All right. So last time in our story, we stopped at the last week of July 1971 when Premier Zhou Enlai had just wrapped up his first meeting with US Secretary of State or then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and the US National Ping Pong Team's tour of China marked the beginning of a new relationship between China and America. So, let's pick back up on our story on August 1st, 1971, Army Day, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army in 1927.

That day, all major newspapers shared an editorial marking the day, as they always did, each August 1st, and called for the People's Militia to be built up for both defense and economic construction. In Beijing, at the Great Hall of the People, the Party Center hosted an Army Day banquet for top civil and military officials along with dignitaries from fraternal Maoist parties from around the world. The next day, on the other side of the Pacific, US President Richard Nixon dropped a big one.

He announced that the USA would support the People's Republic of China being represented with a seat at the UN, but still set the terms that Taiwan, the Republic of China, would still get a seat at the UN, too. In a veiled response, People's Daily attacked the quote ‘illegal occupation by US imperialism of the southern half of Korea’ unquote and predicted a US attack on the DPRK. Xinhua news agency was just as direct, criticizing Nixon's proposal to seat both the PRC and ROC at the UN as a clumsy to China's trick.

Nixon replied to both the Chinese and American press diplomatically, saying that quote, "China may become the world's most powerful nation and that peace depends on our two great superpowers talking." Negotiations with sworn enemies wasn't just happening with the USA during that week.

On August 5th, Vice Minister for Foreign Trade Zhou Huamin flew to Moscow to sign an agreement with his Soviet counterpart for exchange of goods and payments. Sino Soviet trade really had never stopped even during the 1969 border conflict. But this would definitely lubricate the flow of goods and services between the PRC and USSR in a big way.

Still, of course, the Chinese made no bones that negotiation with the Americans and Soviets didn't mean capitulation. On the 7th, Xinhua news agency put out a statement in support of the Black Panther Party and other black communist and nationalist formations, saying that there was an increasingly important role of black workers revolutionary struggles to defeat the USA's working class. That same day, a government statement said that big powers cannot monopolize nuclear weapons and called for the USA and USSR to adopt a no first use policy.

That same day over yonder in Lhasa, the Tibetan Administrative Party Congress opened. The main political report was given not by revolutionary committee head Zeng Yongya but his fellow general Ren Rong. A few days later, the Tibetan Party Congress ended with the election of a new party committee led by Ren Rong, who displaced Zeng Yongya and who went to on to serve in Shenyang far up in the northeast. For more information on that, see our episode on Tibet and Xinjiang during the cultural revolution.

On August 9th, Zhou Enlai was interviewed by New York Times journalist James Reston. Zhou and Reston had a very good conversation and oddly Zhou praised the New York Times for opposing the invasion of Cambodia. Speaking of newspapers, the next day, People's Daily shared a curious story. PLA Hospital number 165's account of relying on Mao Zedong Thought to cure mental illness over standard psychiatric methods.

The article explained how a doctor cured a severely depressed patient by living on the ward with her and reading her Mao quotes. I mean, I will say Mao quotes do make me feel pretty inspired, so maybe there's something to it. On August 12th, Mao called for a National People's Congress after National Day, and the Politburo assigned Zhang Chunqiao, Li Desheng, and Ji Dengkuai to arrange it.

Two days later, Li Desheng flew to Albania at the head of a military friendship delegation. Then on August 15th, amidst a rainstorm, American Maoist William Hinton arrived back for the first time in Longbow Village, whose 1940s land reform campaign he wrote about in his famous book Fanshen. And if you've never read his book, Fanshen, documentary of revolution in a Chinese village, well, honestly, do yourself a favor and turn this episode and start reading it right now because you can't understand the Chinese revolution fully and deeply without reading Fanshen. Anyways, let's get back to the buildup of the main story, the one you guys are here for today.

On August 15th, accompanied by Wang Dongxing, Mao left Beijing on his official private train for his regular summer inspection tour around the South. The 1971 southern tour is key to the incident we're talking about today, so we definitely have to get into it. The next day, by the way, the Nanjing Revolutionary Committee convened a meeting to start reviewing the personnel files of potential girlfriends for Lin Biao's son, Lin Liguo, who was still single and looking for marriage.

Anyways, that day, Mao arrived in Wuhan, greeted by Hubei's Secretary, Liu Feng. In his meeting with Liu, he immediately said about criticizing Chen Boda and Lin Biao due to their behavior at the Lushan conference in September of last year. Recounting the conference's debate on whether or not Mao was a genius, Mao criticized Lin Biao for praising him to the point of absurd hyperbole that implicitly diminished Marx and Lenin.

Mao said he was tired of the cult of personality around him and that Lin was preventing him from scaling it back. Mao also complained that Lin had prevented efforts to cultivate a new generation of leaders after Mao died. Indeed, Mao felt that if Lin had his way, the people's republic would die with Mao, or at least with Lin.

On that same day, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Chunqiao, Ji Dengkuai, and Huang Yongsheng visited Lin Biao in Beidaihe to brief him on plans for a national people's congress. And then the crew all went to see China and Iran's ambassadors to Pakistan sign a mutual recognition agreement, asserting the PRC government as the sole government of China.

The next day, Henan's leaders joined Mao in Wuhan. Mao told the Henan provincial delegation that the Lushan plenum was a failed power grab by people who expected him to die soon. Since the Lushan surprise attack, as he said, Mao thought that he was now paying close attention to the PLA, although did not think it could rebel against him.

On August 25th, Hunan leader and central government agricultural official Hua Guofeng visited Mao, who questioned him over why he was still wearing a Mao badge. Mao went on to tell Hua Guofeng that those who pushed the genius issue to attack Zhang Chunqiao were actually attacking him. ‘I am not a genius,’ he said. Mao went on to say those who thought about the genius theory as being an infallible truth were waving the banner of Mao Zedong to oppose Mao Zedong.

Mao warned Hua that as they had seen across 1967 and 1968, ‘factionalism gets people killed and comrades in the party should work to prevent that from happening again while still continuing revolution under the revolution.’

He went on to say that people should not be killed in struggle criticism transformation and provocatively said that there will still be struggle and contradiction under communism. On August 27th, before leaving Wuhan, Mao told Liu Feng that he wanted to continue mixing in sand by giving Li Xiannian a central military commission job.

Then on the train to Changsha, Mao got his attendance and officials to sing the Internationale and explained the completely Marxist lyrics. After another sing-along of the three rules of discipline and eight points of attention, Mao's train arrived in Changsha. Officials then visited him aboard. Mao recounted to them the histories of the party's line struggles and turning to Hua Guofeng, sang a reprise of the three rules of discipline and eight points of attention.

Mao went on to reminisce about line struggle and Ye Jianying proving his mettle on the long march with clandestine work against the Zhang Guotao line. The next day, talks continued in Changsha, hinting at senior Air Force officers fawning over Lin Liguo.

Mao said that it didn't help someone in his 20s to be called a super genius. Mao asked Sichuan leader Liu Xingyuan and Guangzhou PLA head Ding Sheng, "What are you going to do if he were to oust their old boss, Huang Yongsheng?" Mao then told Wang Dongxing that at some point he should convey to the Politburo the main points that he made on his tour of the South.

On August 30th, another meeting was convened with regional party authorities with Mao. Mao said that Lushan was different from the party's previous line struggles. Lin Biao never owned up to his part in it due to his status. Although he insisted that Lin Biao must continue to be protected, Mao blamed Lin's people for the whole Kerfuffle. He also told the regional leaders not to discuss Lushan openly. Yet, Mao reminded the comrades that genius comes not from any gifted individual or group of individuals, but from a party, which is a vanguard of the proletariat.

On August 31st, Wang Dongxing flew to Nanjing ahead of Mao's train to brief Xu Shiyou and others on Mao's conversations with officials so far this trip. Mao received Xu Shiyou in the evening. Mao asked Xu bluntly why it was that he and Nanchang Uprising leaders who created the People's Liberation Army no longer commanded it.

Meanwhile, on September 1st, Enver Hoxha politely invited a Communist Party of China delegation to the coming party of labor of Albania Congress following his August 6 letter lecturing Mao about Nixon.

Uh anyways, that same day in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, Mao received regional commander Xu Shiyou, Han Xianchu, and Cheng Shiqing and then proceeded to criticize Lin Biao and the generals close to him. Meanwhile, back in Hubei Province, Lin Biao curiously and nervously told his head of security that there was no point in him having plans for a new residence built at Beidahe because he said, quote, ‘I do not have much time to live.’ What did he mean by this?

On September 3rd, Mao arrived in Hangzhou and received regional commanders Nan Ping, and Xiong Yingtang as well as Chen Liyun (3 syllables) and Bai Zongshan (3 syllables) from the air force. Mao upbraided Chen Liyun for following Wu Faxian at the Lushan plenum last year, asking what were you up to?

Chen was too shocked to answer, declaring that the Lushan incident was not over yet. Mao told the officers that he was now taking a close interest in the running of the PLA. Complaining that there are statues and portraits of him everywhere, Mao reiterated his thoughts on the personality cult from a few days before, saying that it was time to cool down the personality propaganda.

Two days later, Lin Liguo's contacts? in the air force contacted Guangzhou Air Force officer Gu Tongzhou and learned of Mao's recent comments on Lin Biao, which enraged Lin Jr. Liu Feng leaked to Li Zuopeng that Mao considered the Lushan split unresolved, and Li immediately flew to Beijing and informed Huang Yongsheng, who then telephoned Lin Bao's wife, Ye Qun.

On September 6, Nanjing authorities’ quest to find a suitable girlfriend for Lin Liguo was called off as Lin Jr. had become engaged to a 20-year-old army musician named Zhang Ning. That same day, Lin Bao's daughter, Lin Liheng, as well as her fianceé, Zhang Qinglin, and Lin Lee Guo's fiance, Zhang Ning, were all summoned to Beidahe. Lin's children and their partners all arrived at the Lin family homestead to find their father unshaven and shaking nervously. Zhang later recounted being shocked at how sick he looked. Lin Liguo then told his sister Liheng that Mao was moving against Lin Biao over the Lushan split and drew parallels to Peng Dehuai.

Two days later, Lin Liguo left Beidahe for Beijing for a dentist appointment. Lin Liheng, with her brother gone, told members of Lino's staff that she was worried that Lin Jr. was going to try to do something politically drastic and bring her father into it, but she wasn't exactly sure of what. The staff brushed her off, saying she was just being paranoid. That night, Ye Qun stayed up all night crying to Lin Biao.

She told him that she expected him to be purged and sent to the countryside because Mao thought she and him were spies. Back in Beijing, Lin Liguo met with Zhou Yuchi and other members of his Air Force clique at a suburban airfield. They talked late into the night and then agreed to meet again tomorrow, though their discussion was strictly confidential. The next day, Lin Liheng and her fiance took Lin Liguo's fiancee sightseeing, brought back a toy soldier as a souvenir for Lin Biao, which he enjoyed. Meanwhile, Mao decided to abruptly leave Hangzhou for Shanghai.

While on the train, Mao approved Zhou Enlai's request for a plenum of the central committee that month to elect Ji Pengfei and to expel Chen Boda from the party. Upon arriving in Shanghai, Mao summoned Wang Hongwen and Xu Shiyou to his train. Xu was uncontactable, so Wang turned up alone, and Mao then sent him away.

The day afterward, Wang Hongwen and Xu Shiyou visited Mao together. Mao criticized Xu for going off to the countryside the day before without leaving any way to be contacted. Nanjing's Air Force political commissar and Lin Liguo associate Wang Weiguo who Mao criticized a few days before tried to get on the train with them but was denied entry. Mao left Shanghai just after midday on his special train and went straight to Beijing. Almost instantly, Wang Weiguo informed Lin Liguo by telephone that Mao was heading back to the capital.

On September 12th, the day started off tense at Beijing Fengtai Station. Mao received Ji Dengkui, Li Desheng and Wu De and told them that Lushan's black hand was not just Chen Boda. Wu De self-criticized for signing Chen Boda's genius briefing. Mao reassured him that he bears no guilt, but Wu remained petrified. Jiang Qing visited Beijing's summer palace to relax and brought four melons, which she was proud to announce, were a gift from Lin Biao.

Meanwhile, back at the Lin house, Ye Qun suddenly told her daughter Lin Liheng and her fianceé that they were to get married that evening. Shocked and confused, they argued her down to an engagement party. Lin Liguo then told his sister Liheng that the situation was fraught in Beijing and that he was either going to go to Dalian, Guangzhou, or even Hong Kong. It seemed that dirty work was a foot. Lin Liguo and Zhou Yuchi told their clique in the Air Force that Lin Biao was going to fly to Guangzhou tomorrow and address the nation for a special announcement.

That night, Lin Biao took his sleeping pills and went to bed. After her husband was asleep, Ye Qun told the rest of the household to get ready to go to Guangzhou early tomorrow.

Lin Liheng discreetly informed guards that Ye Qun intended to fly the family out of Beidahe for Guangzhou early tomorrow morning. The guards, concerned, reported this immediately to Zhongnanhai. Things escalated across the night. The Central Guards Bureau telephoned Zhou Enlai who was in a late night meeting at the Great Hall of the People to help tell him that Lin Liguo had taken a Trident 1 aircraft from Beijing to near Beidahe.

Wang Dongxing reported to Zhou Enlai that Lin Liheng feared that her brother was up to something, possibly attempting to kidnap her father. Yet Qun called Zhou shortly afterward, explaining to him that Lin Biao needed a plane to visit Dalian. Zhou Enlai felt something was amiss and told her that it wasn't safe to fly that night. Zhou promised to come to Beidahe to smooth any problems personally with Lin Biao, but Ye Qun told him not to because it would upset Lin. She then hung up abruptly. Hm.

Under a different number, Trident 1E aircraft number 256 was dispatched to the airfield serving Beidaihe. Zhou asked Wu Faxian if he had sent an airliner to Beidaihe's local airport. Wu said no and said that there was no such plane there.

Wu called around to his comrades and Air Force officer Hu Ping told Wu Faxian that he sent the trident to Beidahe as a test flight after repairs and thought that this would be trivial. Hu Ping called Wu Faxian back a few minutes later and said that he couldn't send the trident back to Beijing as Wu instructed that the engine was now broken.

Sensing something was now certainly wrong, Zhou told Li Zuopeng to ensure that the trident did not take off without the combined approval of four officials, including himself. Li guessed that Zhou was alluding to Lin Biao and named him when repeating and re-repeating Zhou's orders back to confirm them. The politburo continued on across the night discussing the upcoming National People's Congress.

Afterwards, Zhou asked Huang Yongsheng to stay up and help with the suspicious plane. Meanwhile, at Beidaiha's small airport, a PLA air traffic controller was awoken and told to manage a Trident plane to take off without his team. According to his testimony, later he suspected it was a nuclear mission against the Soviets.

Then the clock struck midnight.

Ye Qun and Lin Liguo awakened Lin Biao, who was completely whacked out on sleeping pills and dressed him and set him off for the airport. Lin Biao's head of security fled the group, wanting no part in whatever was going on. While in the car, Lin asked his wife and son if they could head to Irkutsk in Siberia and asked how long it would take to get there.

Upon arrival at the airport, PLA guards admitted Lin Biao's car into the compound. Li Zuopeng gave his approval over the phone for the Trident to take off. Lin Liguo and Yu Qun boarded the waiting Trident airliner while soldiers watched on in confusion. Lin Biao was too drowsy and weak and had to be hauled up into the plane.

Some witnesses even later claimed that Lin was struggling to not get on the plane and was openly weeping. After the marshall and vice chairman was on the plane, some of the Trident crew ran towards the plane before the engine started, leaving Lin Liguo, Ye Qun, and Lin Biao aboard with a pilot and five others.

The plane revved its engines and slowly surely into the black of the night began to creep away from the gate and towards the runway. The troops on the ground at the airport tried to block the Trident's takeoff with their vehicles, but the plane weaved around them, but clipped one, damaging the wing of the plane. One soldier claimed to have heard gunshots coming from inside the plane, suggesting that a struggle had begun to take place on board.

Beidahe Airport's captain of the PLA Guard Garrison arrived at the airport to find that Lin Biao's plane was already on the runway and getting ready to taxi. The trident then sped down the runway and took off, flying westward into the darkness. Li Zuopeng reported to Zhou Enlai that Lin Biao's plane had managed to take off despite attempts to stop it. Zhou told him to track it. Wu Faxian then called Zhou and said that he had forbidden the Trident plane to take off no matter who asked, but Zhou replied that the plane was already airborne.

Wu ordered several planes to be ready to fly Zhou to wherever Lin Biao landed so that he could speak with him face to face. Zhou then ran to Mao's residence at Zhongnanhai and found that Mao was still awake, taking a late night swim in his swimming pool. He pressed Mao over whether to send fighters to intercept Lin Biao. Mao got out of the pool, looking legitimately shocked.

As he sat on his sofa next to his swimming pool, Mao simply said, "No, let him go. Lin Biao is still vice chairman of the party. Rain will fall. Women will get married. What can we do? Let him go.”

Wu reported to Zhou and Mao that the plane was 100 kilometers from entering Mongolia, but was hard to track by radar, flying unusually low to the ground. Now, while the details are unclear, according to reports, the damaged wing on Lin Biao's plane caught fire sometime shortly after they had entered Mongolian airspace.

The pilot changed route, seeming to try to turn backwards towards China, but it was too late. The trident was going down and exploded upon impact in the depths of the Mongolian desert. Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Lin Liguo, and six others in the crew died in the burning wreckage immediately upon impact.

And thus, Lin Biao, the hero of the Chinese Civil War, one of the grand marshals of the Revolution, vice chairman of the Communist Party of China, grand marshal of the People's Liberation Army, and Mao's appointed successor, close comrade in arms, the second in command of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was dead.

Mao, looking genuinely hurt and devastated, told Zhou to convene the Politburo immediately. At 3:00 a.m. Zhou Enlai briefed the Politburo and said that, in his estimation, Lin Biao had defected to the Soviet Union or at least tried to.

Meanwhile, Lin Liguo's allies, Zhou Yuchi, Yu Xinye and Li Weixin raced into the darkness onto a helicopter outside Beijing and took off with two bewildered crew. With Zhou Yuchi reported airborne, Mao was moved from his swimming pool residence, off to the Great Hall of the People, well protected from air attack.

Zhou Enlai banned all aircraft from Beijing and grounded all flights from Capitol International Airport. He gave the order that air force ground forces were to shoot down anything approaching the capital. Zhou then called for the deployment of Army infantry battalions to all airfields, both civilian and military.

An hour later, Zhou expanded the ban and grounded all aircraft nationwide and sent central guards officer Yang Dezhong to Wu Faxian at Beijing Xijao airport to assist him.

Li Xiannian, Hua Guofeng, and Li Desheng were dispatched to the PLA's temporary HQ in the Jingxi Hotel to assist them, too. Meanwhile, in the air, a fighter passed over Zhou Yuchi's helicopter. Zhou's pilot turned back, protesting that Mongolia was out of range and that they would be shot down. Air Force fighters searched the darkness for Zhou Yuchi's helicopter, but lacked suitable radars.

A ground station picked it up headed back towards Beijing, but Beijing air defense gunners refused an order to fire at the helicopter, fearing collateral damage. Zhou Enlai telephoned and agreed that they should not open fire. Zhou Yuchi's uncooperative, reluctant pilot Chen Xiuwen, then tried to overpower Zhou, who shot him dead.

The helicopter landed safely in a cornfield north of Beijing, where they were surrounded by a local people's militia squadron. Zhou Yuchi, Yu Xinye, and Li Weixin then entered a suicide pact. On the count of three, the men put their handguns to their heads and killed themselves before the militia could put them in handcuffs.

Sun rose over China that morning with the people of China being none the wiser that their beloved vice chairman chairman Mao's closest comrade in arms was now dead.

At 9:00 a.m. Zhou Enlai telephoned Lin Liheng, Lin's daughter, and they spoke for about an hour. She testified to the premiere that Lin Liguo deceived their father into getting on the plane.

Meanwhile, PLA signals intelligence intercepted Mongolian military transmissions, saying that an airplane from China had illegally entered their airspace, then caught fire and crashed.

Mongolian People's Republic authorities arrived at the crash and identified Lin Liguo's body from his ID card. The rest of them were uh crispy critters, as we would say. So, they could only basically assume who was who.

Zhou Enlai reported to Mao that Mongolia seemed to think that the plane was indeed carrying Lin Biao and that it had crashed the night before, but was warned that it might be a deception.

Around noon, Chen Boda was taken to Beijing's notorious Qingcheng Prison and housed alone in building number 204 with round-the-clock observation by two sentries. Zhou Enlai convened the politburo again in the afternoon augmented by PLA leaders.

They drafted emergency instructions to the armed forces. Zhou then rang all provincial and local military leaders to tell them that Lin Biao had fled and to put all armed forces into emergency readiness.

The next morning, September 14th, the Mongolian government lodged a protest with China that a military plane had entered Mongolian airspace and crashed in the desert. After 50 straight hours of being awake, Zhou Enlai finally got some sleep.

However, he was unfortunately soon woken by an embassy report that nobody had, surprised, survived the crash. A drugged and woozy Zhou Enlai repeated “crashed to death” to himself and made himself presentable before going to report to the chairman.

Zhou was asked by Mao how it could be that the trident crashed into open ground and suggested that perhaps it had ran out of fuel or had gotten lost. Mao, despondent and melancholic, sat down at his desk. He wrote a letter to the whole party in which he called Chen Boda a sham Marxist who believed in the genius theory at the expense of learning from the masses.

Mao's letter called for partywide discussion and criticism of Chen Boda's conspiratorial activities and noted oddly that Lin Biao concurred with him.

Wang Dongxing sent additional security to Beidahe to protect Lin Liheng against reprisals from any remaining Lin conspirators and acting foreign minister Ji Pengfei was informed that Lin Biao was dead causing him to remark that “they all died in a plane crash. What a marvelous ending. What the legitimate fuck.”

The next morning, soldiers scoured Lin Biao's quarters at Beidahe and began searching his papers and sending them to Beijing care of the general party office. Xu Shiyou visited Zhou Enlai in Beijing, who gave him the task of discreetly arresting four of Lin Biao's suspected accomplices in the PLA.

Summoned to Beijing, Wang Hongwen was then tasked with luring Shanghai's public security chief, Wang Weiguo, away from his men to be arrested safely. Wang Hongwen casually invited Wang Guo to Shanghai's Jinjiang Hotel to review a document.

Wang Guo asked him to read it over the phone. Explaining that the document was confidential, Wang Hongwen told Wang Weiguo that the review would be quick and promised to take him to a seafood dinner. Wang Weiguo entered the Jinjiang Hotel conference room to find that Wang Hongwen was not in fact not there. Instead, soldiers arrested him at gunpoint.

On the afternoon of September 17th, Mao and Joe agreed upon the main points of an internal verdict on Lin Biao, classifying it as a line struggle and tying him to Chen Boda.

The next day, Radio Xinjang, still obviously having not gotten the memo, just like the rest of the country, welcomed Mao and Lin Biao's outstanding good health and advertised a new photo album of the pair available for sale in Urumqi.

Mao then approved Zhou setting up a working group to investigate a Lin Bao-Chen Boda conspiracy led by Ji Dengkui and Deputy Wang Hongwen. Zhou Enlai chaired the politburo that night showing photographs of Lin Biao and Ye Qun's charred skeletons.

The Politburo agreed to disseminate an official verdict on Lin by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, listing 16 historical mistakes, but were told to hold off on releasing it to the public. The Politburo put the Air Force under the command of a five man group of officers sidelining Wu Faxian, who declared his resolute support.

A top secret internal party circular charged Lin Biao with treason and revealed the fatal renegade escape of the bourgeois careerist. The Lin Biao circular presented Lin Biao as opposing Mao throughout the 1930s and 40s and he had been a rightist the whole time.

On September 20th, Zhejiang leader Nan Ping sent his deputy Chen Liyun to Shanghai's Jinjiang Hotel to view a document. Inside, Wang Hong Wen arrested him just like Wang Weiguo. Wang Hong Wen asked the soldiers to be gentle with Chen Liyun as he was taken away.

And in a Shanghai basement, he was interrogated about Lin Liguo. The next day, the Chinese government told all foreign embassies that there would be no National Day parade despite earlier rehearsals because it would be a waste of time and money. This caused French media to speculate that either Mao was seriously ill or that a party, Congress, or National People's Congress might be coming up.

The foreign ministry assured the French that Mao was not dead, but offered no specific explanation for National Day's cancellation and several days of grounded flights. Marshall Chen Yi, off from official duties with advanced bowel cancer, was briefed about Lin Biao's death and began formulating a criticism.

On September 22nd, the New York Times reported that Lin Biao's status as successor was being questioned by some elements and speculated that Lin might have been ill. Back in Beijing, PLA Chief of Staff Huang Yongsheng briefed Bureau Chiefs on Lin Biao's flight and death. Access to the September 18th circular remained tight.

Zhou then interviewed embassy staffer Sun Yixian who photographed Lin Bao's crash site. Sun claimed that he sought evidence of a missile blast. When Zhou asked Sun if he had collected papers out of the wreckage, Sun said no. Zhou was enraged, exclaiming that a party member must defend state secrets to the death.

On September 23rd, the New York Times suggested that either Mao or Lin may have died with unusual troop movements since September 12th being signs of a possible succession crisis. The next day, Wu Faxian was called to a meeting in the Great Hall of the People.

Before leaving, he warned his wife that there may be a chance he would not return. Zhou Enlai announced to the Politburo that generals Huang Yongsheng, Li Zuopeng, Wu Faxian, and Qiu Huizuo had all been relieved of duty.

The four generals were then placed under investigation over their links to Lin and told to write self-criticisms under house arrest. But meanwhile, there was something happy going on.

At the UNHQ and NYC, China's Albanian comrades submitted a resolution to the UN to restore the People's Republic of China to all of its rights and expel forth with the representatives of Chiang Kai-Shek. So yeah, Albania was at the UN doing China a solid while all this was going on.

