraft. Over Outer Mongolia, the plane ran low on fuel; and the pilot, unable to locate a runway, tried a forced landing. The plane caught fire; and the nine persons aboard were burned to death, though "it was still possible to identify them," said Chou. Another group of conspirators took off from the Peking suburbs at roughly the same time in a helicopter, the Premier revealed, but they were forced down by the air force. "Many secret documents were discovered on board, and among them we found evidence of their plot."

One reason Lin fell from favor in the first place was his opposition to any rapprochement with the U.S., Chou added. "Only Chairman Mao recognized that a little Ping Pong ball could change the world," said the Premier, revealing how Peking's first move toward a new relationship with the U.S. had come about. While the American table tennis team was playing in a world tournament in Japan in April 1971, several members had applied for visas to visit China. Peking's Foreign Ministry had turned them down. "I myself approved this decision and submitted it to Chairman Mao," related Chou. But Mao said that "the time is right and we should take the initiative. So on the last day of the Ping Pong tournament we telephoned, inviting the American team."

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