The World: Mao’s Heirs: Four Who Failed

Being No. 2 to Mao Tse-tung is a high-risk occupation. Except for the consummately skilled Chou Enlai, no Chinese official has ever survived in the role of Mao’s putative or designated heir.

Since 1949, four other men besides Teng Hsiao-p’ing have had this dubious honor. All were compatriots of Mao in China’s revolutionary struggle; all ended up on the Great Helmsman’s pile of political corpses. The four who failed:

KAO KANG. A native of Shensi province, Kao played a key role in the guerrilla struggles waged by the Communists in North China during the mid-1930s. In 1945 Kao was sent to Manchuria, where he quickly became party boss of the entire northeast region. On the national level, he was chairman of the State Planning Commission as well as Deputy Chief of State. Conflict with Mao developed in the early ’50s when Kao was accused of trying to establish an “independent kingdom” in Manchuria. The main charge against Kao was that he tried to set up an “antiparty alliance” to usurp the power of the top officials just below Mao, including Chou Enlai. Purged from office in 1954 and imprisoned, Kao—according to party statements—committed suicide.

P’ENG TEH-HUAI. Like Mao, P’eng was a native of Hsiang-t’an county in Hunan province. His relationship with the Party Chairman went back to 1928, when both men were guerrilla commanders. P’eng ran into trouble with Mao during the Great Leap Forward of 1958-59. He criticized Mao’s proposal to industrialize China overnight for its defiance of economic realities. “Putting politics in command,” he warned, “is no substitute for economic principles.” P’eng attacked the Chairman at the Lushan Plenum of the party in 1959. Mao warned that if the party and the army abandoned him, he would resort to guerrilla war to regain his power. The party sided with Mao. P’eng was purged as Minister of Defense—and has not been heard from since 1960.

LIU SHAO-CH’I. The principal victim of the Cultural Revolution, Liu, prior to his humiliation, had one of the most distinguished revolutionary careers in the history of Chinese Communism. Another native of Hunan, like Mao, he began his party career as a labor organizer, spending years doing clandestine work in areas under the control of Chiang Kaishek. Liu became Chairman of the People’s Republic (and also officially Mao’s designated heir) in 1959, when the failures of the Great Leap Forward forced Mao to step down as Chief of State. Liu was the author of How to Be a Good Communist, which until the mid-1960s was considered the authoritative guide to Marxism-Leninism as practiced in China. When Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, however, Liu tried to keep it within narrow limits to prevent the destruction of the party apparatus. With the help of his Defense Minister, Lin Piao, Mao outmaneuvered Liu and purged him in 1966—along with a large group of his close associates, including Teng Hsiao-p’ing. Rumors of his death in 1973 have been neither confirmed nor denied.

LIN PIAO. Like Liu Shao-ch’i, he was officially designated Mao’s heir apparent, but these days, Lin Piao shares with Liu the distinction of being the chief villain of practically every poster campaign in China. Born in 1907 in Hupei province, Lin Piao spent virtually his entire career in the Red Army after he helped to form it in 1927, and he succeeded P’eng as Defense Minister in 1959. He was the chief proponent of Mao’s “cult of personality” during the Cultural Revolution, as editor of the “Little Red Book” of selected quotations by the Chairman. When the Cultural Revolution threatened to get out of hand, Mao called upon Lin, as head of the army, to restore order. In 1971 Lin, according to the official explanation, plotted to assassinate Mao and seize power for himself; when his plot failed, he tried to flee to the Soviet Union but died when his plane crashed over Mongolia. Whether or not that account is true, Lin unquestionably died because his hunger for power threatened Mao. Once praised as the Chairman’s “closest comrade in arms,” he is today routinely reviled as one of the most malicious “traitors, renegades and scabs” in China’s history.