But anyways, on September 26, a central directive informed the public that there would be no national day parade in the capital this year, but smaller local celebrations would still be allowed in the provincial capitals. A meeting for top leaders to criticize Lin Biao began later that day with marshals Chen Yi, Nie Rongzheng, Xu Xiangqian and other veteran PLA officers in attendance.

On September 28th, a central directive limited documents on Lin Biao's flight and death to top leaders like provincial standing committee members and generals. The public was not allowed to know of Lin's death yet. Damage control was still paramount.

On that same day, Lin Liguo associate Wang Fei wrote a confession claiming to have been shown a paper order from Lin Biao to accept commands from Zhou Yuchi, the infamous supposed 571 plot document.

The next day, the 29th, a confidential memo informed leaders that Huang Yongsheng, Liu Pong, Wu Faxian, and Qiu Huizuo had been sacked for conspiring with Lin Biao.

On September 30th, English language newspaper Digest Peking Review carried an advertisement for Lin Biao's speeches. Radio Fujian advertised a Mao-Lin photo album. Literally, the entirety of the Chinese public was none the wiser.

Everything seemed hunky dory at the top and people just assumed that Lin was still working hard alongside Chairman Mao to serve the people and make revolution.

However, that day, Mongolia's press agency publicly announced the September 13th air crash to its own people and said that the PLA plane must have lost its bearing while flying at night.

The politburo agreed staffing arrangements for a Lin Biao-Chen Boda inquiry along with personnel changes in various arms of the Ministry of Defense. October rolled around and autumn of 1971 came.

The People's Daily welcomed National Day with a long article detailing various statistics indicating China had begun experiencing a good amount of economic growth that year along with an article calling for US aggressive troops to leave Korea and criticizing the USA's imperialist voting machine of allies at the UN.

On October 3rd, an awkward broadcast occurred. Radio Hubei described Lin Biao, using the usual formulation, as a shining example to follow. However, literally every other national, provincial, and municipal station had begun to cease mentioning him, with many radio staff not knowing why they'd been ordered to.

That same day in Beijing, a central directive informed leaders that a Lin Biao-Chen Boda inquiry had been set up to be led day-to-day by Ji Dengkui and Wang Dongxing.

The Central Military Commission's administrative group was declared thereby dissolved and replaced by a new organ headed by Ye Jiangying and run by Li Desheng.

Further reshuffling occurred and notice and a notice revealed that Hua Guofeng was to join the state council's business group, running the government day today as its new deputy leader.

In the early evening, foreign ministry officials gathered in the ministry's main auditorium where the notice on Lin Biao's flight and death was read out.

The next day over in the US, Time magazine speculated about Lin Bao's absence from view and hypothesized that Huang Yongsheng may be after his job as defense minister.

Back in Beijing, Mao received members of Ye Jianying’s new central military commission office, informing them that Lin Biao and Chen Boda had conspired to seize power and blamed the two for the treatment of PLA leaders in the late 1960s.

On October 5th, Xinhua News Agency announced that Kissinger would visit China again later in the month to make concrete arrangements for President Nixon's trip.

That same day, Zhou Enlai and Geng Biao received 70 visiting Americans, including the leaders of the Revolutionary Union, Black Panthers, and Young Lords Party. Included in this group were notable American communists such as Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seal, Bob Avakian, Mary Lou Greenberg, H Bruce Franklin, C. Clark Kissinger, and many, many more.

However, as Zhou was entertaining these American comrades, a new limited circulation memo informed top leaders that Lin Biao tried to have Mao assassinated and set up a rival government in the South before he fled. A week later, the Communist Party of China declined Hoxha's invitation to the upcoming Labor Party Congress following 1969's blanket policy against such delegation. Hoxha was, according to later sources, furious and said that the Chinese would regret their anti-Marxist snub toward him.

On October 20th, Kissinger and his entourage arrived in Beijing, greeted by Ye Jianying and Ji Pengfei. They joined Zhou Enlai and his interpreters for talks. After the meeting, Mao summoned Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianyang, Ji Pengfei and the meeting's interpreters Wang Hairang and Tang Wenshang to discuss Kissinger. Ye Jianying said that the timing of Kissinger's visit suggested that the USA knew that next week's UN motion to seat the PRC would fail.

After more talks on the 23rd, Mao criticized a draft communique for the Kissinger talks for lacking a voice. He felt it avoided saying anything about revolution or oppression. The next day, Ji Dengkui read Kissinger a revised draft communique. Kissinger was irked by it, saying that the sharp uncompromising language made it hard to accept.

On October 25th, at the UN headquarters, an American motion to let Beijing assume the UN China seat with Taipei keeping a seat of its own was voted down by the General Assembly. Instead, the UN General Assembly passed the Albanian motion to expel forth with the representatives of Chiang Kai-Shek and exclusively seat the PRC. Surprised by Chiang Kai-Shek and America's defeat at the UN, Mao commented that China had been carried into the UN by its brothers in the third world. And it was true. When the vote showed that the people's republic was to take over the China seat at the UN, it is said that the African and Arab delegates danced in the aisles with joy. November rolled around and Kim ll-Sung arrived in Beijing for his second visit to China in just over a year so that he and Mao could discuss the Kissinger talks.

At the talks, Mao brought together his new ad hoc foreign policy group, Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, Ji Pengfei, Qiao Guanhua, and Wang Hairong. Upon returning to Pyongyang, Kim Il-sung reassured Workers Party of Korea cadres that ‘China engaging with Nixon was no big deal, it was just like the Molotov Ribbontrop agreement of 1939.’

The next day, foreign ministry official Huang Hua, who would soon become deputy head of China's UN mission, signed a mutual agreement with Peru, which is funny because at the same time, Beijing was actually training Communist Party of Peru members in studying military theory and agricultural reform.

And on the third, the foreign ministry threw a bountiful banquet in Beijing for the diplomatic representatives of nations who voted the PRC into the UN the prior month.

On October 6, in a Jiangxi factory dining hall, for over two hours, 80 workers, including Deng Xiaoping, were read the circular revealing Lin Biao's death. Deng Xiaoping contributed no views on Lin in his workshop's discussion group, but he was allowed to take the text of the circular home.

Deng wrote to Mao that he had always thought Chen Boda was a villain, but was genuinely shocked and angered to learn of Lin's betrayal. Thanks to the brilliant leadership foiling Lin Biao and Chen Boda, Deng Xiaoping continued in his letter that he was so happy he could not restrain his emotions.

Two days later, work on getting ready to join the UN continued. Mao approved a report saying that China should make sure to be consultative at the UN and avoid using its security council veto too much. Mao also rejected British overtures to diplomatic recognition.

Unlike the Americans who were ready to compromise, the Brits were trying to remain equivocal on Taiwan. So Mao decided to keep them in timeout. Zhou Enlai, Ye, Ji and Wang and other top cadres, then saw Qiao Guanhua off to the airport as he flew to join the UN in New York.

On November 11th, a Scottish Council for Development and Industry group arrived in Guangzhou. They were the first Western European trade delegation since the 1950s. And while Qiao Guanhua arrived in New York, he told journalists that he wished well people of all walks of life in New York and the rest of America. Future President George HW Bush greeted the PRC UN delegation on the way to the main chair. There they took the China seat and heard other nations remarks.

On October 15th, Qiao addressed the UN. He attacked the USA, thanked those who helped seat the PRC, and talked about history's trend towards revolution. So quite the introduction. On November 18th on local radio, Hangzhou's top PLA officer alluded to Lin Bao's clique exhibiting left-wing extremism and delusions of intellectual grandeur.

On November 20th, receiving Wuhan military leaders, Mao repudiated Lin Biao's ideological contributions, but said that his followers could be rehabilitated. Mao also said that it was worth retaining the eight democratic parties of the United Front. For more info on this, please see our minisode on the United Front parties during the cultural revolution.

In Nanjing, party leaders met to pick through and correct forced confessions extracted during investigations into the supposed May 16th group. Investigations led by PLA officials aligned with Lin Biao. A few days later, Hainan Radio celebrated the end of a nameless clique of party enemies whose bodies and bones were scattered without ever finding a grave.

On November 29th, the Politburo ruled that Mao's four great titles, great leader, great teacher, great commander, and great helmsman, which Lin Biao had coined, were not to be used anymore in any party publications or state media.

On December 1st, People's Daily shared an editorial on summing up experiences and reminded party committees that hidden anti-party me elements were actually very rare and to be careful not to whip up conspiratorial ideas or attack people without firm evidence.

On December 6th, Zhou Enlai told the Military Aviation Industry Forum that it was time to criticize Lin Bao and his anti-party group for anarchism and ultraleftism.

10 days later, the state council's national planning conference began discussing the economic plan for 1972 and criticized the economics of Lin Biao.

The next day on the 17th, a central directive listed the approvals needed to remove officials if they ended up being implicated by investigations into Lin or Chen.

On December 22nd, China's UN delegation returned from New York. Zhou Enlai met them at the airport and they all reported to Mao together in the evening.

And a few days later, People's Daily evaluated the UN26 General Assembly as a victory for the oppressed peoples of the world. And with that, we will end our chronicle of the year 1971. So anyways, let's address the elephant in the room.

What do we make of the Lin Bao incident? Well, scholars are still to this day heavily divided on the issue. So I'll present the two main arguments put forward, or should I say two and a half.

First, there is the prevailing school of thought in official Chinese discourse and among Maoist groups more globally that Lin was quote ‘left in form, right in essence’ and that Mao was indeed the target of a coup by Lin. There is strong evidence for this position.

Lin had not only carefully read Liu Shaoqi's famous ‘how to be a good communist’ and made many approving marginal comments during the cultural revolution. He also told Lin Doudou that Liu Shaoqi's level of theoretical understanding was superior to Mao and he declared that both Liu and Deng Xiaoping were good comrades and commented that it did not make sense to get rid of Liu.

As for the cultural revolution itself, Lin made a dismissive comment in 1967 that the movement had become a revolution without culture. And this perhaps best summed up his attitude, a secret disdain for the entire thing while still claiming to be its second in command. At least that's what his daughter says.

Mao said many times in meetings with the central military commission across 1971 that he was concerned that the PLA had a disproportionate amount of power in the provincial and municipal revolutionary committees and that it was time for the party and mass organizations to give more play to their own initiative in these new bounties of power.

Lin, according to later accounts by his colleagues and daughters, felt deeply upset by this and his son Lin Liquo and his wife Ye Qun even more so. Lin did indeed have every reason to pull off a coup if he wanted his political trajectory to continue, especially after the Lushan conference of 1970 split Mao and Lin irreparably.

His fanatical and dogmatic loyalty to Mao, which often manifested in promoting book worship and blind obedience to authority, had caused issues in society and simultaneously had not paid off for Lin. He certainly felt sidelined and betrayed despite still officially being Mao's successor.

In 1980, the Communist Party of China put forward the summation that Lin Bao's clique and the clique around the Gang of Four had collaborated to sabotage Chairman Mao and the party center, only falling out with each other in 1971 when Lin's coup attempt was exposed.

The Maoist camp within the international communist movement, by and large, takes up a variation of this theory, albeit not looping in the Gang of Four into the conspiracy.

The revolutionary internationalist movement, an international conference of Maoist parties, upheld the idea that Lin was responsible for an attempt to assassinate Mao and that he fled when the plot was exposed. Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, said in his 1979 book, Mao Zedong's immortal contributions that quote,

"Mao recognized quite early that Lin Biao had treacherous characteristics, even though he had played a generally positive role at an earlier stage in the Chinese Revolution. And even though Mao felt it was necessary to unite with Lin during the first stage of the cultural revolution in order to knock out the strongly entrenched rightists associated with Liu Shaoqi” end quote.

Avakian goes on to say that there had been quote “many defects in the way in which Lin had promoted the cultural revolution and by the time of the 9th Congress he had begun to attack many of the achievements and gains of the cultural revolution and that he had argued that revolutionary turmoil was fine for a while, namely for as long as it took for him to get to the top, but that the time had come for the masses to quiet down, put the noses to the grindstone, and just engage in production.” End quote. It was due to this, Avakian and other Maoist leaders during the 1970s and 1980s argued that Lin wanted Mao out of the picture.

This continues to be the general consensus among Maoist parties today. However, some western ‘scholars’ have cited differences with these narratives. One of the most prominent dissident voices is the scholar Frederick Teiwes. In his book, The Tragedy of Lin Biao, he posits the following six-point evaluation.

“Number one, far from being excessively ambitious, Lin was content with an inactive albeit honored position and was thrust into a leading role by Mao and subsequently cast aside for reasons that have little to do with any wishes he may have had for greater power. This view was strongly expressed in the immediate post-Lin period, under the influence of post-Mao accounts of the struggle of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing clicks, more western what recent western analysis have given greater attention to conflict between the two groups."

"Number two, while Lin publicly assumed a proponent's role during the cultural revolution as befitted his new status as the successor and also seemingly took advantage of the situation to settle personal grievances. To the extent that a personal political orientation can be deduced from his actions and private statements, it was in favor of economic and moderation and limiting chaos, particularly the army."

"Three, Lin never opposed Mao politically, but instead operated by the prime political rule of strictly following the chairman's wishes to the extent that they could be determined. Even in the desperate post-Lushan period, his posture was passive and most likely, although not certainly, Hughes says, he had no knowledge of any military coup or assassination plots."

"Four, there was no fundamental conflict between Lin and Zhou Enlai as Zhou accepted Lin's superior status and Lin did not interfere in Zhou's activities. The conflict which did exist was between Lin and his supporters and Jiang Qing's group which fundally mentally developed from competition for Mao's blessing and was concerned more with trivial matters and perceptions of relative power than with policy issues."

"Five. Although the relationship of civilian and military authority caused considerable friction within the party, there is little to suggest that Lin or his top associates in the PLA were pushing for a Bonapartist outcome."

"And finally, six, while Lin did have an interest in the institutional well-being of the military and the PLA as an organization playing a key role in supervising the economy, there is no evidence of his shaping a coherent program to appeal to a military-industrial complex or indeed of any developed policy positions through the entire 1966 through 1971 period.” End quote. _

Glad to be back once again in the saddle after a long hiatus. Uh, actually, we haven't talked since December, have we? Since uh before the holidays. A lot has happened since then. I was actually supposed to go back to the USA for January and February, which was the original reason for our hiatus. But unfortunately, we do have some bad news.

My father-in-law got diagnosed with stomach cancer. But on the bright side, uh he was able thanks to some strings being pulled or as we say in uh Chinese, guānxi, connections and networking, he was able to start treatment at Beijing's People's Liberation Army General Hospital number 301, which is considered the best hospital in China. in China. Not just the best in Beijing, not just one of the best in the country, the best.

It's where uh Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Kang Sheng all spent their final days. And when Xi Jinping and other top government brass uh get sick or need a medical procedure, they go there. So, he is literally in the best of hands. In fact, his current doctor is considered one of the foremost world's foremost experts on stomach cancer. Not just China's foremost expert, he is one of the world's foremost experts on stomach cancer. So, he's getting top of-the-line frontline treatment. So, we're hoping for the best.

It's been rough for all of us. I gotta admit, my winter break, uh, it it really was not a break, you could say. It was, uh, it was a lot of helping around the house, taking care of the in-laws, and all such and such. But the new semester has begun, and we're back in the saddle of teaching and research. So, I guess that's all we can hope to ask for.

So today we're going to be covering the first half of the year of 1971. A year which marks the beginning of a 2-year long process that is seen as one of the most important series of meetings in world history. Not just Chinese history, but world history. And is still one of the most controversial meetings among Marxists on both sides of the Pacific to this very day.

That's right. We're going to start with the negotiations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, the two geopolitical archenemies. Negotiations that ended up in the culminating of Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972.

In this episode, we'll talk about the phenomenon of ping pong diplomacy and how that culminated into a secret meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in July 1971, which is where we'll end the episode.

Yes, folks, in 1971, China began to slowly but surely open up to the world. Well, I mean, not really. As we've seen in prior episodes, foreign delegations and diplomatic relations between China and various countries seeking national liberation or post-colonial development and various pro-Beijing parties. You know, it was still very much a thing during the tumultuous years of 1966 through 1968. But I guess you could say this is where China really opens up diplomatically to the western capitalist powers. I don't know. There's actually been a recent debate on this question of when did China open up or was it ever closed to begin with. I think there's actually a new book coming out. The name of it escapes me. It's supposed to come out in July of 2026. I posted about it at uh on my uh Twitter account, but the name of the book and the name of the author, I'm having a brain fart. It's a new book that is supposedly challenging the idea that prior to 1971, Mao's China was a hermit kingdom. uh sort of like you know people talk about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea today being a hermit kingdom and you know was that really true? But I digress. I don't know. You guys be the judge of it.

So let's get into it. So let's pour up some poor tea. Grab some Asian snickity snacks from your local HMart or your 99 Ranch supermarket or your local Asian farmers market. Change into your pajamas and panda slippers. Turn down the lights and let's get into it.

The year 1971 began on January 1st as uh you know years tend to do in the Gregorian calendar with an editorial in People's Daily and Red Flag called ‘Advance Victoriously along chairman Mao's revolutionary line’. The editorial was uh was very interesting because between the 9th Congress in 1969 and into December of 1970, many people spoke of the cultural revolution in the past tense.

But in this editorial, the opposite was in fact true. As you guys might know, there is no past, present, or future tense in the Chinese language.

You kind of have to do it through context. But what you'll notice is that in English translations, you see them start to use the present tense once again. The editorial announced “This year will witness the deepening of the struggle criticism transformation movement of our current great proletarian cultural revolution.” Notice that it says current.

“We should firmly grasp revolutionary mass criticism on the political and ideological front, the cultural and educational front and the economic front in all spheres of the superstructure and to continually criticize the ideological trends of modern revisionism with Soviet revisionism at its center and eliminating the remaining pernicious influence of the counterrevolutionary revisionist line of the renegaded hidden traitor scab Liu Shaoqi”

and uh what's interesting is is that in that issue of red flag and then also in that issue of Peking review that came out that time you see them once again encouraging mass criticism sessions in the factories and workplaces like you saw during the uh mass movement campaigns that you see in late '66 through mid 68.

So that's interesting. The editorial concluded, "This year the party, the army, and the people of the whole country should continue to implement the grand strategic principles of heighten our vigilance, defend the motherland, be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people."

"The People's Liberation Army should continue to enhance revolutionization and militancy in army building by carrying out the four requirements of the four good units. Militia building must be done well and carried through organizationally, politically and militarily."

"It is necessary to support the army and cherish the people and support the government and cherish the people, strengthen the unity between the army, the government, and between the army and the people, and be better prepared ideologically, materially, and organizationally against any war of aggression. "

"Furthermore, we must be determined to liberate our sacred territory of Taiwan province. We are now engaged in a great and most glorious cause never attempted by our forefathers. Our goals must be attained. Our goals can be certainly attained. The whole party, the whole army, the whole people of all nationalities in the country shall unite still more closely."

"Comrades, let us advance victoriously along Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line under the leadership of the party central committee with Chairman Mao as its leader and vice chairman Lin as its deputy leader. Long live the People's Republic of China. Long live the Communist Party of China. Long live the great proletarian cultural revolution and carry it out until its end."

Another notice in that issue as well is that in provincial daily newspapers in every part of the country was a call from the party center to hold provincial party congresses in every province, every autonomous region and independent municipalities like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. Everywhere in China above the municipal level was to hold a provincial party congress.

While the party committees had been reconstituted on a national level, you know, there was now once again a solid Politburo, a solid central committee. There were now municipal party committees and grassroots level village and district party committees and county party committees that had been reconstituted across summer of 1969 through December of 1970. and the workplace party committee reconstitution had been all but complete.

There had still been no provincial party congresses to solidify these reconstitutions with provincial level party work being carried out almost entirely by the party groups within the provincial revolutionary committees.

The central committee said it was time to change that and said that by the end of the year all provinces should have new provincial party committees elected by congresses on a Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought basis.

However, I'm going to wait to get into that a little deeper with the next chronological episode because the provincial party congresses start in January, but they don't end until late August. And this episode will be finishing with July of 71.

So, I think it might help to begin the next chronological episode with a quick discussion and analysis of the provincial level reconstitution and the provincial level party congresses and how that unfolded before.

Well, you know that big thing that happens in September of 1971 where a certain someone catches a little plane to Moscow or tries to and uh doesn't go so well, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyways, let's get back to the main theme of this month's episode. China opening up to the West. Well, like I just said a few minutes ago, that's very much a misnomer.

As I've talked about foreign guests and delegates visiting China multiple times across the podcast, and not just the Albanians and the Vietnamese, but the first 6 months of 1971 are definitely a noticeable PR blitz that ends with a meeting that changed the world.

On January 2nd, a 100,000 strong rally at Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, welcomed a self Vietnamese uh communist delegation that had been touring the provinces since December.

The tide was gradually turning in Vietnam against the US and South Vietnamese puppet forces, but the war was still a few more years away from being over. and the Vietnamese people still needed all the solidarity and support they could get from the Chinese. So this tour and subsequent rally were a major morale boost for the South Vietnamese comrades who were on the trip.

6 days later, the PRC table tennis or ping pong team arrived back in Beijing after a successful European tour that visited Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The Chinese government had decided to dip their toe in the waters of using sports, particularly ping pong, to open the country up to broader diplomacy by sending ping pong teams to their lone ally in Europe, Albania, of course, along with some more neutral Western European states like the Nordic countries and even one non-aligned states who they weren't particularly friendly with, Yugoslavia.

And you know what? It surprisingly turned out to be an enormous success. Many Chinese officials saw this as a sign that using friendly pingpong meets could be a way to reopen lines of communication with Western imperialist countries, especially with the Soviets once again building up troops and equipment in Siberia and Mongolia.

Now, I know I was going to say that I was going to talk about the the party congresses, the provincial and independent municipality party congresses in the next chronological episode.

But I want to talk real quick though about one of them and that is on January 10th, the Shanghai Municipal Party Congress was held and elected not only a new municipal party committee but also elected Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan's uh revolutionary committee team to lead the new party committee.

The Shanghai delegates resolved to go all out, achieve high and greater and faster and more economic results and build socialism to the fullest extent. Shanghai radio announced that Shanghai had formed a new party committee that was based on the 3in1 combination but in an interesting way.

Instead of party cadres, mass orgs, and PLA, it was also going to be old, middle-aged, and young cadres. So, how about that? Another thing to notice is that the workers headquarters still greatly dominated the municipal party committee.

On January 23rd, a bit of foreshadowing occurred in the press. The People's Daily ironically thanked their American lords for in recent American press sending cables to the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, suggesting that China may be a superpower someday, but made it clear that they rejected the idea of China being a superpower that would lord over other nations.

Still, the fact that the Chinese were flattered by such talk rather than responding with vicious vitriol and venom was an interesting change in earlier rhetoric. All was not necessarily well within the halls of power though. Do you guys remember what happened last time at the Lushan conference in the last episode?

Well, on the 26th of January, the party center in response to Chen Boda's behavior at the Lushan conference in September of 1970 distributed a nationwide packet of evidence of various historical crimes committed by the anti-party element Chen Boda.

It was clear Chen was in big trouble and not just in terms of private behind closed doors admonishment and demands to self-criticize by the polit bureau. He was now being publicly seen as a black element within the party.

Then Zhou Enlai as premier and international face of China decided that he didn't have much time for this whole Chen Boda business. And on the 28th, he personally received the president of the Japanese Pingpong Association in preparation for China's return to international tournaments.

Yes. Yes. Yes. My friends, gasp. The Chinese were talking to the Japanese. the Japanese of all people on how to get China back into the international athletics community on a big scale.

Two days later, the Chinese gymnastics team left for Baathist party led Baghdad for a fortnight-long friendship tour of Iraq, where they performed for 10,000 people, including Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr and his vice president and premier Saddam Hussein.

On February 2nd, Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai met with a proposal to let 1,000 foreign leftists and workers visit China in then in this year. This was a raising of the cap. Originally, it was only going to be a couple of hundred.

And Mao did something interesting. He said, I think we should add rightists to the list of people that may come. that is delegations from pro-s Soviet revisionist parties.

So not only did he want groups like you know the revolutionary union or the black panthers or the you know gauche proletarien in uh France to come. He he wanted people from the CPUSA or the PCF and uh PCI to come and uh see revolutionary China for themselves.

6 days later on February 8th, Finland and China signed a trade treaty that would allow the free flow of goods between the two countries. Finland had had diplomatic relations with the PRC since 1954, but trade between the two countries had stalled in 1966, and Finland never really fully committed to the one China policy.

But with this treaty, Finland declared the People's Republic to be the one true China with the ROC in Taiwan to be an illegitimate state. and Taiwan was to be seen as a province of China by Finnish authorities. Finland also reaffirmed its belief that the PRC should have a seat at the UN.

On the 10th of the month in Cairo, Chai Zemin signed a recognition agreement with Nigeria, affirming that the Nigerians saw the PRC as the sole legal government of the Chinese people and declared that Nigeria would back China having a seat at the UN.

While back-channel discussions between the USA and China were going better than ever, on the surface things were, well, obviously still tense.

A Chinese state council statement indignantly condemned US escalation of the Vietnam War in Cambodia and Laos and pledged to take effective measures to help defeat them. Cities across China held mass demonstrations in support of the government's condemnation of US aggression.

Half a million people marched in Beijing and demanded further military and financial aid for the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Kampuchean people.

Then something very interesting happened that week. The Xinhua news agency reported something that was very, very interesting.

The party central committee was calling for the resuscitation of the old Communist Youth League. The CYL had been replaced by the Red Guards in 1966 and had been officially dissolved in January of 1967 because the central committee of the CYL was very pro-Liu Shaoqi.

But with the university red guard movement having been disbanded 3 years prior in July of '68 and the red guard detachment in China's middle and high schools still existing but being essentially toothless after school extracurricular clubs that were really no different from the pre-1965 youth league. It made sense that reconstituting the Communist Youth League might be a good idea at the time.

It would have be a two-year long process and the Communist Youth League would not be officially revived until 1973 and the middle and high school Red Guards would continue to ostensibly exist until 1977 as a parallel organization.

But this was still a big thing. Soon, talk of reviving the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the All-China Women's Federation also began stirring among the party center. But we will talk more about that in our episode about 1973.

On February 19th, Zhou Enlai submitted to Mao a foreign ministry paper on letting Americans visit China for both political and non-political purposes. With 830 US applicants already having submitted their applications since Nixon took power, Mao said he'd think about it, but he was more concerned with the issue of Chen Boda that day.

In the same meeting, Mao granted Zhou Enlai approval to invite non-members of the Politburo to the Politburo meeting so that he could underline the imperative to criticize Chen Boda. Mao complained that the central military commission conference had barely criticized Chen Boda and that this should be the focus within party ranks from now on.

Across late February, once again, the Chinese press flip-flop between calls for Sino-American friendship and calling for the crushing of American imperialism. Reacting to the wild war cries of US press conference about operations in Laos, the People's Daily labeled Nixon a diabolical warmonger.

The friendship endeavors once again swung back to more safer nations. On the 25th, the North Korean football team were treated to a banquet by the National Sports Commission in Beijing and went on a two-week friendship tour, despite many in the party leadership still viewing the DPRK as a puppet of Soviet social imperialism.

But you know, and hey, at this point, you take what you can get. And as I said in the last episode, Mao and Kim had spent the year of 1970 trying to rekindle their old friendship and once again lock arms in anti-imperialist solidarity, even with their ideological differences.

In terms of scientific development, China was actually doing not too bad. the GDP per capita (editor's note: questionable, at least GDP PPP should be used as a measure) and industrial output were doing much better. Food security was still, you know, it still wasn't as good as developing as many developing countries. But there were no more mass shortages or starvation. And that's really important.

The most important thing though was that China was able to launch its second ever satellite, the East Is Red 2 from the desert in Inner Mongolia. Based on the first, it carried a sensor suite and weighed 50 kg more.

Something that made the Chinese scientific community very happy and made a lot of space programs around the world, particularly the Americans and the Soviets, sit up and take notice. China had gone to space not once but twice now showing that the Chinese were going to continue to make progress into the space age alongside their American and Soviet colleagues.

Oh, and yes, yes, I know I said I only talk about the provincial party congresses at the beginning of the next chronological episode, but I had to mention this one because I'm biased like that. you know, living in Shaanxi myself.

On March 5th, the New Party Congress in Shaanxi elected Revolutionary Committee chairman Li Ruishan to the head of a resurrected provincial party committee. Now, what's interesting is that the 1971 Shaanxi CPC provincial party congress was not held in Xi’an like it usually is, but was in fact held in Yan’an, which I think is very interesting and was definitely a flex.

By the way, I actually kind of like Li Ruishan. He was an OG, a veteran of Yan. He was a rebel cadre during the 1960s, personally took part in the power seizures and uh was actually one of the few top leaders who tried at least to stay a leftist into the 1990s. He was able to avoid being toppled during the coup in the late 70s.

uh He was not implicated as part of the Gang of Four clique or the Lin Biao clique and he stayed on the central committee until 1985 but due to being unrepentant about his red past he eventually got sidelined to some low-level agricultural paper pushing job until his death in 1997.

So, uh, you know, Li Ruishan got lucky to have a good revolutionary committee chairman and provincial party committee secretary. But I digress. Again, we will talk more about the party provincial congresses in the next episode.

Meanwhile, on March 7th, Zhou Enlai took a trip to Hanoi where he met with Le Duan. Low had taken notice of the Chinese government's recent overtures to more and more capitalist countries, but Zhou assured him that support for people's revolutionary struggles must never be sacrificed for the sake of diplomacy.

Then on March 28th, history was made. The 1971 World Table Tennis Championships was held in Nagoya, Japan with the Chinese national team making their triumphant comeback after being absent since 1966. Their Chinese athletes competed and got to fraternize with fellow competitors from Austria, Czechoslovakia, the UK, West Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Romania, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.

Many countries which would have been unthinkable for a Chinese person to visit or fraternize with citizens of outside of you know pro-Beijing communist party delegations or embassy work. At that point the Chinese really did clean up. They won 11 gold, eight silver and two bronze. So good for them.

Many radicals within the central committee, particularly former central cultural revolution group members and many leftists in the military and workers congresses opposed sending a team to this 1971 championships in Nagoya.

And even many of the players on the national Ping Pong team believe that China should not have sent them due to the fact that Japan was an imperialist state and still had yet to apologize for their aggression against the Chinese people during World War II. Ultimately, however, Chairman Mao reviewed and approved the plan and submitted it to the team.

Mao and Zhou instructed its members not to conduct propaganda to foreigners and that while they should not initially initiate conversations with the American team, they should shake hands with the American players at matches and if the American players struck up conversations first to be cordial.

However, once in Japan, the Chinese players immediately engaged in conversations with other foreign teams after they were greeted by their American counterparts.

On March 30th, 1971, American player Graham Steenhoven and the head of the Chinese delegation Sun Zhong struck up not one but two friendly short conversations. Steenhoven had told Sun that the United States had just lifted its ban on travel to China.

He also expressed his regret that the ban meant that the American team did not get to attend the 1961 World Table tennis championships which had been held in China. He hoped the US team would be able to compete in China in the future.

The Chinese delegation relayed this interaction to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Sports Commission requesting instructions on how to respond.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Commission of Sports did not respond positively, honestly viewing it as inappropriate to invite American athletes to China before inviting American Maoists like the Revolutionary Union or October League.

Zhou Enlai agreed, but requested that Chinese officials obtain the American delegation's mailing address and inform them via official letter of China's position on the Taiwan issue.

Mao initially agreed that the American communists should visit before athletes, but two days later, he changed his mind and called for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to invite the American Ping Pong team to visit China.

The third incident, and perhaps the most dramatic incident that really got the ball rolling even further, was the unexpected but dramatic meeting between the American player Glenn Cowan and the Chinese team captain Zhuang Zedong, the three-time world championship winner of many table tennis events. On the morning of the championship, Cowan overslept and missed his own team's bus.

So, he hopped on the next bus to the stadium, which well just so happened to belong to China's national team. Many of the Chinese players were initially suspicious of Cowan. But Zhuang Zedong had read that Mao Zedong had hung out with Edgar Snow just a few months prior and knew the line of the Communist Party was to support proletarian internationalism, particularly towards the American working class and oppressed nationalities.

So he decided, sure, why not go up and talk to an American? Maybe he's a comrade. Zhuang approached Cowan on the bus, shook his hand, and spoke to him through an interpreter. He presented him with a silkscreen portrait of Huangshan Mountain, a famous product from Hangzhou.

Cowan wanted to give something back, but all he could find from his back was a comb. The American hesitantly replied, "I can't give you a comb. I wish I could give you something, but I can't." Cowan would later reciprocate Zhuang's gesture by gifting them a T-shirt embroidered with a peace sign.

When they exited the bus, journalists snap photos of the two together. Two days later, the US team received an official invitation to travel to China and play exhibition matches against the Chinese team with the Chinese with the United States accepting the invitation.

In the midst of this budding peace on March 18th, 1971, communists, socialists, and anarchists around the world celebrated the centenary of the establishment of the Paris Commune, the first elite very short-lived working-class socialist government in human history. The Chinese press put out a provocative editorial called "Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in commemoration of the centenary of the Paris Commune.

In the editorial, the Communist Party of China declared that the 1917 Russian and 1949 Chinese revolutions were the culmination of the uprising of 1871 and that the current Cultural Revolution was the latest stage in the realization of the Paris Commune.

While I can't find any footage of any parade or rally in Beijing for that day or any other day in March, April or May in celebration of the Paris Commune, posters, dazibaos and subsequent editorials were published all around China and many commemorative meetings were held on local levels, particularly in Shanghai, no surprise there, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune. One worker proclaimed, "The Commune was never defeated. People's China is now the Paris Commune."

On April 7th, the US table tennis team received their invitation to China. A press conference was held that very same day, and the next day, a statement from the team was ran in all major newspapers across the country.

Zhou Enlai was happy to hear the news and told the diplomat Huang Hua that the visit of the US table tennis players offers a very good opportunity to open relations with the USA.

Two days later, the US table tennis squad and a team of journalists minus a South Korean-American player, whose anti-communist police compelled him to decline visiting China, arrived in Hong Kong. Later that afternoon, the Canadian table tennis team arrived in Beijing.

The first of several Western teams, who competed in Japan last week, had been invited. The next morning, a 15-strong party around the US table tennis team walked from Hong Kong and into China. They were received by party and army officials and were given Little Red Books in English and Chairman Mao badges.

On the 13th, the British national table tennis team entered Guangdong from Hong Kong and were met with another delegation of workers, cadres, and soldiers who also handed out Mao badges and Little Red Books.

In response, on April 14th, the US government lifted its ban on all Chinese visitors to the United States and relaxed its trade restrictions with Nixon's calling for America to trade with China and the USSR on a roughly equal basis.

That same day, in the Great Hall of the People, Zhou Enlai received table tennis players and reporters from Canada, Colombia, Nigeria, the UK, and the USA.

Zhou Enlai told the US table tennis players that your visit has opened a new chapter in relations between the Chinese and American people. Ping-pong diplomacy, it seemed, was going completely according to plan, and a new chapter in Chinese-American relations was slowly but surely beginning.

During the meeting, Glenn Cohen asked Zhou Enlai his view on the hippies. Zhou, thinking back to the Red Guard movement, responded surprisingly positively, saying they manifest young people's frustrations, but not necessarily with mature thought.

On April 20th, Australia's Ping Pong team arrived in Guangzhou, accompanied, like the teams before them, by their own journalists.

On the 21st, US magazines and newspapers printed Edgar Snow's account of his December 18th, 1970 conversations with Chairman Mao, including an open invitation to Nixon to have a visit for some negotiations.

Also that day, Zhou Enlai sent a letter to President Nixon via Pakistan calling for a meeting with Kissinger or above to fundamentally restore relations.

But not all was well entirely in the halls of power.

That evening, Lin Liguo, the son of Lin Biao, met with other Air Force officials to discuss the Chen Boda inquiry. The inquiry's request for Lin Biao and Mao to speak had been ignored. This meeting, which ended up with Lin Liguo storming off in anger, will become a major foreshadowing for our next chronological episode, which you won't want to miss.

Still, on the diplomatic front, things were looking good. The morning of the 27th, People's Daily carried an editorial called "Salute the American people who are fighting valiantly," a tribute to the anti-war movement in the United States, as well as various national liberation movements like the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets, as well as, of course, various new communist movement groups and pre-party formations inspired by Mao Zedong Thought.

That morning over breakfast, Nixon received Zhou Enlai's letter inviting Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, or Nixon himself to Beijing for talks to restore relations. Nixon then told a press conference that he wants a more normal relationship with the Chinese and I expect to visit in some capacity one day.

May Day 1971 was an interesting one because of just how many foreigners were on the roster. Half a million people filled Tiananmen Square for the usual May Day celebrations. Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk was made guest of honor for the parade. One of 2,000 foreign dignitaries invited.

But something funny happened that made many on the roster take notice. Lin Bao, vice chairman and designated successor to Mao, was late, very late. Zhou Enlai made excuses for Lin Biao, saying he hadn't been feeling well that day. Mao was vocally skeptical about this and said that Lin had always been idealistic about his health.

Near the end of the parade, Lin Bao finally arrived and sat opposite of Mao, but they ignored each other and Lin declined to give a speech. Lin, visibly nervous, stayed just long enough to be photographed, have dinner, and then left immediately without speaking to any of his comrades.

Two days later, People's Daily launched Palestine International Week with a salute to the Palestinian guerrillas. Li Xiannian led a 10,000-strong rally in support of Palestine with many Fatah, PFLP, and DFLP leaders on the Tiananmen roster.

On May 5th, the Chinese ambassadors to France and San Marino, as well as their two counterparts, signed a mutual recognition agreement. France and San Marino had maintained diplomatic relations with China since 1954, but also maintained relations with Taiwan.

This treaty would change that. And with that, yet two more European nations switched over to the One China policy and called for the People's Republic of China to replace the Republic of China's seat at the UN General Assembly.

On May 10th, two American academics arrived in Nanjing, the first to visit China in over 20 years. The team of American scientists and professors had been in Hanoi, studying US defoliant poisoning, and had come to the conclusion that America was committing war crimes by using illegal biological and chemical weapons against Vietnamese civilians and wanted to report their findings to Vietnam's ally China.

Meanwhile, in DC, it became official. Henry Kissinger officially agreed with Zhou Enlai and began mapping his itinerary. The trip, codenamed Operation Polo, was to be kept secret initially. The idea was that if the meeting ended in failure or in a deadlock, it'd be erased entirely from history and no one would ever know about it.

However, if it was a success, they would later publicize it and get the ball rolling on normalization of diplomatic relations between the US and PRC in full. Kissinger, being very serious about keeping this secret, proposed that his planned meeting with Zhou Enlai had to happen in China to stop the Pakistanis from taping it in a memo to Nixon.

On the other side, diplomacy with other states continued. Staff from the North Korean embassy visited the China-North Korea Friendship People's Commune outside Beijing and began to help locals plant crops, showing that the DPRK and China were both open to expanding joint agricultural ventures.

On May 20th, something really interesting happened. Soviet border negotiators came to Beijing and had an 11-day trip around Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jilin, and Zhejiang, meeting leaders and seeing sites.

This was extremely important because while technically the Soviets and Chinese had been on ceasefire since 1969, you know, with the border conflict and all, the Soviets were once again amassing troops and equipment on the Siberian-Hong Kong and Chinese-Mongolian border.

Chinese reconnaissance planes and US CIA spy planes noticed that in the early spring of 1971, 44 Soviet infantry divisions had moved towards China along with a large amount of T-62 tank divisions and Scud missile systems.

Most concerning, however, was the SS-12 Scaleboard nuclear missiles that were beginning to be stationed along the northeastern Sino-Soviet border. In other words, now the Soviet Union could easily nuke Beijing and Shanghai very quickly.

While the Chinese had hoped that the May 1971 friendship tour with the Soviet border negotiators might curry some favor with the Soviet military brass, the fact of the matter was that the PLA and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs came to the consensus that at this point Soviet social imperialism was still the primary contradiction against the Chinese nation.

And talking to the American imperialist, the secondary contradiction about the issue wasn't such a bad idea.

I mean, yeah, you know, 44 infantry divisions, a bunch of T-62 tanks, Scud missiles, and a bunch of nukes that could nuke the capital within minutes. Thinking you might want to put out a line to old Nixon in that case.

The next day at a meeting at the White House, President Nixon told Kissinger that he had a hunch that he could visit China, but kept him in the dark about the plans about how to do so.

Meanwhile, Zhou Enlai received American Maoist and Fanshen author William Hinton and his family at his official residence in Beijing, who had arrived yesterday at Zhou's invitation.

Zhou and Hinton briefly discussed Sino-American relations and Zhou expressed hope that soon there would be a breakthrough in friendship between the two countries.

On May 25th, the first visit by US academics to the PRC came to a close. The two biologists had toured cities and met Joan Lie and Prince Sihanouk.

On May 26, Austria and China's ambassadors to Romania signed a communique in Bucharest, establishing full diplomatic relations between Austria and China and called for the opening of embassies in each other's capitals.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, Zhou briefed the Politburo that rapprochement with the USA could enable peaceful reunification with Taiwan and prevent Soviet hegemony. Many in the Chinese government began to believe that with Vietnamization occurring in Vietnam, with American infantry troop levels dropping from 540,000 to 300,000 and America shifting their war effort towards bombing campaigns against Laos and Cambodia rather than ground operations in Vietnam, that the US was in a position of weakness, a perfect time to bring the Americans to the negotiating table.

Chinese economists also mentioned that inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War was forcing Nixon to take the US off the gold standard, which if any of you guys took AP US history or freshman college US history, you might remember that known as the Nixon shock.

Domestic anti-war protests were tearing the social fabric apart in the US and many youth in America were beginning to flirt with Maoism, Trotskyism, and other radical left-wing ideologies.

Some Chinese political analysts posited that Nixon's primary foreign policy goal despite the escalation of bombing campaigns was achieving, quote, "peace with honor," which required a gradual withdrawal that would spread out over the next few years. That wouldn't look like an outright defeat.

The Chinese defense analyst came to the conclusion that the US was desperately needing Beijing to stop fueling the North Vietnamese war machine and was looking for a diplomatic cover for an American exit.

Zhou agreed in full and, at the risk of looking like China was collaborating with their arch enemy against the nominally socialist Warsaw Pact countries, gave the green light to meet with the Americans.

The meeting continued the next day and Zhou told delegates to work on the basis of a new, more open foreign policy paradigm with all countries including Western imperialist powers. After the meeting, Zhou sent a telegram directly to Nixon recommending that Kissinger come to Beijing before the end of June and suggested that the trip be made openly.

On June 3rd, Mao made a call to Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu. Mao bluntly said that the USSR had continued to piss on our heads and told Ceausescu that he will stay firm with them even if relations worsened further with the rest of the Warsaw Pact.

The next day, Zhou met with the entire Central Committee for an extended work conference where he gave a report about the conference a few days prior with the Politburo on the possibility of Sino-American talks. His report was met with hesitant agreement. Later that afternoon, the US government replied to Zhou Enlai via Telegram proposing that Kissinger come to China on July 7th and demanded that the trip remain a secret.

On June 5th, Ceausescu and the Romanian delegation arrived in southern China and began a tour of the south, starting in Nanjing accompanied by Zhou Enlai, Zhang Chunqiao, and Xǔ Shìyǒu . Two days later, the American anti-Vietnam War activist group, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, received a government invitation to visit China.

On June 10th, the White House authorized 47 types of nonstrategic exports to China, such as agricultural machinery, consumer products, and steel.

Two days later, in an attempt to smooth out relations with the UK, Ji Pengfei, deputizing for ailing foreign minister Chen Yi, attended the newly renovated British diplomatic mission for a birthday celebration for Queen Elizabeth. How about that?

On June 20th, after a cholera outbreak hit the Republic of Chad hard, the Chinese Red Cross Society decided to demonstrate their proletarian internationalism and diplomatic acumen by donating vaccines for 200,000 people plus 1 million RMB with no expectations of the Chadian government paying them back.

On the 23rd, the 15-strong friendship delegation from the US Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars arrived in Guangzhou to commence a one-month visit.

The day after, Wu led a rally in Beijing celebrating PRC-DPRK militant friendship. Guo Moruo, Li Xiannian and the Korean ambassador all made speeches, showing that no matter their past differences around Juche and Marxism-Leninism and the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese and North Korean people would continue to stand against American imperialism and global capitalism no matter what.

That same day, however, a Canadian delegation arrived in Beijing, hosted by trade minister Bai Xiangguo.

On July 7th, 1971, the Communist Party of China celebrated its 50th anniversary with a celebration that not only included a lengthy editorial, but a large party in Beijing that included many foreign dignitaries from enemy nations, as well as leadership from both pro-Beijing and pro-Soviet communist parties. Even Trotskyist parties were invited. It was a sign that China wasn't playing around.

They wanted to show that the Communist Party of China 50 years later was still a militantly Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionist organization, but was also dedicated to peace between nations and willing to take part in new forms of statecraft and diplomacy.

A week later, Zhou Enlai and Ji Pengfei received British Trotskyist Ken Coates in Coates' capacity as head of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. Now, you might be thinking, why were Trotskyists being invited to China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution? Didn't Trotsky view Mao as a dirty, murderous Stalinist or at least China as a deformed worker state? Well, uh, yes.

But we have to remember, and I've heard this from elderly British militant tendency, uh, Socialist Workers Party UK and Socialist Workers Party USA types, that at the end of the day, the Trotskyists were still a major part of the anti-Vietnam War movement and viewed American imperialism as the greater evil than Chinese Stalinism.

And at the end of the day, anti-imperialist friendship trumped anti-Stalinism. So, I guess it makes some sense. Still surprised me a bit, though.

All right, here my friends. Here we go. I'm cracking my knuckles, refilling my coffee, and we're about to get into it.

The secret meeting that changed the world. You might want to get a refill on your drink, too. Use the bathroom and curl up with a pet cuz things are about to get way interesting for the last few minutes of this episode.

So, in the early morning hours of July 9th, 1971, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew to Islamabad, Pakistan, and boarded a plane under the cover of darkness. The American press and indeed most of the State Department and CIA were deceived into thinking that Kissinger was struck down by food poisoning.

He arrived in Beijing under the cover of darkness and immediately was greeted by a military delegation and then began the negotiations immediately in the back of the limo. Yep. They got straight to business. No small talk, no chitchat. The moment they got in the car, the negotiations began.

When they arrived in the Western Hills, Zhou Enlai greeted him, and the famous picture of Zhou and Kissinger shaking hands was snapped, and they got right down to business.

The next day, Zhou Enlai started another meeting with Kissinger and said that China had been building air raid shelters against attacks by the USA, USSR, or both.

Kissinger, despite this, told Zhou Enlai that Nixon would be willing to support a policy statement that there are not two Chinas and that Taiwan is in fact a part of China.

Zhou Enlai surprisingly said that he saw no great importance in the China UN seat and wouldn't take it unless it represented all of China, including Taiwan.

Kissinger replied that Nixon was uniquely positioned to throttle the Taiwan independence movement because he couldn't stand to be attacked from the right. The question of Taiwan was tabled and Kissinger and Zhou began to talk about Vietnam.

During the conversations, Kissinger expressed openness to ending the war in Vietnam and pulling out all American personnel by sea, land, and air, all by gradually. Over a Beijing roast duck dinner at Quanjude on Qianmen Street. Sounds good to me.

Zhou Enlai asked provocatively if Kissinger had heard of the Cultural Revolution. Kissinger tried to avoid the subject, but Zhou pressed on and debriefed Kissinger on the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to the present day.

Kissinger repeatedly gave vague responses and kept trying to redirect the conversation back to the question of the wars in Indochina. But Zhou kept poking Kissinger.

Kissinger then finally replied, "We have uh we have not had the benefits of the Cultural Revolution which the prime minister describes right now. Uh we have a large somewhat undisciplined and uh with respect to publicity not always reliable bureaucracy. A bureaucracy which, as you found out in Warsaw, operates in a very formalistic manner. Therefore, anything which goes through regular diplomatic channels goes through a very cumbersome bureaucratic process and uh we cannot guarantee that it will be fully protected from publicity."

Translated from Kissinger realpolitik speech, at least what I, I Drew Smith think he's trying to say without offending Zhou is uh that he:

I'm not going to debate Maoist ideology with you, but speaking of smashing bureaucracies, the US government is a leaky, useless mess that ruins everything it touches. That is why I snuck into your country in secret. And that is why you and I must handle all future negotiations directly, bypassing my own government's official channels.

Zhou and Kissinger in the end ended up agreeing. Bureaucracy sucks, albeit they agreed about it for very different reasons.

Then Zhou got straight to the point. "Mr. Secretary, I want President Nixon to visit next May." Kissinger immediately agreed, but proposed an earlier visit to get it done before the next presidential election campaign.

After lunch, Zhou excused himself to attend a preparatory meeting of sponsoring countries for the Asian African table tennis friendly invitational tournament. While watching the game, Zhou stepped away to finalize a schedule for a simultaneous joint announcement of Kissinger's trip for Time magazine and US broadsheets.

Zhou then proposed setting up discreet communications via embassies in Paris as opposed to Canada, which he felt would be too obvious.

Meanwhile, while Kissinger was continuing to talk with other Chinese officials and Zhou was meeting with the Ping Pong athletes across town, Yao Wenyuan addressed a massive rally in Tiananmen Square commemorating the 10th anniversary of the PRC-DPRK friendship treaty and attacked aggressive US imperialism with Kissinger only a few kilometers away.

Tiananmen Square was filled with hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, peasants, and soldiers waving the Little Red Book and holding up pictures of Mao shouting "Down with the United States. Victory to the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Kampuchean people."

After six meeting sessions totaling 17 long hours and lots of Beijing roast duck, Kissinger left Beijing and was flown back to Pakistan with journalists none the wiser. __

Hope you are all doing well. I know I am. Um, since we last spoke, oh my goodness, so much has gone on. Um, October, I must say, was one of the best months of my entire life so far. If not, dude, I might say it was the best month ever.

I went on this amazing road trip through Gansu, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia. And it could only be described as nothing short of spectacular.

I saw so much natural beauty. I met so many amazing people from seven different ethnic groups. Had some amazing food. Uh, saw some great history. Uh I spent most of it like really kind of exploring like the Western Xia dynasty and learning more about the history of Islam in China.

However, it’s really unfortunate there just was not much enough time to do local research about the cultural revolution and everyone else that I was with just, you know, they weren't interested.

But, you know, I really wasn't there for research. I was having way too much fun to be honest and seeing just some sights and sounds of the frontiers and margins of China that just, you know, you most people will never get to see.

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend if you ever can to just disappear into the Chinese countryside for a while. if you ever can do it, no matter what part of China, and just just really get to know the Chinese rural working class and the farmers and the minority nationalities because they are legitimately some of the most amazing people in the world.

Also, I am now officially married. Yes, that's right. I am now a happy hubby. Not just in spirit, but on paper. Guo Youkun and Andrew Smith are now officially in accordance with the laws of the People's Republic of China and Shaanxi Province, husband and wife.

Uh what a feeling I must say. I mean, I will say this, you know, it really hasn't changed that much because we've been cohabitating for so long and uh not much else has really changed materially just legally. You know, I've um you know, I've called her the misses for so long. Um and she's called me hubby for so long that you know, it's not not much really. It's it's just a it's now a matter of paperwork.

Um yeah, actually, I kind of take that back. I've noticed definitely a change in some ways. uh like I feel uh both of us feel like more uh initiative around certain things like household stuff, miscellaneous duties and uh we definitely I think there is a little bit of us that feels more secure in the relationship. I don't know y'all in the audience who are married y'all feel me, right? I can't really put it into words, but anybody who's listening who is married uh will understand what I mean.

Um I also got to have lunch and had tea with Fred Engst uh aka Yang Heping, nephew of William Hinton and son of Erwin Engst and Joan Hinton. Uh yeah, he was in town for the unveiling of a statue of his parents here in Xi’an. And guess what? he came and knocking on my door because he's a fan of the podcast.

So anyways, it was great to chop it up, hear his perspective on a lot of things and uh talk with him about the city of Xi’an, how it's changed since he was a kid because he and I both have a deep love for the city. And um he will be appearing on the podcast uh later onwards when we do our special episode about expats, uh defectors and tourists and other sorts of foreign friends in China during the cultural revolution. So look on out for that.

All right, my friends. So, with that out of the way, let's get into the year 1970. Yes, we're doing an entire year in this episode. Um, we're we're kind of switching to that format. Uh, so, uh, you know, for various reasons, but, uh, trust me, you guys are going to love this episode.

All right, so let's set the scene. It's a frigid, cold New Year's Day in Beijing. A new decade of hope and excitement where new possibilities seem to be endless after the consolidation of the victory of the 9th Party Congress and reconstitution of the party on several levels. All newspapers issued a joint New Year editorial usher in the great 1970s which trumpeted the quote volcanoes erupting and crowns falling and signals that capitalism was irretrievably in decline.

The editorial, which I honestly recommend uh all comrades study, said that Brezhnev is doing even worse than Khrushchev and had put the USSR on the road to total collapse, which you know, considering how the Soviet economy was grinding into a deep stagnation and was developing in a highly lopsided way, you know, it wasn't entirely false. It wasn't just propaganda. And indeed, 15 years later, the Kosygin reforms would come to their final fruition with the disastrous and ultimately Soviet Union ending in perestroika reforms.

So it was uh very uh you know a lot of people say that at that point the Chinese were uh just giving wishful thinking but it's pretty uh pretty much there's a lot of foreshadowing in what they say.

Um while it is definitely true that the Sino-Soviet border conflict had ended with a truce in autumn of 1969, the threat of Soviet invasion still called for a strengthening of the party building process by reconstituting party committees on all levels and reconsolidating the people's militia on a red leftist line so as to once again they love saying this drown the imperialists and socialist social imperialists in a sea of people's war in the event of an invasion.

Like I said, it's a slogan we hear again and again we hear it across the year 1970.

It also meant that unfortunately a lot of decision making on many levels disproportionately was left in the hands of the top brass of the People's Liberation Army and its Central Military Commission ostensibly in the name of national defense against American imperialism and Soviet revisionism.

Indeed, the next day, Soviet diplomats returned to Beijing ahead of the resumption of border negotiations. This time, their arrival did not set off any fear of a nuclear crisis. And indeed, there was even a cordial sense to the meeting with uh Soviet and Chinese attendees referring to each other once again as comrade and both paying tribute to Lenin together in the first significant way since the 1963 and 1965 polemics back and forth between the CPC and CPSU.

After a few days, progress was made. The ceasefire armistice was extended and the two sides agreed to meet once again at a later date at either a party level or national government level.

The last day of negotiations uh for the peace though were quite literally rattled. However, on the night of January 5th, a huge earthquake hit central Yunnan at 7.7 on the Richter scale, it destroyed 300,000 buildings and buried tens of thousands of people alive with over or uh 10,000 people confirmed dead immediately and hundreds of thousands more severely or permanently injured.

Help had to arrive from Kunming and Beijing with thousands of party cadres, revolutionary worker Congress activists, barefoot doctors and volunteer staff pouring into the affected counties with crucially needed supplies and medicines and mobile surgery stations. Waving the Little Red Book, these barefoot doctors and party members declared that it was Mao Zedong Thought that drove them to selflessly and tirelessly work to rescue the people and comfort grieving families without hesitation or want of extra compensation.

Again, like I like to say, just because the Red Guard and rebel movements were essentially over and the PLA was highly in control of society doesn't mean that, you know, there still wasn't a great revolution within the minds, actions, and cultures of everyday people. Um, it was still, you know, in some ways the Cultural Revolution was still a revolution of everyday culture and interpersonal relationships.

Well, anyways, after the mixed success of negotiations with the Soviets, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to turn their attention to the Americans.

On 7th of January in Warsaw, PRC diplomats asked the US embassy for a meeting. The last talks were back in February of '69, but ultimately failed. China's chargé d'affaires in Warsaw arrived by limousine at the US embassy where a short amicable meeting set up formal talks for the 20th of the month.

On the morning of the 20th in Warsaw, top Chinese and American diplomats held their first bilateral meeting for over since 1969. They talked for about an hour, mostly about Taiwan, but eh no major breakthroughs came.

Then um on January 24th, Vice Chairman Lin Biao warned a meeting in the Great Hall of the People again of a nationwide conspiracy by a May 16th group and called for them to be exposed. Jiang Qing and Huang Yongsheng echoed Lin's fervor to once again defeat the new May 16th conspiracy.

Jiang claimed that she had not slept in 3 days working on the case. And all I got to ask, you know, I'm just going to be real. Are we really doing this again, guys? You know, I've already discussed the May 16th conspiracy in early episodes and showed that, you know, it was real. It happened, but there was a massive exaggeration of it and the party center greatly overestimated the size and influence of the original May 16th conspiracy. So like I'm kind of feeling like ‘we bringing this back for real? Come on y'all. Come on.’

Well, Mao took this time to really make a great point though. He said, quote, "We have won a great victory, but the defeated class will still struggle. These people are still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory, not even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance."

This quote reminded the party in the masses that in the state that the revolutionary transformation of society and mass criticism of the capitalist roaders and the state apparatus was far from over and that the Cultural Revolution still had yet to achieve absolute and final victory.

Because of this, this quote was often repeated in local editorials and dazibao around factories and neighborhoods when debates around certain local policies or the decisions of certain politicians became points of contention, especially when there were claims like that the May 16th conspiracy was once again rearing its ugly head.

However, things got really intense on February 5th, 1970 when Zhou Enlai sent out a central directive that called for a massive fight against graft, embezzlement, profiteering and extravagance and waste by local revolutionary committees.

The campaign was to become the One Strike Three Anti campaign. Striking once against corruption and counterrevolutionary activity and striking three times against embezzlement, profiteering and extravagant waste.

Now this, uh, the One Strike Three Anti campaign is one of those things where one really divides into two. The thing is there was a legitimate mobilized mass movement around these things and there was also a lot of top-down brutal imprisonments and executions orchestrated by the PLA leaders of the revolutionary committees in order to settle scores against former Red Guard and rebel leaders or to execute people who no longer served them in some sort of way.

So before I get into the further narrative or chronological aspect of this episode, uh let's park things right here cuz this this campaign, this One Strike Three Anti campaign. We really need to address it in a critical but nuanced way. Things started on a local level with quite a bang. 6 days later in Ningxia province, uh, middle school math teacher Zhū Shǒuzhōng, who was very pro-Liu Shaoqi, but who had overall been neutralized on a political and social level, was arrested and summarily executed without trial.

Suicide spiked among academics especially especially in my research when I was going through uh some of the like university chronicles and archives at Fudan University in Shanghai, Xi’an Jaotong University in Xi’an and Shaanxi Normal University here in Xian as well as many teachers at high ranking middle schools and high schools in Beijing. Yeah, there was a lot of suicides across March.

Reports flowed from across the country that the campaign was causing waves in society. A mass public trial in Wǔtái Shān Stadium in Nanjing was a site where 11 people were sentenced to death and shot immediately for various crimes of corruption and other financial misgivings. A month later, a similar mass trial at the same stadium ended up with 12 more counterrevolutionaries publicly shot.

In Gansu province, authorities calculated that 225,000 people had been brought into police stations or in front of discipline committees by the Three Antis campaign, including 169,000 capitalist roaders.

Reports like this, however, did cause some concern in Beijing. No doubt a central directive told authorities to avoid forced confessions and rely on education and unity-struggle-unity when investigating the supposed May 16th group.

Um, one thing that really caught my eye and that didn't come across in my research for the uh, Guangzhou episode that I did a few months back was that on April 1st, Radio Guangdong announced a crackdown on a supposed anarchist organization, an anarchist organization calling itself the World Freedom Party made up of ex-Red Guards who had supposedly uh attacked at police stations with firebombings.

This really shocked me. Um, and I'd like to dig more into this and see if there was an actual organization or if this was a fabrication by revisionists who had been rehabilitated and elected into the provincial revolutionary committee. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.

This really like made me go whoa. Well, across its entire duration, the One Strike Three Antis campaign saw uh something like 284,800 arrests with many executed and 1.9 million people officially criticized for various crimes from February to November 1970.

The One Strike Three Antis campaign did not have a definitive end uh as it came to conclusions at various times across different provinces but it was generally over by the end of the year in the capital. The proceedings were largely over by summer of 1970 and had petered out by uh the time that the November 1st official report put an indefinite pause on the campaigns.

Although what's interesting is that the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee spearheaded by Wang Hongwen uh and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and the Shanghai Municipal People's Militia continued the campaign on a local level as a series of quote unquote ‘Red Typhoons’ in which militiamen teams of workers would take part in raids around the city looking for lumpenproletarian activity and corruption by workplace managers.

So, huh, how about that? And uh this is something that I want to make a point about when it comes to the One Strike Three Anti's campaign. It definitely had a brutal negative bureaucratic character that we see in mainstream scholarly works and in the archives, but I want to say we also see a positive mass character.

If you uh if any of you have read in uh Maria Macciocchi's uh work Daily Life in Revolutionary China or in other eyewitness testimonies such as the short book Philosophy is No Mystery, you'll see in these works that the people really did seriously take the calls to uncover wastefulness and extravagance and many debates on how to minimize uh such things in industry and commerce were very fierce.

In fact, I personally know an older Chinese gentleman who as a teenager joined a squadron of youth in Zhengzhou who were ordered to patrol business districts of the city wielding baseball bats and inspecting shops and markets to make sure that the shopkeepers and small business owners were not engaging in embezzlement or money laundering or wasting important materials.

If they uncovered evidence of such, they'd give the culprit a beatdown and then drag him to the local police station or people's militia garrison for them to be handled accordingly.

Uh so would I say the One Strike Three Antis campaign was an outright negative thing as say as like you know the cleansing of the class ranks campaign. Well, I can't say I would consider myself an enthusiastic supporter of it, but honestly, I don't I would say it wasn't as bad as the cleansing of the class ranks campaign. The death toll wasn't as high, and although the amount of people investigated and arrested was very high, a greater amount of people were absolved.

Um, a lot of people had their charges dropped compared to the CCRC of 68 and 69. And uh, there also seems to be a lot more of a democratic or mass character to it than the CCRC did. So, you know what they say, two things can be true at once. And you know, the laws of dialectics, one divides into two.

One thing that really advanced during 1970 was China's international relations. On February 2nd, Zhou Enlai chaired a Politburo meeting to set up Chinese positions for a second bilateral meeting with the US. Uh, as you know, they were planning for February 20th in Warsaw. On February 12th, Mao approved the Politburo's suggestion to tell the Americans that the Chinese government would be willing to receive a special envoy from Nixon.

On February 20th, the Chinese and American delegations flew into Warsaw where diplomat Lei Yang told US Ambassador Walter Stoessel that the PRC government would be willing to receive a high-level American visit. Lei Yang also warned that relations with the US would not fundamentally improve, however, until all American troops leave Taiwan and the Strait. The meeting due to this ended yet again in a deadlock impasse with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saying to Nixon, "Don't hold any higher meetings with the PRC without further preconditions for Mao." But I'll get back to US-China relations in 1970 in just a few minutes. So let's get on with our chronology and get back to March 1970.

So on March 7th, Mao wrote to Zhou Enlai from Wuhan suggesting that it was time to convene a Fourth National People's Congress and therefore thereby revise a new state constitution. Mao had been eager to reestablish the National People's Congress and revise the national constitution of the People's Republic of China. But there was a major problem: the question of the head of state of the People's Republic of China.

Now before the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi had been president of the People's Republic of China while Chairman Mao was Chairman of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. So, you know, and the president of the People's Republic of China was just technically a ceremonial head of state. After Liu's ouster, of course, the position had been vacant and its duties divided between Mao and Zhou.

Many in the government like Lin Biao and Chen Boda, however, wanted to bring back an official head of state position and referred to it as the state chairman. The state chairman would be a very powerful position. According to their plan, it would officially consolidate the office of president of the PRC, chairman of the Central Military Commission, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and take on many of the duties that at that point were relegated to the office of premier. It would also expand the ability of the executive branch to be able to issue executive orders and official decrees much more easily than before 1966.

It would also make it so that the chairman of the party or the vice chairman of the party all but had to be the state chairman. Now, I don't know about you guys, but this sounds like a very autocratic position to me. One that if it were to fall into the wrong hands could cause a lot of trouble. Mao shared that sentiment. He completely opposed the idea of the creation of a state chairman even if it meant him being elected as such. Instead, Mao said that the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress should act as ceremonial head of state.

On the 9th in Suzhou, Lin Biao learned that Mao was against the idea of the state chairmanship.

Uh Lin, although initially one of the biggest proponents of the idea, then automatically—I, you know, because Lin just did things like this—told General Huang Yongsheng that yes, he agreed with Mao. Uh yeah, 'I'm against that idea.' Uh yeah, Lin being Lin. 'I was against that idea all along. And what are you talking about? I was never for the state chairmanship, right?' Well, we'll see later on in this episode how that goes.

On March 15th, Mao set aside the debate about the state chairmanship and the new constitution and sent out an order to curb the factional fighting that, much to my shock, was still lingering in remote parts of the country since the 9th Congress had officially brought the rebels and conservatives into an uneasy alliance.

Andrew G. Walder states in his text, Agents of Disorder, quote, "The year 1970 marked the end of an era of violent warfare. Of the four clashes recorded in the annals for that year, two were in Xinjiang, one in Sichuan and one in Zhejiang. The last recorded factional battle, leaving five dead in August of 1970, occurred in a county that spanned a chain of islands populated by fishermen off the coast of Zhejiang."

So, huh, how about that? I had no idea there were any factional battles past 1969, but there turns out there were four factional battles during that year and there were no more after that. Um the next day the Politburo accepted a set of principles for a new state constitution drafted by a small group of four radicals and Jiang Qing. The following morning a work conference started the planning of the structure of the new National People's Congress and Mao once again refused to accept the role of state chairman.

The Chinese revolutionaries had a lot to juggle during the second half of March. Though this time also on the international side, foreign affairs are a fickle thing, especially when you're trying to maintain a socialist state that's in the midst of an internal revolutionary movement.

On March 18th, anti-communist military officers and politicians led by Lon Nol enacted a coup d'état in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with right-wing mobs being whipped up to destroy Vietnamese and Chinese families' homes. Prince Norodom Sihanouk fled to Beijing and declared over radio that he wanted a united front with the Khmer Rouge rebels waging protracted people's war in Cambodia. On March 21st, Zhou Enlai received a memo from the Pakistan government that US President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger were offering a secret direct telephone line to him.

Sadly, one week later, one of China's most steadfast American friends, Anna Louise Strong, whose 1946 interview of Mao is included in his Selected Works, died in a hospital in Beijing and was given a state funeral. She is currently buried in Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing alongside many other great communist and patriotic Chinese revolutionaries.

On April 4th, Zhou Enlai arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea to mend relations, which had been, to say the least, strained since 1966 when Red Guards deemed the Workers' Party of Korea chairman Kim Il-sung a fat revisionist, and border skirmishes between the PLA and KPA troops occurred. Although, unlike the Soviet and Chinese ones, they didn't actually have any casualties. They just exchanged gunfire.

Um so that was during the Sino-Soviet border conflict of '69. At a rally of hundreds of thousands in Pyongyang, Zhou Enlai gave greetings to the Workers' Party and Korean People's Army and gave solidarity to South Koreans under the dire misery of fascist rule. After several days of hours-long meetings and solidarity conferences, Zhou Enlai flew home with DPRK-PRC relations once again friendly, at least ostensibly.

On April 4th, Mao left Wuhan for Changsha where he had a brief meeting with provincial revolutionary committee vice chairman and central committee representative for Changsha, Hua Guofeng. The meeting was cordial and Mao was optimistic about Hua's work for the people of Hunan and respected his ability to unite rebel, conservative, and ultra-leftist factions within the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee.

But well, let me tell y'all something. Watch out for Hua later on in this series. He's not quite what he seems. And when Chairman Mao dies in 1976, a lot of good comrades learned that the hard way.

On the 11th, as Mao was touring Changsha with Hua, Lin Biao sent Mao a note begging him to accept the position of state chairman. I thought, wait, Lin, I thought you said you were against it all along. Well, whatever.

Well, anyways, Lin in his note said very strangely, if I add, that the psychology of the people requires that Chairman Mao become state chairman. Mao laughed at the note, calling it absurd and dogmatic, and promptly tossed it in the trash.

On April 22nd, 1970, a momentous occasion occurred for communists around the world. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's 100th birthday.

Local and national papers around China carried a whole front-page image of Lenin with a quotation by Stalin to celebrate Lenin's centenary. And a huge anti-Soviet social imperialism parade was held in Tiananmen Square with people holding up massive portraits of Lenin, declaring that the Communist Party of China had reclaimed Lenin from the Soviets. Major newspapers carried joint editorials on how the Soviet Union had abandoned Leninism for revisionism and social imperialism.

2 days later on April 24th, the Chinese people made history. From his villa in Changsha, Mao telephoned a control room in Beijing filled with statues of the Chairman and told PLA technicians that it was time for liftoff. China would be launching its first satellite on a Long March One rocket. The satellite Dongfanghong I, or The East Is Red One, successfully launched into orbit. It broadcasted a loop of its namesake revolutionary song with a lullaby-like chime. In fact, let's listen to the historic sound right now.

And with that distant quiet anthem, the Chinese space program was born and China entered the space age alongside the USA and USSR.

Pretty amazing for a country that 21 years prior was one of the most war-ravaged, famine-ravaged, naturally devastated and poverty-stricken countries in the world.

On April 27th, Mao returned to Beijing for the first time in over 6 months when he and most senior leaders had dispersed in anticipation of a Soviet strike.

Mal received the pullet bureau in his bedroom and once again many of the Politburo begged him to assume the position of state chairman. Rolling his eyes he once again declined and told them to drop the matter and maintain the chairman of the standing committee of the national people's congress as China's official head of state and furthermore demanded that nobody nominate him for that position either.

Few days later, well, Mayday 1970, International Workers Day, one of my favorite holidays and the most sacred day in the calendar of the International Proletariat. The East is Red one satellite passed overhead while the usual annual Mayday crowd gathered in Tiananmen Square and Mao met with foreign dignitaries.

After the parade and during the afterparty banquet, Mao discussed with various heads of state, ambassadors, and leaders of various pro-Beijing anti-revisionist parties about the question of continuing possible negotiations with the USA.

However, two weeks later, the Chinese government decided to postpone the next round of Sino US talks, which had been scheduled for the 20th of that month on account of the American invasion of Cambodia and the escalation of aggression against Laos and Vietnam. And this I love. This I love right here.

In response, on May 20th, when the meeting was supposed to happen, the Communist Party of China held a massive rally against US imperialism in solidarity with the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Palestine. Almost 1 million people attended with Mao waving to the crowds on the rostrum, declaring, "People of the world, unite and defeat the US aggressors and all their running dogs." 3 days later he published an editorial of the same name in the People's Daily and Peking Review which was published in multiple languages and distributed around the world.

And what's interesting to me is that despite the anti-Soviet demonstration a month earlier and repeated almost daily denunciations of the Soviet Union in the Chinese press and the fact that the Soviet armed forces were continuing to build up troops and aircraft on the uh Sino Mongolian border, the Soviets actually sent a delegation to this rally and stood alongside Mao on the rostrum. I mean, I I guess since it was an anti-US pro-Vietnam rally, it kind of makes sense. And you know, the Chinese were hoping to uh you know, maybe by inviting the Soviets that to an anti-American event that that might ease tensions further.

Then in June, on June 5th to be exact, something very interesting happened. Now, a lot of you guys know that one of the constant criticisms of the cultural revolution was that the schools were closed, that there was no education during that time, and you know, nobody was allowed to go to college. Well, on June 5th, Mao reviewed a report on the prospect of fully reopening universities and rehabilitating academics, even those who he said were really impossible. The report stated that the old university system must be destroyed, but that does not mean losing the scientific advances made under it.

On the 27th, a central directive let Qinghua and Peking universities Qinghua and Beida start enrolling new students for the first time since the cultural revolution had begun. A pilot group of 40 4,100 students were selected by cadres taking in account to ability class and practical experience as well as dedication to Marxism Leninism. As per Mao's often repeated preferences, the courses taught were going to be shorter and peasants were going to return to their home units after graduating.

um you know as the um Marxist Leninist Maoist Revolutionary Study Group pointed out in their summation of the cultural revolution and I'm going to quote it at length because I think it's great. Um quote

“In study and work individual and collective creativity was encouraged. While it was understood that students had different abilities, creativity was not seen as only individual. Rather the view was that it comes from combined intelligence and cooperative efforts of many people. Discourse of study and work graduated middle school students ready to contribute to socialist society."

"Of the 1970 graduates of one Beijing middle school, 60% started working in factories, 30% went to the countryside to work in small factories and health clinics, schools or in the fields and 10% joined the army and some went into study at universities or technical universities."

"When Qinghua University in Beijing reopened in June 1970 under the worker peasant soldier student study program, 45% of the students were selected by factories, 40% by the rural communes and 15% by the PLA. Before the cultural revolution, 60% of students were of non-working class origin.”

And uh just an aside Drew's note, when Qinghua reopened that month, only seven, count them, seven students in the entire university were accepted from bourgeois, landlord, or petty bourgeois backgrounds.

So yeah, anyways, to continue the quote from the ML-MLM RSG, “it was expected that these worker-peasant-soldier students would be more mature, more motivated, and have greater knowledge of the pressing problems of Chinese society. For students who hadn't graduated from senior middle school, a special half-year course was provided before they began their regular program at Beijing University.”

So, as we can see, the new university system was going to be built on a completely new basis of actual Marxist pedagogy that would transform the people and the nation, not just, you know, replicating the western or even old Stalin era Soviet university systems.

On July 1st, all major newspapers shared an editorial to mark the Communist Party's 49th anniversary. Communists should be the advanced elements of the proletariat. It's a really interesting article and I think uh I really honestly think all communists should study it to be honest. It might be good for comrades to study it as part of like a study group or when uh doing research about party building in one's own country.

A month later on August 1st, you know, Army Day in China, Zhou Enlai and Chen Boda attended a Ministry of Defense reception marking the PLA's 43rd anniversary where, oddly enough, a Soviet armed forces delegation was also present, just like that at the May 20th anti-US imperialism rally.

Um the next day Zhou Enlai greeted a delegation from the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, South Yemen, and accompanied them from the airport. Hundreds of thousands of Beijing lined the route to greet them.

Mao also met with them and told the delegation that the USSR was going to try to use economic aid to control them, but said that China's aid would be unconditional.

In the conversation with Mao, however, what's interesting is that the South Yemenis asked why, um you know they had defeated the British, why hadn't the Chinese defeated the British when it came to Hong Kong? And Mao simply said he lets them keep Hong Kong for now because it's useful as a trade and diplomatic outpost.

Then on August 13th, in a meeting about revising the state constitution, Air Force commander Wu Faxian tried to add a reference to Mao's genius guiding China. And Chen Boda agreed. Now notice this is interesting because we're talking not about the party constitution. We're talking about the country's constitution.

Wu Faxian obliquely accused Zhang Chunqiao, who opposed the change, of trying to use Mao's great humility to sideline Mao Zedong Thought. Chen Boda invited Wu Faxian to discuss their class with Zhang Chunqiao earlier uh and asked Huang Yongsheng to brief Ye Qun on what had happened.

The next day, Chen Boda and Huang Yongsheng arrived at the state constitution drafting committee armed with quotes to defend references to Chairman Mao's great genius. Zhang Chunqiao let the genius draft pass. Uh but Lin actually correctly predicted that this would be a big issue at the upcoming central committee plenum in Lushan.

August 18th, Edgar Snow, who had been invited to China for the first time since 1960 on Ma's initiative, met with Zhou Enlai and conducted an interview. In it, Zhou Enlai said that he felt that soon the time would be right for true friends of China to enter the country. And indeed, a year indeed a year later, a large amount of friendship tours of China began to be offered by Chinese travel agencies.

All right, now we're getting to the big part. Um we are going to be discussing probably the most important part of this of uh 1970. And uh this this event is why this episode is going to be a bit long. So uh you may want to get some snacks and a drink.

So, if you guys know where Lushan is, it's in Jiangxi Province. It's where the 1962 Lushan conference happened. Um, and on August 19th, Mao arrived at Lushan and ascended the mountain. On the 22nd, Zhou Enlai held an expanded politburo meeting in the evening during which he affirmed that yes, Mao did not want to serve as state chairman. Despite uh telling the leaders that he wouldn't, Lin Biao volunteered to address the central committee plenum's opening session on the 23rd.

So on August 23rd, 1970, Mao presiding over the plenum told Lin Bao not to criticize Zhang Chunqiao by name when speaking on the genius issue. As the plenum opened, top leaders followed Mao into the hall, waving the little red book. The plenum's agenda comprised mainly of the state constitution, the economy, and war preparedness. Mao had called for the meeting to be one of unity and victory.

In an hour-long speech, Lin Bao stood by enshrining Mao Zedong Thought in the state constitution as the nation's guiding principle. Lin continually labeled Mao a genius and navigated the state chairmanship issue with the formulation of head of the proletarian dictatorship. Kang then made the next speech along similar lines to Lin's. He explicitly stated that the people wanted Mao to be state chairman.

Then Lin Bao's wife Ye Qun and then of course Chen Boda visited Li Zuopeng, Wu Faxian and Qiu Huizuo to discuss pushing the genius of Mao rather than the state chairmanship. Chen Yi asked Wang Dongxing whether uh whether to self-criticize at the plenum and Wang told him no. Zhang Chunqiao will be in the firing line instead.

Wu Faxian got the politburo to agree to put the distribution and discussion of Lin Biao's unexpected speech at the top of the plenum agenda. And on Zhou Enlai's orders, Wang Dongxing checked with Mao whether to distribute Lin Biao's speech. Mao just shrugged and said, "I have no opinion, so print it."

The next day, on the 24th, Wang Dongxing printed a set of Engels, uh, Lenin and Mao quotes compiled overnight by Chen Boda as a Marxist basis for labeling Mao a genius. The central committee members listened twice to a tape of Lin Biao's speech from the day before before breaking into regional workshop sessions.

The North China group was led by Chen Boda and Chen obliquely attacked Lin Biao for denying the existence of Chairman Mao's genius and that he was supposedly insulting and debasing Mao.

Chen alleged that some counterrevolutionaries jumped for joy on hearing that Mao would not be state chairman and Guō Mòruò supported him on that. Chen Yi said that Mao was the best person to be state chairman and that his genius is a historical fact, which had some in the party had conspired to deny.

Wang Dongxing told the North China group also that his uh military unit 8341 wanted to wanted Mao to serve as state chairman.

In the Southwest group, Wu Faxian used Lin Biao's forward to the little red book to make his own defense of the theory of genius. And in the margins of the meeting, Wu Faxian told two delegates that he was criticizing Zhang and had discussed doing so with Ye Qun.

Li Zuopeng warned the South Central group of the existence of a wind against Marxism Leninism and against Mao and Lin Bao themselves. In Zhang Chunqiao's East China group Wang Hongwen sided with Zhang's uh critics actually and told that he supported the theory of genius.

One cadre in the East China group told Zhang Chunqiao that he should be sent for labor reform for denying Mao's genius. Zhang turned pale but said that he was simply opposing dogmatism, not opposing chairman Mao.

The next day, the North China group sent a briefing around the plenum calling the deniers of the genius theory reactionaries, traitors, and careerists just like Liu Shaoqi.

The briefing told central committee members to overcome the efforts of swindlers and make Mao state chairman and Lin Bao his deputy. Mao received the briefing and a petition from central committee members asking him to reconsider his decision not to serve as state chairman. Jiang Qing brought Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan to visit Mao and complained about Chen Boda.

She accused Chen of trying to drag out Zhang. Mao scolded Wong Dongxing for failing to quash the state chairmanship issue, even after sending him to block it at the politburo way back in March.

Mao then summoned the politburo at short notice and told them all angrily that if they want him to die soon, well, that's the best that making him state chairman would be the best way to do it, accusing Chen Boda of launching a surprise attack when the state chairman issue was settled. Mao ironically proposed Chen take the job. “If you want a state chairmanship so much, why don't you take the job, Chen?”

Mao told the leaders to never raise the state chairmanship issue again. He froze distribution of Lin Biao's plenary speech and told everyone that that day's meeting was over. The next day, Mao suspended the regional groups. He called up Chen Boda into his office for criticism and told him to relay it to Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo.

Upon when meeting with the politburo, Mao resoundedly rejected the four great titles bestowed upon him by Lin Biao and Lin's slogan that his sentences are worth 10,000s from others.

Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng oversaw Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo in self-criticism sessions later that day and as they did and then the next day generals Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo attended individual criticism sessions once again with Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng.

Chen asked Wu if it was true that on the 8th uh on the 13th of August that he had accused Zhang Chunqiao of using uh Mao's great humility as an cover to attack Mao.

On August 29th, Lin Biao chaired the politburo. Zhou Enlai blamed Chen Boda for derailing the entire plenary meeting over the state chairmanship idea and the whole genius thing. Chen self-criticized saying that he realized now that it was against chairman Mao's wishes. Wu and Wang also self-criticized.

As the conference went on, tensions continued to grow and criticisms continued to fly. Mao annotated Chen Boda's genius briefing, repudiating the quotation's significance and called Chen's reputation as a theoretician "hollow." He said Chen Boda had never cooperated with him and even conspired with Peng Dehuai when he and Mao clashed at Lushan 11 years prior.

On the 31st, Huang Yongsheng arrived in Lushan. Having originally planned to miss the plenum, aware of his allies' gaff, he visited Mao and told him that he plans to study well. On September 1st, after deleting a perhaps slightly ironic reference to Lin Biao from yesterday's disquisition on Chen Boda, Mao discusses his next speech with Zhou Enlai.

Then Mao distributed the comments about Chen Boda's factionalism and theoretical ignorance to central committee members as simply "some views of mine." Later in the afternoon, Zhou met with Chen. Afterwards, the politburo, having read Ma's blistering "some views of mine," met to criticize Chen.

On the second, Lin Biao chaired a session for top leaders to self-criticize for their part in the Lushan Plenum's stark deviation from what Mao had attended.

On the fourth, Mao deferred that the Lushan plenum is not closed until the 6th. He barred Chen from remaining sessions, but said that he does not need to be purged.

On the 5th, Chen met with Mao and requests to quit politics and work as a simple farm laborer. Instead, Mao instructed him to just simply unite with colleagues. But as we can see, the damage was done.

On that same day, Ye Qun visited with Jiang Qing to make peace after Jiang had objected to Ye's associates attacking Zhang Chunqiao. Jiang accepted the apology and shook Ye's hand.

Jiang Qing said that Chen and Zhang are just literary people scorning each other and said that at the end of the day, she still respected Lin Biao. In a later meeting with Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng and Huang Yongsheng, Mao said that leaders need to read more Marxist books to understand theory.

Mao also added a line about convening the National People's Congress again to a plenum communique draft then approved it for group discussion. Lin Biao chaired the next day on the 6.

Lin Bao chaired the close of the Lushan plenum. Leaders passed a communique which said that the whole party had achieved unprecedented unity.

When Lin Biao invited Mao to address the meeting, Mao declined and asked Zhou Enlai instead. Zhou uh simply uh repeated the points from the communique that had just passed. And with that, the Lushan conference ended.

But let me tell you, it was, as you guys can see, it was uh not exactly uh a great a great victory for party unity. Um, in fact, all historians pretty much say that this is the point, this is the point where Mao and Lin begin to fracture and become, you know, their differences become irreconcilable and this begins the slow buildup to the Lin Biao incident in September of 1971.

Um, Jin Qiu says in her book, the uh the culture of power, the Lin Biao incident and the cultural revolution, um, I'm going to quote from her. She says,

"According to the written record of Lin's speech at the opening session, Lin emphasized the importance of the new constitutions confirming Mao's position as a great leader, head of state, and supreme commander. "

"By saying that Lin revealed his opinion that there should be a state chairmanship and that Mao should hold the office. Lin also suggested that the constitution acknowledged that Mao Zedong Thought is at the guiding principle of the country. "

"Further he stated that it could not be denied that Mao was a genius” which was, as I said before, a reply to Zhang Chunqiao's previous speech at the constitution preparation meetings.

Lin however did not mention Zhang's name as Mao requested. delegates received Lin's speech favorably, especially those who knew of the conflict between Lin's group and the former cultural revolution group.

Most of the delegates had, and this is important y'all, most of the delegates had suffered during the red guard stage of the Cultural Revolution and still resented the treatment they had received.

When they learned that Zhang Chunqiao was the individual Lin was criticizing for opposing the idea that Mao was a genius, many of them took pleasure in Zhang's misfortune. So, a lot of uh a lot of these guys who uh had been toppled and then rehabilitated were like, "All right, if we dogmatically claim that Mao is a genius, if we all side with Lin Biao, this is our chance to get back at the Maoist left."

Um, another thing that Jin says is that uh Mao was uh actually really concerned about this point because military control of the governments seemed to have become an obstacle to rebuilding an effective civilian administrative system. It was time for the PLA to hand power back to the civilian administration.

And this may have affected Mao's decision to side with the cultural revolutionaries against Lin and the military. So I think that there is definitely some truth to that. I think that at that point um Mao was realizing how this - he had realized for a while but now it was like really right in front of his face how disproportionately powerful the PLA was within the government and within the party and he wanted to find some way to curtail that.

All right. Well, thankfully on a happier note, on National Day, October 1st, major newspapers carried a joint editorial, Advance from Victory to Victory, marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of the PRC.

While leaders and assorted dignitaries waited for the National Day rally and parade to start, Mao met with Edgar Snow inside the Tiananmen gate. Snow apologized for criticizing the cultural revolution in a book which he said he now realized was wrong.

Mao said, "Oh, I hadn't read that." Assuring Snow that his main critics were ultra-leftist and were now sidelined, Mao said that foreign friends should get some leeway anyway. Mao then told Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia that the best way to train his army is by fighting. American West Point graduates arrive in Vietnam ill-prepared.

And then after that, 10,000 balloons were released and a great grand speech by Lin Biao was given. The dignitaries watched a vast and spectacular parade through Tiananmen Square with giant portraits of Mao featured in many of the parade floats and a 100,000 strong crowd using bouquets to spell out long live chairman Mao. When the parade ended, the 100,000 strong crowd formed ranks and charged towards Mao to wave the little red book and chant 'long live chairman Mao. Long live chairman Mao.'

After nightfall, the leaders returned to the Tiananmen rostrum to watch revolutionary model opera numbers and of course the fireworks. And uh if you want to definitely you can actually watch this parade on YouTube. Just look up uh China October 1st, 1970 National Day Parade. The now defunct channel Revolutionary Front still has uh it up and it's it's pretty good. It's a It's a really good uh video and so definitely check that out. Definitely check that out.

I turned 39, and I had a great time enjoying some cigars and some Kraft burgers at Red Oak, our local American restaurant and lounge, and the missus and I are actually finally making it official: going down to the Xi'an Municipal People's Government Marriage Registration Office. Woohoo! Yeah, it's going to be great.

Also, dang, here in Xi'an we've had some insane weather this season. We've been consistently around 40°C, or like 100°F, across the entirety of the summer. It was brutal. And then suddenly, the first week of September, boom, right down to the 20°C, like 60s and 70s Fahrenheit, which, honestly, I'm all for.

I was really sick of the heat. And I love fall and winter, especially here in Shaanxi, which is really a great season in this province. Oh, and a little fun thing that's happened: I got dinner with one of my favorite fellow China podcasters and one of the inspirations for this podcast, Lazlo Montgomery, the host of the China History podcast. It was so much fun.

Let me tell you, Lazlo Montgomery is an absolute delight. He's a joy to be around. We talked for hours and had so much fun exploring the Muslim Quarter here in Xi'an. And, oh, I will be grabbing—next month I'll be grabbing dinner with Fred Engst too, since he'll be in town for the unveiling of a new statue of his parents here in Xi'an.

So how's about that? How's about that? All right, my friends, let's get into it. Let's get into it. So, in this episode, we'll be talking about something that I've been wanting to do for a while, and my fans, especially the Hoxhaist fans out there, have been wanting me to do for a while because it's actually a super important thing to talk about when discussing the international dimensions of the Cultural Revolution and Maoist China's broader relationship with the world during the Cold War.

You see, after the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese didn't have much in the way of friends other than, like, pro-Beijing anti-revisionist parties around the world, you know, like the Communist Party of blah blah blah, Marxist-Leninist, or the, you know, Revolutionary Communist Party of blah blah blah. And, I mean, they had some ambivalent, ambiguous relationship with the North Vietnamese and North Korean ruling parties. But overall, China seemed isolated, with one tiny exception: a tiny place called the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

Albania is 7,245 km, or 4,502 miles, away from Beijing, and is separated from China by almost the entire landmass of Eurasia, at only 28,000 km2, or 11,000 km2 large. Albania is smaller than Maryland. It's an itty-bitty place. In 1966, it only had 1.8 billion people, although its leader, Enver Hoxha, joked that along with the Chinese, Albania makes up one-eighth of humanity. Hahaha. Its major resources are oil, chromium, copper, nickel, coal, grapes, citrus fruits, and wheat. But due to tons of economic sanctions put upon them by both the Western and Eastern blocs, Albania greatly struggled to develop during the 1960s and 70s. Okay, so before we do anything, we need to do some background on socialist Albania.

The Albanians were really unique in that during World War II, the Communist Party of Albania and its Albanian National Liberation Army liberated their country from German and Italian occupation almost entirely alone. I mean, there was a little help from the Yugoslav partisans and the broader allies, maybe. But by the time the Soviets reached the Adriatic Sea in 1945, the Albanian communists had declared a People's Socialist Republic the year before.

Their leader was a charismatic and intelligent hardline Marxist-Leninist and faithful student of Stalin, named Enver Hoxha. And after the liberation of the—uh, after liberation, the Communist Party of Albania changed its name to the Party of Labor of Albania, or Partia Punes e Shqipërisë. Help, I don't speak Albanian. Let's just call it the PPSH. Throughout this episode, you might hear me refer to the party as the PPSH, and I do that to distinguish the Party of Labor of Albania from the People's Liberation Army of China.

So, shortly after Albania and China both established socialism, the Soviet-Yugoslav split occurred, and Hoxha was not about to let Tito and his revisionist clique try to dominate Albania. Indeed, Tito had actually hoped Albania would become a Yugoslav Republic. He firmly declared his allegiance to Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and on November 23, 1949, Albania and the newly born People's Republic of China recognized each other.

Although it would not be until 1954 that they would exchange ambassadors. During the 1950s, much like China, Albania required a lot of help from Soviet technicians, engineers, and specialists to help get their economy off the ground. That was until the 20th Congress of the CPSU, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin and began a series of economic reforms that would put the Soviet Union back on the road to capitalism.

Enraged, Hoxha and the PPSH railed against de Stalinization and declared themselves the sworn enemies of Soviet revisionism, refusing to follow the rest of the Eastern bloc on the road of market reform. In response, in the 1960s, the Soviets yanked all economic aid and assistance from Albania, and Albania became the sole Eastern Bloc people's democracy to side with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet split.

There was indeed a major struggle against a pro-Soviet faction within the PPSH too, with many former comrades and leadership being purged or sidelined for their sympathy with Khrushchev. And, um, across the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, Albania and China would be the closest of comrades in their fight against both Moscow and Washington.

In May 1966, a week after the May 16 circular started the Cultural Revolution in China, the Albanians sent a party delegation to Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Dazhai, to see how their Chinese comrades were doing in the realm of agriculture. The Albanians were seemingly only slightly aware, though, of the Cultural Revolution, with no official statement by that delegation in support of the new revolutionary movement.

Albania's engagement with the Cultural Revolution really started a month later, when Premier Zhou Enlai went to the Albanian capital of Tirana for an official state visit, from June 24 to June 28, 1966.

Zhou's arrival in Albania was met with extraordinary enthusiasm, marked by mass welcome rallies attended by over 100,000 people, a testament to the warmth of the fraternal bond between the two countries. Albanian leaders consistently extended very flamboyant and grand welcomes to Chinese delegations. Indeed, you know, during his stay, Zhou engaged in very exp— not expensive— extensive discussions with top Albanian leaders, including Enver Hoxha and Premier Mehmet Shehu.

One of the key agenda items actually included Mao Zedong's Ten Theses on the Work in the Village, which was a document that underscored the ongoing and serious class struggle within China. And the Albanians, in turn, reaffirmed that Mao was a great philosopher and that it was imperative to unite against the dangers of Soviet-style revisionism.

And it's really interesting to really look at the Wilson Center archives, because if you look at all the transcripts of the meetings of, you know, in 1966 between the Albanians and the Chinese, you really see how, like, deeply into theory they are. Like, they've— you can definitely tell that this isn't just, like, realpolitik or, like, just some official window dressing.

Like, these guys take Marxist theory very seriously, and the Chinese and Albanians were in complete agreement that while Joseph Stalin had made errors, it would be strategically wrong to publicly proclaim it, and underscored their shared commitment to defending Stalin's legacy against de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union.

And after Zhou's visit, China maintained a consistent, invisible presence in Albania throughout the Cultural Revolution. Chinese economic experts, friendship tours, international exchange students, and high-level delegations continuously visited the country, reinforcing bilateral ties across the ten years of the Cultural Revolution.

And these exchanges spanned various sectors, including the party, government, youth league, journalists, trade unions, archivist delegations. And, you know, Enver Hoxha really, you know, demonstrated the importance of the Chinese delegations by personally welcoming all first, second, and third-level Chinese delegations. I mean, that probably kept him pretty busy.

And the Chinese and Albania Friendship Association began to send cultural troupes between the two nations. I've seen a really interesting video from late 1966, where an Albanian girl in traditional ethnic Albanian costume is singing a song titled "The People of the World Love Chairman Mao," in Albanian and Mandarin. I think you can see it, if I recall, it's on the website of Carma Hinton's documentary, Morning Sun: A Film About Cultural Revolution.

At morningsun.org, you can find a small clip of this performance you can dig about around for it. On September 30, 1966, Premier Mehmet Shehu returned the favor to the Chinese by heading a senior delegation from the PPSH and the Albanian government to meet with Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai again. The discussions encompassed a wide range of critical topics, including the Cultural Revolution, the state of bilateral relations, and unmasking of traitors within both communist parties.

Shehu notably drew parallels between Chinese figures like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and Albanian figures like Koçi Xoxe or Xhemere Dishnica, providing detailed accounts of Xoxe's alleged attempts to undermine the PPSH.

The next day, the Albanians enjoyed being on the Tiananmen roaster to oversee the National Day parade and the Red Guard rally that evening. Upon their return home, Albanian party cadres began to discuss Mao's new policies through the ranks of the Albanian masses.

However, it should be noted that Mao's theories were still disseminated by the Party of Labor and its mass organizations like the Democratic Front of Albania. There was no organic, spontaneous, quote-unquote, "Albanian Maoism" that would permeate Albanian society, à la Maoism among, you know, radicals in Western countries.

There would be no, you know, Gauche Proletariat, like in France, or the, you know, Revolutionary Union in the United States. That just would not happen. So, at a meeting in Shanghai in the late summer of '67, two Albanian PPSH cadres were sent by Hoxha to request an Albanian translation of The Little Red Book. Mao gave them permission, saying, "See if you find my quotations useful."

He added, "Chinese experience may serve other countries, but they must judge this for themselves." Funnily enough, Mao said, "Personally, I find the quotations book worthless," and nothing more than a collection of materials with historical insights into China. He even advised the Albanians to prioritize the publication of quotations from classical Marxist thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin instead.

The Albanian delegates, who were reportedly utterly baffled by Mao's remarks, nevertheless reiterated the utmost political importance of Mao's quotations for their country, reflecting their strong desire to adhere to Beijing's friendship. Upon the release of The Little Red Book across Albania, The Voice of the People newspaper wrote an editorial entitled, "In Albanian: Chairman Mao's Quotations, a Great and Precious Gift from the Fraternal Chinese People."

A week later, East German diplomats in Tirana reported that a Chinese professor was already teaching Mao's quotations at Tirana University. And what's very interesting is that, well, and I really wanted—I'm really excited to talk about this—is that the Albanians did not just disseminate the works of Mao Zedong. Hoxha really took it upon himself to partially replicate the Chinese experience with his very own ideological and cultural revolution initiated in May of '66.

Although it was really in '67 that it really started, you know, really taking off. So, in February of 1967, Hoxha declared Albania to be the first atheist state in history and called for a campaign to dismantle all religious institutions in the country. He appointed his missions to be carried out by his own version of the Red Guards, dubbed the Albanian Youth. And the ideological and cultural revolution had a curious beginning.

Originally, Hoxha had declared in 1961 that internal economic and social conditions for the restoration of capitalism had now been eliminated in Albania, and that the class structure was no longer necessary within the party or society. However, upon the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in China, Hoxha abruptly reversed this summation and seemingly changed ideological course entirely.

The Albanian Cultural Revolution started with a notable number of reforms: the abolition of ranks in the military, reintroduction of political commissars into the Albanian People's Army, sending mid to high-level officials to work in factories and fields, collectivization of the remaining remote mountain areas that still had private ownership, and a concentrated effort to stamp out foreign media.

And what's interesting is the ideological and cultural revolution was very mainly characterized by its anti-religious aspect. One study showed that within the month of May '67, 2,169 religious objects were destroyed and violated or converted into other usages. This figure includes 600 monasteries and 327 buildings of the Catholic Church.

Ironically, this is around the time the Chinese authorities actually began to discourage the Red Guards from destroying ancient temples, relics, and the other symbols of the old world. Because, remember, in May of '67, the Party Center put out the order to protect cultural relics. And that's when you really see the definitive end of the destroy the old world campaign. Hoxha, though, at that time had really begun his own campaign of wiping away the old Albania.

In his own variation of Mao's theory of the role of the superstructure in the process of a cultural revolution, the Albanian government decreed the superstructure must get rid of all retrograde things and foreign elements.

In other words, Hoxha justified it with the inappropriateness of the basis within the superstructure. And Albania became very notable because it was such a militant anti-religious campaign. They even had a museum of atheism in Tirana, where a former church was turned into a national museum devoted to ridiculing the old religious order.

Despite the inspiration of the Cultural Revolution in China, the Albanian Cultural Revolution never really reached the massive scale of the former. The Albanian Youth were only used to attack religious institutions and already toppled landlords. And there really was no mass, spontaneous workers or women's organizations that particularly aided the attack on the old society.

And unlike the People's Liberation Army in China, the Albanian People's Army was consigned mainly to the background, acting as something to be transformed rather than a tool with which to transform.

Although a $200 billion loan from the Chinese in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was a major injection of life into the Albanian People's Army, who then used the funds to update their technology and engage in massive amounts of defense research.

In the end, it was a top—the ideological and cultural revolution was very much a top-down initiative orchestrated primarily by Hoxha and the Central Committee of the PPSH and the Democratic Front of Albania.

My former professor, Isa Blumi, an Albanian-American historian of the Balkans, says that the ideological and cultural revolution was launched for more calculated and pragmatic reasons than the ideological conviction that Mao held, which caused him to launch the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But I'm sure that my Hoxhaist listeners would vehemently disagree. I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Isa Blumi further writes in his substantial article about the ideological and cultural revolution, Hoxha's class war, that initially subtle criticism of the work of enterprise directors found its way into the public. And while this sounds like the workplace denunciation seen in the Cultural Revolution in China, the criticism in Albania were directed strictly through party-led trade unions, and the vocabulary of party line was far more prevalent than the Chinese vocabulary of mass line.

Instead of Maoist bombarding the headquarters to transform the party, Hoxha wanted to concentrate on creating a, quote-unquote, "new man" out of the Albanian working class, transforming the people themselves. The party transforming the people. The ideological and cultural revolution copied the cultural revolution's dazibao, or big character posters, by creating fletërrufe, or wall newspaper, but only used them for propaganda, sloganeering and targeting of misguided citizens.

On the 9th of April, 1968, a call for new workers' committees, à la the revolutionary committees in China, was released by the PPSH. However, by the end of 1969, the Party of Labor pulled the plug on the workers' committees because they felt that the Soviet-era managers, who Hoxha characterized as the revisionist class in Albania, had been decisively pushed from power.

This brought about a notable doctrinal difference between the Albanian Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Compared to the Albanian view that all contradiction had ceased, the Chinese believed that capitalist roaders had to be consistently fought until communism was achieved due to old ideas having the ability to regenerate in society and in the party.

Anti-revisionism outside of the PPSH ranks, like, you know, specifically Maoist anti-revisionists, was decisively impossible. Hoxha said that even if demanded by our Chinese comrades, there was to be no independent pro-Beijing activity in Albania.

Like I said before, there really was never an organic Albanian Maoism, so to speak. Any Maoist works or propaganda material from China was to be solely distributed by Albanian authorities.

This stringent handling of ideology in broader society was seen by Hoxha as a way of making sure that Sino-Albanian anti-revisionism would stay on its intended course at all times.

Unfortunately for Hoxha, in my personal opinion as a Maoist, he made a fatal error of not waging cultural revolution primarily on his opponents in the party itself, but rather on aspects of Albanian culture that had already been stripped of their power by the foundation of the People's Socialist Republic.

At the end of the ideological and cultural revolution in November 1969, a high-level Chinese party and government delegation, led by Li Xiannian, member of the Politburo and vice premier, and he eventually became president of China under Deng Xiaoping, and Li Desheng, alternate member of the Politburo, visited Albania.

The primary purpose of this visit was to participate in the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of Albania's liberation and the victory of its People's Revolution. The visit was highlighted by a grand military review and mass parade in Tirana, as well as one in Beijing, both of which served to publicly underscore the robust military and political alignment between the two nations.

The Chinese leaders conveyed their warmest greetings to Albania, and cultural exchanges were promoted through events such as Albanian Film Week, organized by the Sino-Albanian Friendship Association in China. And this period was characterized by propaganda really emphasizing the eternal and unbreakable friendship between the two peoples.

And, you know, speaking of the Albanian Film Festival, it really is amazing just how much cultural exchange happened between those two countries. There was a yearly Albanian art exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing every November. Dancing and theater troupes were frequently exchanged between the two countries.

Ping-pong tournaments were held quite often during the Cultural Revolution. When it comes to Albanian-Chinese friendship, though, the one thing I unfortunately couldn't find a lot of information about in English or even in Chinese—sorry, once again, like I said, I don't read a lick of Albanian—there was stuff about Albanian expats in China.

Maybe, maybe I can find some stuff about that before our upcoming episodes on expats, tourists, and defectors in China, which will guest star Fred Engst during the Cultural Revolution coming up in December. Anyways, back to the story.

However, unfortunately, the early 1970s marked a significant turning point in Sino-Albanian relations. As China's evolving foreign policy began to clash with Albania's rigid ideological stances, leading—it led to the emergence of definite strains.

The visit of Henry Kissinger to China in July of 1971, followed by the public visit of President Richard Nixon in '72, caused profound apprehension in Tirana.

Hoxha dispatched a harsh and rude letter on August 6, 1971, directly urging China not to proceed with Nixon's visit, clearly articulating the depth of his ideological opposition to any rapprochement with the capitalist West.

The impact in Tirana was described as having, quote-unquote, "apocalyptic dimensions," according to some bourgeois Western scholars and some cables from the U.S. State Department.

Reflecting this profound dissatisfaction, Albanian newspapers and radio stations notably did not report Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

Compounding Albanian distrust, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai informed the Albanian ambassador in Beijing about Kissinger's secret visit, but conspicuously said no word why this had been kept secret from Albania.

Nevertheless, despite the emerging cracks between the two, Albania continued to definitely play a crucial role in China's international standing, particularly concerning its UN representation.

Even as the ideological beef began to surface, Albania maintained its unwavering diplomatic support for China on the world stage.

Albania had consistently sponsored resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly since 1963, advocating for the People's Republic of China's admission and the expulsion of the Republic of China in Taiwan.

This persistent advocacy culminated on October 25, 1971, when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, co-sponsored by Albania and 22 other nations.

The resolution recognized the PRC as the only legitimate representative of China and mandated the expulsion of the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek. This was a monumental diplomatic victory for China, and it was really—they couldn't have done it without Albania. They really can't, couldn't. In the months leading up to the historic UN vote, Albanian Foreign Minister Nesti Nase engaged in critical coordination with Chinese officials.

On June 15, 1971, Nase informed Zhou Enlai about the specific diplomatic steps Albania intended to undertake to facilitate China's recognition in the UN. Subsequently, Albanian diplomat Sokrat Plaka traveled to Tirana to coordinate the strategy Albania would employ at the General Assembly, informing the Chinese counselor in Tirana about the preparatory work for the resolution.

It was tireless work behind the scenes, and we really, like I said, we really got to give it to Albania, the props for all that they did for China at the time. So, you know, right on Nesti and Sokrat, that was a Brosef move.

In November of 1972, a high-level Albanian military delegation, led by Minister of National Defense Beqir Balluku, visited China. The delegation included key military officials responsible for various weapon types within the Albanian People's Army.

The primary objective of this visit was to request substantial military assistance from the Chinese government, as the Albanian People's Army was kind of in a rough place. It was still relying on a lot of outdated World War II Soviet armaments, despite recent advances in technology, you know, during—thanks to the 1968 and 1969 Chinese loans.

Balluku presented a detailed request for modern infantry weapons, various types of artillery, including long-range and self-propelled systems, reactive artillery, anti-tank missiles, coastal artillery modernization, including radio locators and surface-to-surface missiles for the, you know, this was all going to be used in the famous bunkers that lined the coast of Albania, and of course, significant quantities of ammunition.

Albania's defense was particularly vulnerable in terms of air defense, and it really faced complete air supremacy from surrounding powers. So they really needed anti-aircraft artillery and missile systems on their coastline and in the highlands, hence more guns for the bunkers.

While the immediate outcomes of these specific military requests were not explicitly detailed in the documents I read so far, it seems China's economic aid to Albania was granted then, but seriously declined after 1973. This time also witnessed the widening of ideological rifts and the emergence of significant policy differences between Beijing and Tirana.

Beyond the Nixon visit, Albania also expressed strong disapproval of the emerging Three Worlds theory, viewing it as another significant deviation from orthodox Marxist-Leninist principles. From Tirana's perspective, this theory signaled a further move by China towards aligning with American imperialism.

The shift in Chinese foreign policy contributed to growing friction within the alliance. And I do want to say we will be talking a lot about the nuances of Chinese foreign policy in the early '70s, both the good things and the bad things about it, in upcoming episodes.

China began to renew diplomatic relations with Titoite Yugoslavia, and while still continuing to denounce Yugoslavia as state capitalist and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia as a revisionist party, they began to, quote-unquote, "voice Yugoslavs' concerns regarding internal Albanian politics" and exerted pressure on Albania to tone down the aggressive anti-Yugoslav narrative. This was completely unacceptable for Enver, who in response intensified his anti-Tito rhetoric.

This perceived Chinese meddling in Albania's internal affairs caused a great deal of tension and also included some purges within the PPSH apparatus and the Albanian People's Army. Indeed, you see a lot of purges within the Albanian cultural, military, and economic establishments between '73 and '76.

In October of 1974, Albania had already made a substantial request for financial assistance from China, seeking 5 billion yuan in loans, a postponement of loan repayments from 1976 to 1980, and direct grain and oil assistance.

However, the period from 1975 until Mao's death witnessed a significant deterioration in Sino-Albanian relations. And it's really shocking to me because, from what I read, it really marked a pronounced decrease in high-level exchanges and state visits, and a lot of decreased amount of friendship, activism, and work, and escalation of public disputes.

By mid-'76, Sino-Albanian relations had, according to the U.S. State Department and CIA spy reports, plummeted to an unprecedented low. Zhou Enlai was dead and Mao was failing in health, and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was now firmly controlled by revisionists and rightists within the Communist Party of China.

State visits were almost now entirely nonexistent, reflecting a growing estrangement between the two former allies. Public expressions of solidarity, once a hallmark of the alliance, waned considerably.

When Chairman Mao died on September 9, 1976, the Albanian government sent a statement to their Chinese comrades eulogizing him as "a great revolutionary" and ordered three days of official mourning in the country. However, Tirana pointedly neglected to endorse Huo Guofeng and his anti-Gang of Four campaigns, and publicly denounced Deng Xiaoping.

In a telling sign of cooling relations, Albanian leaders' speeches at the National Assembly in December 1976 conspicuously omitted any attention or mention of China or its new leadership. Furthermore, Albanian mass media refrained from giving information about the latest events in China.

This demonstrated a clear ideological break with China's post-Mao leadership, which was perceived as deviating from true Marxist-Leninist principles. The deepening friction was also evident in practical terms. By the end of December 1976, the two sides were unable to sign a protocol relating to the next exchange of goods for 1977, and a complete and open breakdown in economic cooperation occurred.

Rumors also began to circulate that Albania had requested the withdrawal of Chinese technical experts from the country—with evidence suggesting these technicians were indeed returning home, albeit allegedly for vacation. By the summer of 1977, Tirana newspapers had escalated their public criticism, openly accusing China of opportunism and flagrant departures from the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. And a flurry of polemics occurred.

The Sino-Albanian split, which was formally declared in 1978 with the termination of Chinese assistance, was a grave cataclysm situation for the PPSH leadership and Albanian socialism. Mao's death removed Albania's main benefactor, and the ascendancy of Huo Guofeng, a rightist in the party who had ended the cultural revolution and was keen on instituting market reforms, coupled with the purge of the Gang of Four, further alienated the Albanians.

The Sino-Albanian split, however, was marked by a very dramatic retconning, retroactive continuity of sorts.

Unlike the Soviet-Albanian split of 1956, where Hoxha declared that Stalin was a great revolutionary, who had been posthumously usurped by Khrushchev, and unlike many Maoist parties, for example, the Communist Party of Peru, Communist Party of the Philippines, Revolutionary Communist Party USA, who maintained loyalty to Mao and the Gang Of Four, but denounced the Hua and Deng administrations as having restored capitalism, or some of the very few pro-Beijing parties that stayed loyal to Hua and Deng, like the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist USA and the Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist,

Hoxha and the Albanians, as well as many anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist parties who sided with the Albanians in the split, made a very dramatic announcement.

They declared that, in fact, Mao had been a revisionist all along, and that, in fact, China had never been socialist. In 1978, Hoxha published "Imperialism and the Revolution," which was mostly an analysis of imperialism after the death of Lenin, but the second half of the book was a stormy polemic against Mao Zedong Thought as an anti-Marxist theory and claimed that China had always been a chauvinistic power within the socialist bloc, and that Mao had plotted to transform China into a new social imperial superpower like the Soviet Union.

In 1979, Hoxha published his "Reflections on China," a two-volume series of supposed diaries that he kept chronicling his secret opposition to and struggle against Mao across the 1960s and '70s. Although many historians believe that there is no evidence that these diaries actually existed prior to 1979, and Issa Blumi once outright told me in a class I had with him that he considers them a post-Mao fabrication.

But who knows? What do you guys think? Was Hoxha a steadfast opponent of Mao all along, or did he need to justify his gear shift in an opportunist way? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter or on our podcast Discord chat. Read what Hoxha said and get back to me on it. I want to hear you decide for yourselves. So while the pro-Deng camp within the pro-China parties and movements seem very quiet in their response to Enver Hoxha, Peking Review doesn't seem to really have much to say about Hoxha's late '70s theoretical works and his actions in the 1980s. I know that the orthodox Maoists hit back at Hoxha pretty hard with a flurry of more polemics.

The RCP USA published in its theoretical journal, "Beat Back: The Dogmatic Revisionist Attack on Mao Zedong Thought," comments on Enver Hoxha's imperialism and the revolution. The Communist Workers' League of Germany posted, "Hoxha vs. Mao Zedong: Defend Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought," and the Ceylon Communist Party released "Enver Hoxha Refuted."

Enver Hoxha died on April 11, 1984, but by that time, the three-way split between the Hoxhaists, the Maoists, and the Dengists was irreparable, and Albania stayed hostile to both the People's Republic of China and the Marxist-Leninist forces around groups like the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement until the collapse of socialist Albania in 1991.

And the rest, they say, is history. All right, y'all, and with that, how about we put a bookmark in the story and we will continue onward this October with our next chronological episode in which we will explore the year 1970, during which Mao and Lin Biao clash at the Lushan Conference, and the contradictions between the two come to the surface in a way that will eventually lead to the dramatic Lin Biao incident. You don't want to miss the next one, y'all. So until next time, from the ancient city of Xi'an, formerly the Han and Tang capital of Chang'an, zàjiàn!

My students did really well, I'd say. They're very smart young comrades and all that, but I could definitely tell they were all ready for this semester to be over. Definitely. And the seniors all had severe senioritis, because it's spring semester, so they were all getting ready to graduate. But I'm so proud of them, man. They're cool cats. They're cool cats.

I'm going to Beijing through the 18th through the 23rd of this month to attend to some personal business, as well as blow off some steam. I'm going to go see some homies. We're going to go see the wifey's family, and it's going to be good. It's going to be good. I love Beijing. It's my favorite city in all of China. It's my favorite city in the world. Beijing, Moscow, Istanbul, Xi'an, and NYC, those are my favorite cities. No, no, no, not NYC. Copenhagen. Yeah, those are my top five favorite cities. Honorable mention to NYC, though.

The only thing is, is that, let me tell you, Beijing is so hot in July, and it's humid. I dream of the day where I can someday go to Beijing when it's not summer. But, you know, it's going to be my sixth time going to Beijing, so that'll be cool. Um, excuse me, I've been—I was working out real hard at the gym today. It's been, uh, I was working my back and my biceps and triceps, and I've really started to kind of lock into my weight loss and bodybuilding.

I kind of let myself go this semester, because I got so locked into some projects, like a grant. There was this big grant application we were trying to push through, and I wrote not one, but two journal articles this semester, and I got them accepted and got them published in the US-China review, and that's great and all, but I definitely let myself go. Don't let yourselves go, guys. Always take care of your health, especially if you're getting up there in years like me. All right, guys, well, enough of the personal updates.

Let's go on ahead and get into it. So, in episode—in our last episode, episode 28, we left off with the ending of the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party of China, and it was a—we'll say it was a partial victory for Chairman Mao and the left. If I want to recap, the PLA became inordinately powerful within the party, and, yeah, there was still a lot of unresolved contradictions boiling under the surface.

Even though it seemed like a very happy family reunion, it very much was not. But I would highly recommend, if you haven't, stop this episode right now and go listen to episode 28. Otherwise, a lot of this episode will not make sense. Well, once the Congress was over, because it ended on April 30th, and then, of course, Mao decided to have a nice big old May Day celebration.

Got to love International Workers' Day, and he really wanted to use May Day for diplomatic measures. So on May Day, he invited dozens of ambassadors from friendly or neutral countries to attend the International Workers' Day festivities in Tiananmen Square, where he announced that he was going to be resending a lot of Chinese ambassadors abroad, and he apologized for a lot of the cultural revolution violence against foreign embassies.

And he declared that from May 15th to 17th of August, the People's Republic of China would begin stationing more and more new ambassadors across 20 countries across the globe, except the Eastern Bloc countries. They would not be getting any new ambassadors. Only Vietnam got a new ambassador.

But the Soviets, East Germans, North Koreans, yeah, there was still absolutely no love. And let me tell you, the Sino-Soviet border conflict was still in full swing, with lots of minor gunfire exchanges being shot, you know, around Zhenbao Island in the month of May. There was still a lot of gunfire between both sides, although no casualties yet. Beijing did also make no overtures to the United States. Zhou Enlai instructed Lei Yang and other diplomats who were leaving for Warsaw.

Lei Yang was going to become the Charge d’Affaires for Warsaw, for the embassy in Poland. And he said, though, quote, "Pay close attention to developments in US policy." After this meeting, Mao, Lin Biao, and all the ambassadors watched the May Day fireworks, and there were drums, gongs, and flag waving, accompanying, singing, and sloganeering, and it was just a good old-fashioned, nice, and big May Day celebration that you would expect from the cultural revolution era.

In fact, if you guys want to watch the festivities, there is a YouTube channel. Unfortunately, it's no longer updated, but they keep all their videos up. It's called Revolutionary Force, and they have lots of old videos from the cultural revolution, and they have footage of the 1969 May Day parade. If you want to check out it, it's really cool.

I would highly recommend watching it, just to get a taste of what May Day was like in 1969 in China. Then on May 4th, they celebrated the May 4th movement, and People's Daily and Red Flag marked the 50th anniversary of it and said it shattered the 2000-year-old fetish of Confucianism.

But underneath it, a report of problems in propaganda work was criticizing how the Mao cult they felt had gone too far, with all the loyalty dances and people, like, in the morning, bowing before pictures of chairmen, before the working hours. You know, quotation, what did I say? Quotation competitions where people would just memorize and recite Chairman Mao's quotations, but without really deeply understanding them.

The report also lists wasteful and political empty practices, like printing Mao quotes on pillows or wine bottles, or how a lot of places - they would just have these big megaphones in village squares that would just play recitations of Mao quotes, like, all hours in the day and night. And they said that was pointless. And also, there was, yet again, more talk of wrapping up the Mao badge industry.

Like I said, last episode, Zhou and Mao said, "Give us back our airplanes. You're using too much aluminum that could be used for the Sino-Soviet conflict and preparing for possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union and the United States." So, yeah, this, unfortunately, it, yeah, the Mao badge thing needed to die down.

As much as I love collecting Mao badges. Also, in mid-May, Zhou Enlai summoned leaders from Inner Mongolia to talk about how the hunt for secret Inner Mongolian People's Party members and the broader cleansing of the class ranks campaign had gone way too far.

Way too far. And that it was time to stop the needless arrests, imprisonments, and executions. And he decided that he wanted to, he—Zhou called for stabilizing the region and to try to put a stop on the campaign, and basically said that, well, okay, guys, look, there may have been an Inner Mongolian People's Party that was around, but you guys have probably gotten rid of them. Anything further is just going to be a needless witch hunt full of bloodshed. If you guys want, I would highly recommend going back to episode 21.

I have an entire episode dedicated to Inner Mongolia and what all happened there. It was rough. You know, I always like to say, I always like to say that Tibet and Xinjiang are an example of how to properly handle the national question under socialism, and Inner Mongolia is how not to handle the national question under socialism. It's—things got pretty bad there. Like, definitely, that was messed up.

Meanwhile, Mao was attending a Politburo meeting on defense. He decided that it was time to freeze recruitment and conscription in the PLA ground forces and extend the Navy, Air, and Rocket Forces. He also called for the Politburo to reestablish the Central Military Committee's General Office and a much more slimmed-down PLA General Political Department.

Then, on May 29th, 1969, after Mao and Zhou had had their respective meetings about Inner Mongolia and then the army, they convened a meeting with representatives from various departments of the party to trim down inner party bureaucracy.

But the question remained after the Ninth Congress: what to do with the Central Cultural Revolution Group? Was it still necessary now that the mass movements were over?

And while the CCRG was not outrightly named in the meeting documents, it was certainly on the chopping block in one way or another. And you notice, after May of '69, really after the Ninth Congress, the CCRG begins to slowly slow down its operations, convening gradually less and less and issuing less and less statements across the summer and early fall of '69. But we will get to the end of the CCRG in a little bit.

Some central government ministries and commissions were put almost entirely under military control due to this, including the Railways Ministry, Communications Ministry, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the Xinhua News Agency, Central People's Broadcasting, and various defense industry organs. And it's kind of interesting, because they justified it in a weird way.

The three supports and two militaries operation, which you guys might remember being implemented in March of 1967, when Mao called for the PLA to support the left and the power seizures and to help, like, stabilize things after the January storm, it was re-invoked as justification across summer and autumn of '69, as a pretense to solidify army control across much of the government after the Ninth Congress.

And they basically said, oh, you know, yeah, it seems like the army is taking control of all these ministries, but don't worry, it's because we're supporting the left. Well, you guys be the judge of that. You guys be the judge of that.

This continued until, honestly, this kind of military rule continued on until August of '72, when the Central Committee and Central Military Commission jointly issued a document to end the campaign, as well as denounce Lin Biao's machinations in making this happen. Although, I have to say, Mao and Zhou also, I think, share some of the blame, particularly with the May of 1969 meeting. After that, later that night, on May 29th, after that meeting finished up, Mao left Beijing for Wuhan, and he wanted to take a little vacation. And he gets to Wuhan, and something funny happens. He went to his guest house, and he found that it was completely decorated with quotations and portraits, and there was, like, a set of Mao badges for him. He was so annoyed by this. He instructed the attendants to take it all down and to, you know, all the presents needed to go. He just - he thought it was weird. You know, Mao, he was kind of okay with the cult of personality for a good while, because he thought, hey, you know, it's a chance for my political line to be popularized among the people. But definitely, at least after April of '69, he got really annoyed with it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, on June 5th, 1969, an international meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, which you guys, some of my Communist listeners might remember what they have heard of, and it's still going on today, the IMCWP, which is like the yearly meeting of the old pro-Soviet, the official Communist Parties of the world and Workers' Parties. Some social democratic parties take part in it. You guys, if you've heard of the IMCWP, you know what I'm talking about. Well, this was the 1969 IMCWP Congress, and it was held in Moscow, but no delegates from China, Albania, North Vietnam, or Korea were present. Brezhnev addressed the meeting, and he immediately launched into an attack on Mao and advocated a "System of Collective Security in Asia." You guys can gather what that meant. And it lasted until the 17th, when the CPSU, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, asked to put forward a resolution to vote to officially expel the Communist Party of China from the international communist movement. But surprisingly, the motion, you know, failed.

Actually, even some of the Warsaw Pact parties voted against it, feeling that, you know, hey, I think you were, they thought the Soviets were being a little too harsh. So that was interesting. While this was happening, the PRC Central Government State Council agreed to negotiate with the Soviet Union over Zhenbao Island, and they suggested resuming talks on June 18th. Chen Yi's writing group of marshals began another course of study on international affairs, and they decided that, according to their [probability] conclusions, that actually nuclear war with the Soviet Union was still relatively low, and that negotiations would still be a good idea. They also felt that it was time to maybe talk to the Americans. After that, things got a little ugly on June 10th. At dusk, Soviet and PRC troops clashed in the mountains dividing Kazakhstan from Xinjiang, and a herdswoman named Sun Longzhen was killed in the shooting.

The next day, China issued a formal protest at the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang, but the USSR claimed that the Chinese herdsmen had crossed over into Kazakhstan and had fired on their soldiers. The next day, at a rally in Urumqi, shepherds involved in the clash denounced Soviet hyenas for laying claim to their traditional grazing grounds. So, yes, things, trust me, the Sino-Soviet border split was far from over.

But something interesting happened on June 17th. Back in Washington, American Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield sent a letter to Zhou Enlai, care of Cambodian Prince Sihanouk, sorry for mispronouncing, requesting a personal meeting to break the ice between Beijing and Washington. Zhou declined, citing America's continuing presence on the island of Taiwan, but agreed with Mao that future talks with the Americans shouldn't be out of the question, if only because it could put extra pressure on the Soviet revisionists. On June 18th, Soviet and Chinese diplomats met at Khabarovsk to begin negotiations over the Ussuri border river and particularly navigation rights, but again, it ended in a deadlock. Then, on July 20th, several hundred PLA troops seized the disputed Qiliqin Island Island on the Ussuri river, but Soviet forces opened fire and forced their retreat with no casualties. Then, in August, Nixon flew to Bucharest, Romania, to meet with Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, with whom he ended up discussing China, and he asked Ceaușescu to forward a note of goodwill to Chairman Mao. Ceaușescu was kind of vague in his reply, just saying, "I will tell your opinion to the Chinese." And it kind of left it at that. But it's very interesting, because now Nixon is very, very serious about talking with the Chinese. On August 13th, a Soviet patrol approached PLA border troops and dug in near Tielieketi in Xinjiang. Each side accused the other of violating the border, and they opened fire. Two Soviet BTR-60 troop carriers outflanked the PLA position, and at 9 a.m., an intense firefight broke out, with both sides calling up reinforcements. After an hour of fighting, the PLA forces, mauled by two Soviet helicopters, collapsed, and around 30 Chinese troops and two Russians lay dead. Of course, naturally, there was a huge outrage. The next day, the People's Daily claimed that in an ugly performance of self-exposure (projection), the USSR had admitted to colluding with US imperialism against China. Urumqi's top officials told a rally that the Soviets coerced 60,000 people to flee to Xinjiang in 1962 and refused to send them back. Then, the next day, a second day of anti-Soviet protests again. Marchers swore to defend the sacred territory of the Chinese motherland to the last. Flipping back to Washington, on August 14th, Richard Nixon asserted that the US did not intend to join the Soviets against China during a national security meeting, but said that he would monitor the situation closely. Then, on September 9th, Mao, Lin Biao, and Zhou Enlai sent congratulations to Ho Chi Minh on the 24th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Unfortunately, the next day, Ho Chi Minh, who had been in ill health for some time, died of a heart attack. And this was big because it threw both the Soviets and the Chinese in disarray. They were both, you know, preparing for a potential attack against one or the other, but they had to stop, because they, of course, had to go to the funeral.

So, on September 4th, Zhou Enlai arrived in Hanoi with a delegation to pay respects to Ho Chi Minh and laid a wreath on his coffin. But Zhou returned from Hanoi to Beijing before Ho's funeral on the 6th, deliberately avoiding Soviet Premier Kosygin and the Soviet delegation. And during the funeral, it's kind of funny, there were some Chinese delegates there, but they all sat firmly way on the other side of the Soviets. Like, they were giving them the cold shoulder.

But Alexei Kosygin asked his hosts, the Vietnamese, to relay a request to the Chinese for a meeting with their senior leaders. And despite his fears that the Soviets could use the opportunity to launch a nuclear attack, Mao agreed. Zhou Enlai should meet with Alexei Klysygin in Beijing. So, on September 11th, Premier Kosygin flew from Hanoi to Beijing. PLA units surrounded the airport and prepared for an inevitable attack by Soviet special forces.

But everything was calm, and inside Beijing Airport, Zhou Enlai and Kosygin came face to face and discussed the Sino-Soviet border conflict and the wider ideological conflict within the international communist movement. Zhou told Kosygin that China had no desire for war, but if the Soviets struck their nuclear bases, China would fight them to the end. And with that, the meeting ended very tersely.

The next day, the Central Cultural Revolution Group, after being China's most powerful body since May of 1966 until the 9th Congress, finally shuttered down and declared its dissolution. Then, on the 13th, Zhou reported to Mao in Hangzhou about his meeting with Alexei Kosygin, and Mao simply approved with a simple agreed.

Then, on September 17th, a panel of four marshals of the PLA submitted a report advocating for a strategic approach to Sino-American-Soviet relations, suggesting that China could benefit from playing the American card. Then, on October 1st, National Day, of course, you know, they had to have a big old parade, but this was a very different one.

Yes, it was the 20th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, but from the Tiananmen rostrum, as Beijing Revolutionary Committee Head Xie Fuzhi opened the National Day celebrations in front of a rally of 100,000 people, helicopters were idling around the Tiananmen Gate in case the leadership needed to evacuate, and a PLA special forces cell was stationed on the rostrum, because they thought that maybe the Soviets would nuke the, they would nuke the parade.

After the 21-gun salute and the national anthem, Lin Biao made a speech saluting the revolutionary proletariat and praising Mao's genius leadership, of course. A huge parade with floats, including a ship on a sea of ribbons and a giant statue of Mao, pulsing with yellow sunbursts, marched through Tiananmen Square. Also, that day was interesting because the first line of the Beijing subway, which connected a suburban barracks to the central Beijing train station, opened to mark National Day. So, you know, Red Line 1 was open on that day.

And I like, personally, I love the Beijing subway. It's so nice. It gets you everywhere in the goddamn city. It's fast, it's always on time, it's clean. I love the Beijing subway.

Then, in the evening, Mao watched fireworks from the Tiananmen Rose Drum alongside Lin Biao, and then he met with an Algerian government delegation. And Mao and Zhou said something interesting.

The Algerian government asked Mao and Zhou if the Cultural Revolution was finished because of the 9th Congress, and they said it's winding down but has not completely finished. But, you know, as you can see, things are far from over.

On October 11th, Wu Han, if you guys remember, way back in episode one, the ex-Beijing Vice Mayor whose historical play ‘Hai Rui dismissed from office’, which, you know, was one of the opening shots in the Cultural Revolution, finally died in prison.

On the 13th, Mao, Lin Biao, and Zhou Enlai and others agreed that the party leadership should vacate Beijing before Soviet diplomats arrived on October 19th to finalize a ceasefire. The next day, Mao and Lin Biao appeared at the Great Hall of the People to a PLA audience who chanted, "Long live Chairman Mao," and waved the little red book. But Mao and Lin Biao made it clear to still be prepared for war.

Then after the meeting, almost all top leaders were told to leave Beijing for destinations individually chosen by Mao, anticipating a Soviet strike on Beijing. Mao left for Beijing for Wuhan by train. Various other leaders started dispersing across China, but Zhou Enlai and Huang Yongsheng stayed in Beijing to hold down the fort, so to speak.

On the 15th, the Politburo briefly met with Zhou Enlai, and Zhou Enlai conveyed Mao's view that having the leadership concentrated makes them vulnerable to an atom bomb. Lin Biao and his wife Ye Qun flew to Suzhou on Mao's orders, but Zhou was the one in charge of the leadership evacuation plan. On the 16th, Chief of Staff Huang Yongsheng set up a command center and readied several PLA corps to defend any anticipated Soviet invasion routes.

The State Council and the CPC General Office secretly moved their staff out of Beijing into 100 underground silos in Beijing's Western Hill. Zhou Enlai's military affairs small group and the Central Military Commission relocated to an old Civil War headquarters complex in the Western Hills.

And then the Ministry of Public Security moved prisoners out of potential targets in Beijing's smaller county jails, and some had their executions expedited.

One of these prisoners that was evacuated from the Central Beijing prison was none other than Liu Shaoqi. He had to be moved from his prison hospital. He was basically paralyzed, unable to speak, but he was stretchered onto a plane, escorted by Central Case Examination Group men, and they sent him to the prison hospital in Kaifeng, which is in Henan Province. I've been to Kaifeng. It's a beautiful city.

Then, on October 18th, Lin Biao called something called his first verbal order, and that basically was a directive that scattered all of the main PLA officer corps across China.

And you think, okay, that's exactly what they were doing, right? Well, what is interesting is that Lin was basically moving his personal enemies, including a lot of the left wing of the PLA, to other parts of the country, and he wanted to have them stay there permanently so that they would be out of the way. And a lot of people, and this actually comes back to bite Lin in the ass when he, you know, when he has his fall from grace.

When in Wuhan, Wang Dongxing showed Mao, Lin Biao's first verbal order, and Mao actually became very angry. He threw it into a trash bin and said, "Burn it," and he lit it with a lighter, and it was just, yeah, he was actually pretty mad. He knew what was going on.

Lin, the next day, learned of Mao's displeasure with his first order, and he rushed to have it rescinded, but it was too late. They had already mobilized 940,000 troops to do this whole thing. And it's interesting, while not all PLA officers were treated badly when they were moved from the capital, this is what Frederick Hughes says in his work on Lin Biao.

They were under certain restraints, and some suffered from inadequate medical treatment. The possibility that Lin Biao was to some degree responsible for the harsher aspects of their situation cannot be ruled out. Yet there is an obvious wish on the part here of the marshals, not only to glorify Zhou Enlai, who played a key role in securing the return of some of them to Beijing for medical treatment, but also to resolve Mao of any responsibility.

But whatever the actual responsibility for any hardship suffered, order number one itself is best understood as a response to the Mao-driven Politburo interpretation of the international situation. End quote. So, yeah. And the thing is, is this, you know, this is really where things start to go wrong between Mao and Lin.

On the 19th, Soviet diplomats landed uneventfully in Beijing, and Lin Biao, having followed their progress from takeoff, fearing that it was actually a trick and they were going to nuke Beijing, finally rested.

But while Lin seemed to have averted political disaster, he had really pissed Mao off, and in less than a year's time, the fracture between Mao and Lin would become even bigger and completely irreparable at the Lushan Conference in September of 1970. And Lin would begin to be gradually exposed for the sycophant and secret capitalist roader that he was.

But we'll get to that in our next two chronological episodes. So, on October 20th, the Soviet negotiator sat down with the Chinese team led by Qiao Guanhua to discuss the border. And, well, after a day-long meeting, they came to a resolution. They didn't really resolve the border dispute, but they decided that it really wasn't worth starting World War III over this. So, they thankfully just called it quits and pulled back their forces from the Ussuri River.

Although, I should make it very clear, I should make it very clear that the threat of war between the Soviets and the Chinese - it was always kind of looming there. It always was looming, and you will still see a lot of saber rattling between the two sides across 1970 through 1976. And even during the early reform and opening up period, there's some tense situations. But, like I said, we will get into that later.

Okay. So, after the Sino-Soviet border conflict was thankfully diffused before it got really bad, on November 12th, 1969, in a prison hospital in Kaifeng, Liu Shaoqi's eyes became unresponsive and his lips blue.

And with that, early the next morning, the man who was once meant to succeed Mao, but who had become China's number one capitalist roader, finally died. The next day, Liu Shaoqi's bodyguards located Liu's body that had been dumped into a basement corridor.

They put some clothes on him and cleaned the blood off of his face, because it seems, what I've heard is that the nurses and doctors kicked his body around after he had died.

But I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not. I've only heard that from one source. Then, on November 14th, before dawn, Liu Shaoqi's body was taken away in an army jeep with his feet sticking out, and he was secretly cremated under a false name. And his ashes were dumped into a river. So, with that, Liu Shaoqi went into history, for better or for worse.

Honestly, if you're going to ask me, I'm going to say, for worse. And I'm glad that he did not end up succeeding Mao. But, unfortunately, the fight against the capitalist roaders in the party has just begun. On December 1st, 1969, the Chartered Affairs of the PRC Embassy in Poland invited the US Ambassador Talks back to talking, back to the negotiation table, I should say, which marked a significant step towards improved relations. And with that, it seems that 1969 ended on a peaceful but tense note.

But, my friends, I should say, while it seems that the revolutionary aspect of the Cultural Revolution was done, I would beg to differ. This does not mean there was no more further social and economic transformation at the grassroots or developments in Marxist theory, or that there were absolutely no mass democratic practices on the local level.

You know, it was a slower and steady level, but the Cultural Revolution was still ongoing. One thing I noticed is that I've been reading a lot of Old People's Daily back issues. And, for example, in one PLA propaganda team at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science, the cadres were going through a whole campaign to struggle, criticize, and reform their thinking.

And there was a lot of debate and wrangling around the meaning of Chairman Mao's theories and how to come to a higher understanding of Marxism to transform the sciences in China. And, yeah, it's a really interesting thing. It was also a time where you see across the latter half of 1969 was a large-scale debate on how to repudiate the theory of productive forces that continued to spring up within the factories and collective farms.

And the party center greatly approved of this. Communist workers and peasants fought to grasp the essence and forms of revisionism so as to identify it with their own workplaces and within themselves so as to continue the struggle against the regeneration of the bourgeoisie within their ranks, showing that the revolution within the revolution was still continuing in earnest.

Another big thing that came across the latter half of 1969 was the workers' universities in the factories. Now, the workers' universities movement started in early autumn of '68 after the Red Garden movement had been disbanded. And the first one was founded in September of '69 in the Shanghai Machine Tools Factory. But it really didn't start taking off as a nationwide phenomenon until they got the blessing of the party press in July of '69.

After that, hundreds of workers' universities were set up to be affiliated with state-owned enterprises where employees of these enterprises could learn new technical skills, study Marxist philosophy and revolutionary history, and debate how to run the factory better.

These new kinds of workers' universities would come to be a major point of revolutionary development and mass struggle and mass criticism across the latter half of the Cultural Revolution. And I'm going to try to maybe dig deeper into them in some of our episodes about the early 1970s.

During the fall and winter of 1969, the People's Militia began to be reconstituted once again and put more directly under the command of the People's Liberation Army, with the exception of one place, and this was a very crucial exception, Shanghai.

There, the workers' general headquarters, which was one of the few rebel groups that was allowed to stay active after August of '68, continued to hold de facto power over the People's Militia, something that would cause the militia there to have a very different, far more radical leftist line. And this would eventually come to clash, literally, with the party apparatus after Mao's death.

One thing that I wanted to mention, and this is very interesting, is I was looking through some stuff about Sichuan from some Chinese sources.

And it seems that, according to some press clippings that I found from Chinese University of Hong Kong's Cultural Revolution database, some battles, some low-level fighting between former rebel groups lasted in rural Sichuan until August of 1969. I thought that was really interesting.

But, you know, there was still a lot of good stuff going on. You know, like I said, there was the workers' universities, there was that fight against the theory of, that mass campaign against the theory of reproductive forces.

There was a lot of improvements in the economy because now that there was no more disruption by mass rebellions within the workforce, you know, the economy stabilized and got better. Wages went up, supply chains once again were reestablished, and everything kind of just began to stabilize. Shortages lessened and rationing measures were lifted.

There was a lot of advances in the production of medicines such as insulin. There were new advances in fertilizer and agricultural machinery. And just, yeah, the economy in the latter half of 1969 was really good. There was also a lot of expansion of the Barefoot Doctors program. And you see a lot of former Red Guards and former rebel hospital workers that had been demobilized the year before, remobilized to become Barefoot Doctors in the countryside.

And it really revitalized the healthcare system in the Chinese countryside and kind of set the basis for a lot of new hospitals and doctor's offices and clinics that are still around today. So how about that? How about that? All right, my friends. Well, that is 1969, in the summer of '69. Yes, 1969 is brought to a close.

Next month, we're going to be doing a really fun thematic episode. We're going to be doing China and Albania. Yes, by popular demand, I was going to do this last year, but things came up and I kind of had to get busy with other topics and projects at work. But yes, we are going to finally talk about Sino-Albanian relations during the Cultural Revolution. We're going to have a really great time with that.

I'm really excited. We're going to have a lot of fun. And then, of course, in September, we will be switching to our chronological episodes will become annual. By that, I mean that we'll be going year by year. And I mean, I know this sounds like a shock because

I've been doing like the every two months or every four to six months.

But honestly, you know, a lot, like not as much happens on a monthly basis across 1970 through 1976. Maybe we'll split up 1976 a little. We might make that into a two-parter because that gets pretty wild and crazy, the end of the Cultural Revolution.

But 1970, we are going to make January through December of 1970 an entire single episode. But that's still going to be cool because we're going to be talking about what the interregnum of sorts of the Cultural Revolution was like and the Lushan Conference of September of 1970, where Mao and Lin have a serious falling out.

All right, my friends. Well, it is now 7:30 and it's a good time to kick back with a movie and a little snack and cuddle with the cats. And yeah, so I will talk to you guys later.

And let me just say, once again, from the ancient city of Xi'an, I say, zaijián! Today's episode's sources were

Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals

Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yang Jiaqi and Gao Gao.

The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yang Jisheng.

The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution by Frederick Hughes.

Proletarian Power Shanghai During the Cultural Revolution by Elizabeth J. Perry and Li Xun.

The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution by Gao Mobo.

The Unknown Cultural Revolution by Han Dongping.

The Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, Volume 2, by Dmitry S. Rabushkin.

The Marxist Internet Archives Peking Review Archives, the People's Daily Archives, Shaanxi Provincial Archives, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Cultural Revolution Database, and

Restoring Chaos to History: Sino-American Relations in 1969 by Lorenz M. Lüthi in the China Quarterly. All right, guys, have a great day.

It's a little nippy right now, but I think it's going to become nice and hot today, and I'm just getting this recording out of the way before I have a long day of, um, lecturing and classes and just, you know, overall educating the young people, broadening their horizons, getting them to question the world around them and to transform the world around them, because that's what I love.

To quote Young Jeezy: "If Drew is what they want, then Drew is what they gettin'." They ask me what I do, I tell them teaching for a living. That's all I gotta say, I gotta say. Well, hey guys, um, no real updates on the personal front, so let's just cut the chitchat and get straight into it.

So, here we are, we're going into a really interesting time of the Cultural Revolution, because the Ninth Congress happens and the Sino-Soviet border conflict begins, and that gets pretty wild and wooey, so let's get into it. Here we are, beginning the wild and gnarly year of 1969. In the summer of '69, a global year of continuing change, continuing radicalism, and of course in China the Cultural Revolution was continuing, all but in a very different way than the first three years. So let's start with the cold light of day on New Year's Day.

So on New Year's Day, the front page editorial in the People's Daily and other newspapers announced joylessly that the CPC was going to be holding its Ninth Party Congress this upcoming year, and that it would cement the glorious victory of Chairman Mao's line on a nationwide basis and would reconstitute the party entirely on a Mao Zedong-Thought basis.

However, what's interesting is that it did not specify when the Congress would happen; all it said is, "It's going to happen this year." Indeed, it was decided ahead of time at the plenum back in October and November that the Congress would be held at a secret time so as not to give the Soviets the ability to kill off the entire Chinese leadership in a nuclear strike on Beijing.

Sounds a bit paranoid, maybe, but with the Soviets amassing large amounts of troops, missiles, and long-range nuclear bombers on the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Mongolian border, eh, I think the authorities in Beijing had, uh, had right to be a little cautious.

Newspapers that month were also filled with a noticeable ramping up of the Mao cult. It was reported that in Shaanxi Province alone there were now 3,149 shrines to the Little Red Book. The Xinhua News Agency that week reported that 740 million little red books and 150 million copies of Mao's selected works had been published and would continue to be published and proliferated around China and around the world.

And also at that time that year, the spring festival, the Chinese New Year, was revolutionized to be centered around praising Chairman Mao as the new spring, as the morning sun.

And of course, my favorite thing, Mao badges were still being churned out at an obscene rate. Indeed, if you want to know more about the jaw-dropping amount of Mao badges that were being made at that point, go back to episode 24 for our special episode about Mao badges. Every day, people around the country would take part in loyalty dances or sing Chairman Mao's quotations in ways that were set to music.

The personality cult around Mao was bigger than ever, and to outsiders it seemed to have taken an almost religious dimension.

Again, if you want to learn more about this as well, if you want to learn more about the Mao cult more broadly, um, refer back to episode 18, my special episode about the Little Red Book, where I dive a little more deeply about how the Mao cult went from 1969 to, let's say, 1971, and like the question of how much of it was, you know, genuine popularity, how much of it was Mao doing it, how much of it was Lin Biao doing it.

It's - it’s a tricky thing, it's a tricky thing. But yeah, one thing that's interesting is that it's really after the Red Guard movement subsides that the Mao cult gets really intense. But things were about to get real ugly and real fast. In the middle of the Ussuri River, right on the border between Russia and Heilongjiang Province, sits a tiny little island.

Russians call it Damansky Island, while Chinese people call it Zhenbao Island. This tiny, seemingly meaningless piece of land became the flashpoint for a conflict that would push the Soviets and the Chinese into a full armed conflict and almost to nuclear war. On the morning of January 4th, Soviet troops arrived on Zhenbao Island for what should have been a routine patrol.

After all, both sides viewed it as their own territory, as the border between Russia and China had been a source of contention dating well back to the 1800s. When they arrived on the island, they immediately confronted the Chinese People's Liberation Army outpost on the island, and in the ensuing scuffle, four Chinese troops were wounded.

The next day, two Chinese fishermen who used Zhenbao Island as a place to catch their fish were seized on the island by Soviet troops and were beaten mercilessly with rifle butts.

The people of Heilongjiang were outraged, quite understandably, and many demonstrations against Soviet social imperialism were held on the river, calling for the Soviet troops to put down their arms and to work to topple the Brezhnev-Kosygin revisionist clique.

On January 23rd, the situation was even further exacerbated. A Soviet jeep intercepted a PLA patrol between Zhenbao Island and the Russian bank of the frozen Ussuri River.

The Soviets, aided by three trucks of reinforcements and attack dogs, battered the PLA patrol into a hasty retreat, leaving nine comrades wounded. A Russian officer broadcasted to Chinese radio stations on the river that if he has to eject the Chinese troops from Zhenbao Island again, he will use deadly force.

The Chinese people were no longer simply directly confronting revisionism within their own ranks, but were now forced to directly and physically confront Soviet revisionism.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing on January 28th, Mao approved a new policy called ‘Reeducation and Offering a Way Out’, which emphasized that bourgeois academic authorities and others in society who had been deemed revisionists or capitalist roaders could redeem themselves through education.

This was important at this point because Mao had begun to see the need to scale back the brutal and bloody class cleansing of the class ranks campaign, and as a need to promote the May 7th Cadre Schools, where intellectuals and party cadres were educated through labor and intensive Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong-Thought education classes. Mao firmly believed that the time for destruction was over, and it was time to rebuild the newly red society before the Ninth Congress.

Meanwhile, in Washington, in the first week of February, newly inaugurated President Richard M. Nixon instructed his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to use his contacts to give every encouragement to the idea that the U.S. is open to rapprochement with China.

The Chinese and Americans had been in contact with each other for about a year via each other's embassies in Warsaw, but with the Chinese and Soviets now on the cusp of open conflict, and with Vietnam still raging just south of China, Nixon thought now would be an opportune time to fully negotiate with the Chinese. Kissinger ordered aides and advisors in the White House to launch a study into U.S.-China relations, particularly both with Beijing and Taipei, and an evaluation of possible alternate U.S. approaches to China.

In just a few years, these studies would pay off on both sides. And honestly, the Americans had every reason to think that the Chinese would be conducive to coming to the negotiating table, as fighting between the Chinese and Soviets was getting worse.

On February 6th, around 100 Chinese and Soviet troops came into contact on Zhenbao Island, but the Chinese decided to avoid an escalation and withdrew immediately. The next day, Soviet soldiers launched a sporadic amount of machine gun fire at Chinese troops upon sighting them across the river, but both sides withdrew once again.

Thankfully, nobody was killed or wounded on either side at this time, but it showed that the Soviets were in no mood to play nice. Indeed, the Soviets opened fire on the PLA once more on the 9th and again on the 16th, although once again with casualties on neither side.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, on February 7th, Mao assigned Lin Biao to develop, deliver the CPC Ninth Congress political report, and called for Chen Boda to draft it alongside Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan.

I'll tell you guys a little more about that process around this report in a few minutes, but needless to say, it was the subject to the clash of many different lines and very different personalities.

On February 19th, the Foreign Ministry and PLA leadership approved a Zhenbao Island counter-interference struggle plan from the Heilongjiang PLA command.

Later that day, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, and Xu Xiangqian, some of the marshals of the PLA who had been toppled, were recalled from manual labor or from their May 7th Cadre Schools and were brought to a meeting with Mao, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, and others from the Central Cultural Revolution Group.

Mao asked Chen Yi to lead the group of out-of-favor marshals in studying international strategic issues, emphasizing the skirmishes at Zhenbao Island and the recent talks with the USA in Warsaw. Zhou Enlai told Chen Yi to convene an international relations study group once a week, but to not be bound by, as he said, "the old frame of thinking."

While this was happening, yet more bloodless skirmishes between the Soviets and Chinese happened on the 22nd and 25th. Then, in the wee hours of the morning on March 2nd, the shit really hit the fan on Zhenbao Island. Under the cover of darkness, several PLA platoons entered Zhenbao Island undetected. They set up a telephone link with the shore, dug in, and began to wait.

PLA Captain Sun Yuguo led a patrol around Zhenbao Island but was immediately intercepted by Soviet troops. At that point, Sun's men opened fire without hesitation and immediately killed seven Russians.

The Soviets scrambled to counterattack but were aided by a large force. Hidden on Zhenbao Island, Sun Yuguo's troops destroyed the rest of the Soviet patrol in 20 minutes of intense fighting.

Reinforcements from a nearby Soviet border post made their way to Zhenbao Island under rifle and mortar fire, but a well-placed rocket from the PLA forces across the river destroyed their command car. The Soviet relief force inflicted heavy casualties but failed to retake the island.

After two hours, both sides withdrew from the Ussuri River, with the Chinese declaring themselves the victors of the day. But that day, uh, after two hours, both sides withdrew from the Ussuri River, with the Chinese declaring themselves as having won the day and 31 Soviet soldiers laying dead in the snow. Uh-oh.

When the news hit Beijing, protesters surrounded the Soviet embassy because Xinhua and the People's Daily had spun it that the Soviets had attacked first. Demonstrators screamed, "Fry Brezhnev, hang Kosygin!" for yesterday's border clash. Under the headline "Down with the new Tsars," the People's Daily said that the PLA would wipe out any invaders from the "fascist USSR." Anti-Soviet demonstrations took place in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and other big cities.

Meanwhile, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk held anti-China demonstrations. Speakers at a gigantic rally in Harbin and Heilongjiang called on the population to make every home a guard post to defend China's sacred territory.

That day, the protests, which was surrounding the Soviet embassy on Beijing's anti-revisionism road, swelled to a million people. The People's Daily continued to publish story after story and editorial after editorial about the crimes of the Soviet revisionists, both in the USSR against their own people, against the Chinese people, and Soviet social imperialism in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The editorial staff accused the Soviet Union of conspiring with Chiang Kai-shek against the People's Republic of China and called for increased war preparedness. The Soviets responded in kind. In Moscow, a crowd of 50,000 threw rocks, ice, and paint at the Chinese embassy in one of the biggest protests the city had seen in decades.

The Soviet press referred to Mao as a fascist with severe mental health issues. Some newspapers began to armchair diagnose Mao with everything from paranoid schizophrenia to antisocial personality disorder, and said that Maoism was a Nazi ideology that could destroy the international communist movement from within.

Mao replied by saying that such attacks would be responded tit for tat, and he accused the fascist USSR leadership of betraying Lenin's legacy and betraying the Soviet people. On March 14th, things got even worse.

A Soviet armored vehicle, on a routine patrol, onto Zhenbao Island while PLA troops were laying down landmines on the island. Um, a second PLA squad crossed the frozen Ussuri River and took up positions. Four more Soviet armored personnel carriers landed on the island in hopes to expel the PLA forces. The Chinese sent out a radio message to all Soviet troops that they were to leave immediately, and then they themselves withdrew.

The next morning, PLA artillery began shelling Zhenbao Island. Infantry crossed the river and forced the Soviets to withdraw after 90 minutes of fighting, led by four cutting-edge T-62 tanks. Soviet forces mounted a counterattack a few minutes later. Their artillery remained silent to avoid hitting the Chinese bank. Then the T-62s shrugged off RPG hits from the Chinese, but one was knocked out by a mine in front of the Chinese shore.

The crew abandoned it but were gunned down immediately. On direct orders, telephoned in from Moscow, a new Grad rocket artillery system fired a huge salvo at Chinese reserves, massing far inland, wiping out many Chinese troops and wounding hundreds of others. Top Soviet leaders in Eastern Europe for a Warsaw Pact meeting put the nation's strategic rocket forces Far East section on high alert.

After hours of fighting, both sides finally retreated from exhaustion. After the smoke cleared, 100 Chinese troops were dead, and 20 Soviet troops lay dead alongside them. Hundreds more were wounded on both sides.

The Soviets tried to counterattack again on the 16th and 17th, but were repelled without any further deaths, but several dozen wounded. Both sides claimed the other side shot first, and for several years, who shot first, 'did Han or Greedo shoot first', was a major subject of heated debate among Chinese, Russian, and American scholars.

Personally, I think the Chinese shot first. Yes, I'm gonna say it, the Chinese shot first. Lyle J. Goldstein, in his report about the Zhenbao Island incident, says that it is possible the Chinese PLA had their own reasons for shooting first.

There was hopes that upping the prestige of the PLA on the battlefield would help solidify Lin Biao's place as Chairman Mao's successor in the upcoming Ninth Congress and overall military control of the Revolutionary Committees.

There was also the possibility that leftist or, you know, very hardline Maoist officers within the PLA Heilongjiang command wanted to continue the class struggle against revisionism, only this time against the Soviet social imperialists rather than the revisionists at home.

However, this is just a theory, albeit one that makes a bit of sense, especially because Goldstein points out that despite amassing dozens of army divisions and long-range nuclear bombers on the border with China, the Soviets did not have a technological or even numerical superiority over the Chinese at that point.

Goldstein and other Western scholars essentially say that while the Chinese shot first, they do admit the Soviets kind of started the matter by repeatedly provoking the Chinese for years prior.

Kind of one of those, like, it's like when a little kid bothers their sibling by going, "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you," kind of like hovering the finger just over you, just like threatening to poke you but never poking you, and you finally slap, slap their finger away, and they're like, "Ow, you hit me!" Yeah, it was kind of one of those situations.

On March 21st, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin attempted to speak to Mao and Zhou at Zhongnanhai by telephone, but the switchboard operator in Beijing refused to connect that dirty revisionist.

Zhou Enlai declined a second attempt by Kosygin to telephone him and replied that such informal channels were no longer advantageous. Mao approved a memo closing informal communication channels with the Soviet Union but told Zhou Enlai to be prepared to negotiate with them in the future.

The next day, despite their last effort overtaken by other events, Mao asked Chen Yi's group of marshals for a second broader report on international relations. Mao told the radicals in the party that he was protecting Chen Yi in hopes that he could use him to liberate Zhang Pinghua and Zhao Ziyang once the masses' anger had subsided. Oh, remember the problem with Mao badges wasting too much aluminum, like I talked about in episode 24?

Well, on March 24th, Zhou Enlai closed the National Planning Conference and criticized the use of 5,000 tons of aluminum to cast bigger and bigger Mao badges. Mao co-signed the criticism, saying that, uh, saying that it was wasteful of army and air force technology to, uh, use so much aluminum. He called for the end of large-scale manufacturing of badges, and Mao said, gave the directive, quote, "Give us back our airplanes."

And from then on, you really see the Mao badge factories slowly start to close, and by, I'd say, yeah, by January 1970, all the big Mao badge factories had closed. You still see a lot of badge sets for the Ninth Congress, um, come around. I have some Mao badges from summer and autumn of '69 in celebration of the Ninth Congress, but overall, by January of 1970, Mao badges were no longer being produced. But it was okay, 'cause there was literally billions of them. Um, so there you go.

Well, the next day, exchanging planning notes for the Ninth Congress, Mao told Zhou Enlai that he and Lin Biao would be chairing the Congress with Zhou acting as Secretary General through the whole thing. But the question of the political report remained. Mao and Lin Biao received Chen Boda's first draft and Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan's second draft for Lin's political report to the Congress.

But Mao, uh, felt that Chen Boda's draft was too economistic and was too preoccupied with building up the productive forces and stabilizing the economy. Mao said it reminded him too much of Eduard Bernstein's old idea of "the movement is everything, the final goal is nothing." The Zhang and Yao draft, however, was much more to Mao's liking. He felt it was more balanced, with a radical thrust of keeping politics in command while still promoting the stabilizing of the economy. Essentially, Zhang and Yao centered their report on the idea of "grasp revolution, promote production."

On March 27th, Zhou Enlai drafted up a list of 115 names for Mao to, uh, to Mao for election to the Central Committee at the upcoming Congress. Mao was okay with the list but felt that maybe the Central Committee needed to be expanded.

Oh, and this is a fun aside, off-topic, I know, but on March 29th, in the Philippines, a few dozen Maoists from the Communist Party of the Philippines, which had been, um, refounded a couple of months prior, um, formed a new People's Army commanded by veteran Communist Party insurgent Bernabe Buscayno. Hey, uh, could any of my Filipino, uh, ND listeners help me with that name? I probably just butchered it. So anyways, happy birthday, NPA. Much love to all the Kasamas down there.

Um, then on March 30th, provincial delegates from all around the country were secretly carried into Beijing. Yeah, it was super secret, at night, by PLA aircraft for the big shebang. The Ninth Congress was to begin. Let me tell you how secret it was.

They were transported from the air force base in blacked-out armored vehicles to their hotels, which they were not allowed to leave until the morning of the first, and they had the telephones in their rooms confiscated. The party center wanted to risk absolutely no chances of Soviet or American intelligence finding out anything about this.

Now, one question I've had for many years is, if the party was still being reconstituted, how did they elect the delegates to Congress? Well, Yang Jisheng finally answered that for me. When, uh, in his text, um, it says,

"The delegates attending the Congress weren't elected, um, by party committees, but were designated by the core party groups of the Revolutionary Committees at various levels. At that time, the party organization had yet to be restored in the provinces, so military-dominated core party groups played a decisive role," end quote.

The next day, on March 31st, Mao approved the final draft of the political report for Lin Biao to deliver to the Ninth Congress the next day. Against Mao's advice, Lin still had yet to read it, possibly because, well, frankly, he deeply resented that Zhang and Yao, not Chen, had been the ones who headed the finalizing of the final draft, although that's just my personal speculation.

The next day, the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China opened in Beijing. At 5:30 p.m., 1,512 delegates from across China crowded into the Great Hall of the People and took their seats. The People's Liberation Army band began to play "The East is Red," and Chairman Mao, the man of the hour, strolled onto the stage, flanked by Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, and Jiang Qing. Everyone gave Mao a rapturous welcome, waving their little red books in a chopping motion, clapping frantically, and yelling,

"Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the great proletarian cultural revolution! Long live the Communist Party of China!" at the top of their lungs. Getting straight down to business, a 167-strong Congress presidium, led by Mao and Lin Biao and comprising a delicate mixture of CCRG radicals, PLA loyalists, and rehabilitated party veterans, was elected by the delegates to preside over the Congress.

When it came time to elect the chairman, vice chairman, and secretary general of the presidium, uh, quite the scene followed. Mao said, "I nominate Comrade Lin Biao as chairman of the presidium. Do you all agree?" Lin Biao rushed to the microphone and said, "La-li-li, no, no, please, I refuse. Our great leader, Chairman Mao, must be chairman of the presidium."

Mao said again, "Comrade Lin Biao, I want to be chair, I want to be vice chairman, and I want you to be chairman, all right?" Lin Biao stood up once again, smiled at the crowd, and said, "Our great leader, Chairman Mao, will be chairman of the presidium. All who agree, please raise your hands."

Of course, the delegates all smiled, all 1,510 of them, raised their right arms high in the air, and Lin Biao said, "Passed!" The conference hall once again rang with thunderous applause and shouts of, "Long live Chairman Mao!" Mao said, "Okay, if you insist, I can be chairman."

He then nominated Lin Biao as vice chairman and Zhou Enlai as secretary general, and both were readily elected by a show of hands and applause. There were 1,000, you know how I said there was 1,512 delegates? Well, actually two requested leave, so in the hall, there were 1,510 delegates, and Mao was elected unanimously by a full 1,510 to zero, while Lin Biao had 1,508 votes.

An authoritative source said afterward that Lin and his wife, Ye Qun, were the ones that voted against Lin to ensure that Mao would have the largest number of votes. Zhou Enlai received 1,509 votes and Jiang Qing 1,502 votes. Resentful of missing eight votes, Zhang later alleged mischief and demanded an investigation into who voted against her. Jeez, Jiang Qing, calm down. Don't take it so personally, girl. It's just eight votes.

It's, that's, that kind of reminds me of, um, if any of you guys are big fans of the old, uh, sitcom Frasier, I'm a big fan. There was an episode where he, uh, had a sample audience, and all of the sample audience loved him except for this one guy who was just kind of like, "Eh, I don't really like him." And, like, Frasier goes completely bonkers trying to analyze why that one guy didn't like him even though, like, 50 other people said they liked him. So it's, yeah, it's, it's kind of like that.

Um, well, anyways, on a more serious matter, this is interesting because it shows that during this time, it was becoming abundantly clear that there was a growing rift between the PLA faction headed by Lin Biao and the radical rebel faction headed by Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao.

The Ninth Party Congress was supposed to formalize the victories of the cultural revolution and chart the course forward. However, tensions emerged between Lin's military-backed faction and Zhang's radical civilian faction over the future direction of the revolution and the role of the PLA.

You have to understand that Lin Biao's power was obviously rooted in the military, and, you know, it had just been the one that had been sent into more or less, quote-unquote, "restore order" after the factional violence of '66 through '68.

And while Mao had embraced the cultural revolution to secure his position as Mao's successor and had been accepting of the fall of many of the rightists in the PLA, kind of as sacrificial lambs of sorts to divert mass anger at those officers within his camp, his faction favored stability and some level of restoration of top-down bureaucracy.

Jiang Qing and her radical allies, by contrast, saw the military's growing influence as a threat of their vision of continuous revolution and hopes to resume the cultural revolution eventually as once again a series of radical mass movements.

Um, despite the fact that Lin Biao was too timid and unambitious of a man to go head-to-head with Mao so brazenly, this didn't mean that he didn't have his issues with the radical rebels that Mao wanted to grand-alliance with, and this would eventually boil over into very open tensions at the Lushan Conference in 1970.

But we'll get to that when it comes. Um, another thing that I wanted to say, um, before I go on, is that there is kind of in the historiography, um, a lot of debate of, is the Ninth Congress where the cultural revolution ends?

Or at least that's when the radical phase ends. I often see, um, um, some historians say that the cultural revolution lasted from 1966 to 1969, and it's kind of interesting because the, like, if you read Mao's speech and Zhou's speech and Lin Biao's political report and some of the editorials that were in Peking Review, People's Daily, Liberation Army Daily, a lot of them talk about, like, the, uh, the great victory for the cultural revolution.

And, um, you even noticed in a lot of, um, eyewitness accounts of the cultural revolution from, like, 1970, 1971, 1972, um, you see that when, like, foreigners are visiting China and they interview and talk to Chinese people, the Chinese people seem to talk about the cultural revolution in the past tense, although that might not necessarily mean anything because you got to remember that there really is no past tense in Chinese.

Um, so that leaves things kind of ambiguous and lost in translation. Personally, you know, I still think that if you look at what was going on at a grassroots level, um, and at a provincial and county level, there still was a lot of mass struggle and, uh, like, debates around the nature of society.

There was a great revolution in people's thinking. So I think that while I understand why some people say that the Ninth Congress was the end of the cultural revolution, I still go with the traditional historiography of 1966 to 1976.

But we will continue this debate on in further episodes, especially at the season, uh, when we get to the series finale where we're summing up this podcast, so check that out. So after the presidium was elected, Mao made the keynote speech.

In his speech, he called for unity of all factions at this Congress of Victory, saying that the cultural revolution was going on swimmingly and had achieved a great victory, but to remember to never forget class struggle.

Then Lin Biao delivered the political report to the Congress, which was his first look at it, in which he gave a glowing summation of the cultural revolution and said the Chinese people must resolutely stay the course, carrying out the revolution till the end. The next day, delegates had breakout sessions, um, inter-region, and started discussion about the political report that Lin Biao gave the day before.

Every provincial and regional delegation passed the political report. Zhou Enlai warned Mao and Lin Biao that the USSR could make an empty show of strength at the border to coincide with the Congress and that the PLA should be placed on high alert. Mao said he'd put it into consideration.

On April 11th, as the Congress resumed its sessions, the Soviet Union submitted a second request to resume talks over Zhenbao Island in four days, or any time that would be convenient to the Chinese side, but the request was ignored.

In fairness, the party center was, uh, you know, a little busy with the Congress. Addressing leaders of the Ninth Party Congress's regional delegations, Mao said that the political report could be altered after being passed, and then he actually did something really interesting.

He said that the ‘cleansing of the class ranks’ campaign had to be put to a halt. He said, quote, "To kill too many people is a bad thing," and he said it had been too far-reaching and had targeted too many people on the basis of unreliable evidence.

This officially, thankfully, put a stop to the terrible campaign, although the campaign did continue on a limited scale on a local level in some isolated parts of China as late as 1971 due to the influence of some factions within the army. But overall, thankfully, the senseless imprisonment and killing of the left that had been done by the cleansing of the class ranks was over.

Two days later, Mao received more delegates, uh, including Sun Yuguo, the troop, the guy who led the troops at Zhenbao Island, and the Dazhai Commune head, Chen Yonghui, in his office at Zhongnanhai. The day after that, Mao returned to the Great Hall of the People to put the new draft constitution of the CPC to vote.

The Ninth Congress voted unanimously to adopt the new constitution, which designated Lin Biao as Comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade in arms and successor. Furthermore, the constitution added a new section to its, uh, article on ideology, stating, "The Communist Party of China takes Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought as the theoretical basis guiding its thinking."

Prior to that, the Communist Party of China simply said Marxism-Leninism. Anyways, “Mao Zedong Thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is headed for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide victory. For half a century now, in leading China's great struggle for accomplishing new democratic revolution, in leading her struggle for socialist revolution and socialist constructing, and in the great struggle of the contemporary international communist movement against imperialism, modern revisionism, and the reactionaries of various countries, Comrade Mao Zedong has integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practices of revolution, inherited, defended, and developed Marxism-Leninism, and has brought it to a higher stage and completely new stage.”

After the passing of the constitution, Zhou Enlai made a speech praising Mao's universally recognized successor, who elicited great joy, while Chairman Mao elicited boundless joy. Zhou called Mao a genius, which Mao found a bit gratuitous.

Reacting to Zhou Enlai's speech, Lin contradicted all the praise about his wisdom and theoretical understanding and said that all credit was to Mao. Lin Biao went on to tell the Congress that Mao's leadership had made China a more prosperous and more powerful country than any other country in history. Big words.

So on April 15th, delegates broke out into their regional groups once again to discuss who should be elected to the party's new central committee. Kang Sheng said, speaking to one delegate group, that it was good that the CPC Ninth Congress had been held eight years late because otherwise Liu Shaoqi would have wielded power at it.

Five days later, on April 20th, Zhou Enlai chaired a large meeting of leaders to approve a list of candidates for the new central committee, one candidate for each seat. After four days of discussion, consultation, and resolutions being brought to the floor, on April 24th, the Ninth Congress elected a new, 170-strong party central committee from a short list of 170 candidates approved by Mao the night before. More than 80% of the members of the central committee were first-timers.

The PLA ended up clenching a disproportionately large 35% of the seats, the most the PLA had ever had since the founding of the army in 1927. Ex-BeiDa Red Guard leader Nie Yuanzi, released from solitary confinement for the Congress, was also elected to the central committee.

On April 27th, Zhou Enlai gave Mao and Lin Biao the short list of names for the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee to be elected. On April 28th, the first plenum of the new central committee began in the Great Hall of the People with the task of formally electing the new Politburo. Mao opened the first plenum with a speech. He said that the advanced tanks and planes of China's enemies had yet to be proven, had been proven, sorry, easy to deal with.

In reply to Wang Ming, his exiled rival, who was living in Moscow at the time, claiming that China had a military coup in March of '67, Mao said, "Giving officers civil posts does not imply a military system." Uh, to be more specific, what Mao said is, "The Soviet revisionists are attacking us with their task broadcasts. Wang Ming's materials and tirades in the Communist, uh, journal, which was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, say we now have a military bureaucratic system."

System is a Japanese term. The Soviet call it, Soviets call it military bureaucratic dictatorship. Although Mao expressed disagreement with the idea that China was now a military dictatorship, that didn't mean he didn't have some similar deep-seated anxieties.

After all, he now, I think he was beginning to realize that the PLA did have a disproportionate influence on society at that point. Mao, in his speech, went on to recount the hardship of the civil war and said that ever since the party had entered the cities and declared nationwide victory, it had deteriorated and it had to be rebuilt, and that this was the beginning point.

After Mao's speech, the new Politburo was elected. Zhou Enlai told returning member Chen Boda, "Hey, I didn't expect to see your name after Mao's comments about him."

The new Politburo met together immediately and in turn appointed members of the Central Military Commission and other military organs. And with that, the Congress was over. All 1,510 present delegates sang the internationale, chanted "Long live Chairman Mao," and dispersed back home to tell their families and comrades of the joyous news.

Now onto my analysis.

In many ways, Mao's vision of establishing a new order had fallen greatly short. I mean, was the Ninth Congress a victory for the left? In some ways, yes, it was. Liu Shaoqi was dying in a prison hospital in Kaifeng while Deng Xiaoping was exiled and working in a factory in a rural village in Jiangxi. Many writers had been expelled or had been frankly killed during the prior three years.

But at the end of the day, the PLA were the real victors of the Congress, and the PLA had not been sufficiently cleared of the revisionist capitalist roaders within its ranks. The PLA officer corps and most PLA cadres may have denounced Liu and Deng, you know, officially, but they, including Lin, as we will later see, were still quietly sympathetic to them.

With the revolutionary committees now highly controlled by these old-school army brass, the victory for the Maoist left around the chairman, in retrospect, was, uh, I wouldn't say a hollow victory, but it was very much a partial victory.

While the entire country was celebrating the success of the Ninth Party Congress with gongs and drums and red flags, the conflict between Mao and Lin was rapidly fermenting. And like I said earlier, 15 months later, during the second plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in autumn 1970, a.k.a. the Second Liu Shan Conference, the conflict between Mao and Lin would burst into the open.

To be continued. Yes, that, my friend, is another, friends is another story for another day. So hey, let's put a bookmark in the story and let's leave it there for now. Um, I'm gonna be busy in the month of May, so most likely I'll be taking time off from a new episode.

I want to have June's, uh, I originally wanted to have June's episode be about the economy during and the politically, the political economy of the cultural revolution, but that's kind of a hefty topic to take on, um, especially during the school year. So I might have to have June be either an interview episode or maybe a book review or, or something like that.

Something that's like neither a thematic or a chronological episode. Um, I don't know. I'll keep y'all in the loop. If you guys have any ideas, send them my way on the Twitter. Um, oh, and a preemptive Happy International Workers' Day, comrades. Let's say it. Long live Revolutionary May 1st. Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Yeah. Until then though, be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory, comrades. From the ancient city of Xi'an, the ancient Han, Sui and Tang capital of Chang'an, I bid you a warm and hearty zai jian.

Today's sources for today's episode were

The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yang Jisheng,

Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao,

Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquadah and Michael Schoenhals,

The Tragedy of Lin Biao, The Riding the Tiger During the Cultural Revolution 1966 to 1971 by Frederick Hughes,

The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution by Jin Qiu,

Documents of the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China from Marxist Internet Archives, the Marxist Internet Archives Peking Review Archive,

New Documents on the Sino-Soviet Ussuri River Order clashes of 1969, compiled and published by Dmitry S. Ryabushkin ,

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict 1969 National Security Archives Electronic Briefings, edited and published by William Burr,

The Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, Volume 1 by Dmitry S. Ryabushkin ,

Return to Jianbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why It Matters by Lyle J. Goldstein, and

the Chinese University of Hong Kong Cultural Revolution Database.

All right, have a great day, guys.

Da jia hao tongzhimen, and welcome back once again to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution podcast, with your host Drew Smith, broadcasting once again from the beautiful and ancient city of Xi'an, once the ancient capital of Chang'an. Hope you guys are doing well. Um, I've settled in back just fine after my trip back to the States. Classes are going well, life is going well. Spring has sprung here in Xi'an.

It's still— it's still actually quite cold, but the flowers and the trees are just beautiful this year. The cherry blossoms and the plum blossoms. Other kinds of trees are just absolutely wonderful. I'm going to be going hiking with my trade union branch as a solidarity building exercise here in a few days, and it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun.

Mrs. and I are doing well. We didn't really do much for International Working Women's Day. These days, Women's Day in China is very divorced from the politics. The communist, you know, politics of International Working Women's Day. It's not so much a thing anymore, unfortunately. It's now kind of become this defanged holiday that's a mix of Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Secretary's Day.

So, for better or for worse, you know, it's one of those things where we just— we went out to eat, and I got her a bracelet, I got her some cosmetics, and that was— that was about it. You know, I got her a couple of flowers, and that was it. But today we're going to be doing an episode that's kind of, well, at the risk of making it seem narcissistic and unwarranted in self-importance, we're going to be doing an about-the-author mailbag ask-me-anything.

A lot of people have wanted to hear my story about why I came to China, what was it like being in the Revolutionary Communist Party USA and the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, why I became a communist, things like that. And I thought, right now I'm really deep in the research of the April episode.

April is going to be a theoretically meaty episode about the Ninth Congress and the Sino-Soviet border conflict. So I kind of wanted to do a March episode that I didn't have to do a lot of research for. So this is the perfect time for me to actually get on with doing what you guys wanted me to do, and that's to tell my story. Who is Drew? So, I collected a series of questions we have.

Let me see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. We have 16 questions. And I think that that's enough that we can start chopping it up. I'm going to answer these mailbag style, kind of. We'll go through one at a time. I'll read the question and I'll answer it. So let's give it a go and let's see what we've got in the mailbag.

The first question from our reader is: Why did you move to China?

And this is a really great, great question. And that is: So I have always loved Chinese culture, ever since I was a little kid. So how about we start with that? How did I get interested in China? So I've been interested in China since long before I ever was a Maoist or called myself a communist. I was still a little kid. When I was maybe about 8 years old, yeah, about 7 or 8 years old, I got these DK eyewitness books, which were these really fun picture books that, you know, had different interesting stuff. Like there was explorers, astronauts, ancient— and then, like, they had a series of ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Vikings, and ancient Egypt, and ancient China. And for one year, for Christmas, because I was a precocious child who already loved history, my parents got me Vikings— what was it? Ancient Egypt, because I liked ancient Egypt. I thought that was— the mummies and stuff were really cool. And ancient China. And I loved the ancient China book. I thought it was so cool. Especially because my mom really liked China and Japan, so even though we're a white family, not a drop of Asian blood in us, I grew up with, like, Chinese calligraphy wall scrolls, prints of old Chinese art, replicas of Ming vases. My mom even had some old Korean furniture that she found for cheap at an estate sale. Stuff like that. So I grew up with that kind of around me. And then in, I guess it was 1993 or 1994, Carma Hinton, William S. Hinton's daughter, who is now a film director, she did a documentary about the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. And I watched that as a kid. I was 8 years old, and I was captivated. I thought— I wasn't, like, pro-CPC. I wasn't pro-students. I was literally 8 years old. But I found this story so fascinating. It's a 3-hour long— it's a 3-hour long documentary. I think maybe even 4-hour. But I watched the whole thing, just glued to the television. And that, you know, with that DK eyewitness ancient China book, solidified, wow, China's really cool. I really want to go visit there someday. Then in 1996, the Chinese government, in conjunction with the city of Memphis, Tennessee, did this awesome, absolutely amazing exhibit called Imperial Tombs of China, where they had, like, a Han Dynasty jade burial suit. They actually brought some real-life terracotta warriors to there. There was relics of the Buddha. There was all sorts of wonderful Ming vases and Mongol— like, Mongol fur coats and stuff like that. Tong Dynasty lacquerware, old Buddhist art from, like, the Han-Tong-Sui Dynasty, the Warring States period. Bamboo scrolls from the Zhou Dynasty. It was— it was genuinely a beautiful and amazing exhibit.

And as a 10-year-old kid, that blew my fucking mind. And that really solidified that I would always be interested in China. Now, eventually I got also very interested in Russia, and we're going to talk more about why I got interested in Russia as a kid later, when we start talking about how I became a communist. So let's fast forward to college.

And actually, my specialty in college was Soviet history. And actually, for a long time, I spoke pretty darn good Russian for a guy who, you know, mainly just took university classes. I went to Russia in 2012. And so originally I was going to get my PhD and become a professor of Russian and Soviet history. But the job market in, you know, American academia, particularly the humanities, you know, over the course of grad school, just continually went down the toilet. Again and again and again. Just less and less job prospects.

And I was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? So I thought about going to Russia to TIFL. And I was like, yeah, you know, I can at least still live and engage with the Russian culture, so I'll go live in Russia. Well, I try to look for jobs in Russia. I find a few, but I get: "Oh, you will have to sponsor your visa, your self, you will have to buy your own ticket, and you will have to find your own place." And I'll be like, well, I'm living in America. I can't really find a place for, you know, to— like, a place to live.

Well, it's not our problem. You know, typical Russian. Typical Russian bureaucracy and cold indifference. That being said, Russians are some of the most wonderful people in the world. There's a reason I deeply love them. But, you know, before you really get to know them, and when you're dealing with them in business or stuff like that, well, yeah, you guys feel me, right? You guys feel me.

So I was like, okay, where do I want to go? And as I looked through the job listings, and the Chinese universities were like, hey, we'll help sponsor your visa, we'll pay for your airplane ticket, we'll buy, you know, we'll get you a crib. And so I packed my bags and I went to the Middle Kingdom. And I found the woman of my dreams. I found the career of my dreams. And, you know, kind of shit hit the fan in Russia with the Russo-Ukrainian war. So I'm so happy to be here. And, you know, it kind of has fulfilled a childhood dream of mine, and I can't foresee myself being anywhere else. I mean, honestly, honestly, guys, you know, I went back to America a few months ago, and I felt absolutely no connection to that country. Like, I love my friends. I love my family. I love my comrades that are still there, you know, fighting in the belly of the beast. And I give my love and solidarity to each and every one of y'all. But I felt no spiritual or cultural connection. You know what they say, y'all? Home is where the heart is. And my heart is here.

It's in China. Okay. With that out of the way, let's look at our next— let's see. So our next viewer, our next listener says,

"So Drew, how did you become a communist? And furthermore, how did you join the RCP?"

All right. Well, this is a long story. So buckle up. This question will probably take the majority of our time. So one thing you've got to understand is my upbringing.

So my mom's family are all real blue-collar, hillbilly, you know, salt-of-the-earth folk. My mom comes from a working-class background, but she— and my dad comes from a pretty well-off upper-middle-class background.

All of my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my great-aunts and uncles, and my cousins on that side of the family are all, like, doctors, lawyers, high, big engineers, small business owners. They're not, like, bourgeoisie, but they are the upper crust of the petty bourgeoisie.

But the thing is, is not to overshare too much or bring you guys down, but my dad's kind of the— was, I haven't talked to him in years— was kind of the black sheep of the family. And he had— he struggled for many years with severe mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction. And so my mom and him, I was a little accident between two college freshmen.

And so a shotgun wedding occurred, and I was born. And my parents, partially due to the fact that they never got to, you know, finish college, and another fact that, you know, my dad was just so insane. And so, you know, he was very sick all the time. He was, you know, he struggled, like I said, with substance abuse severely.

And so we really struggled to make ends meet, despite my dad's privileged upbringing. You could say we were kind of upper working-class, labor aristocracy, lower middle class. We probably could have done better, but my dad was, to say the least, not very responsible with his finances. So I grew up working-class, you could say maybe proletarian, maybe labor aristocracy.

And so, you know, I kind of grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. I saw, like, you know, a lot of the social problems, like teen pregnancy, drug addiction, you know, racism. And that really stood out to me.

I was very socially conscious as a kid. I also read a lot of books about the Holocaust and slavery and, you know, the transatlantic slave trade. And I watched about the extermination of American Indians. My great-great-grandmother was a Native American.

She was part of Eastern Band of the Cherokee. And no, not— this isn't so I'm like, oh, my great-great-great-great-great-grandma was a Cherokee princess. No. Like, if you look at my great-grandfather, who I grew up with, like, oh, yeah. And, you know, if you look at pic— old Daguerreotype photographs of Maggie Williams, my great-great-grandmother, oh, yeah. Yeah. That's an Indian. So, you know, I was conscious of that.

I watched this really deep and interesting mini-series called 500 Nations. It was a PBS documentary series narrated by Kevin Costner. I highly recommend it. But it was about the extermination of the Native Americans. And it was so horrifying to me as a kid that I realized I can never be proud of this country. I can never be patriotic for this country.

And then as a kid, I kept learning more about, like, what we did in Vietnam, what we did in Korea, how the CIA had caused so many regime changes and, you know, installed so many dictators. And the fact that, you know, during World War II, we really didn't go to war with the Nazis because they were Nazis. We did it because they were getting in the way of our geopolitical interests, and we would have allied with the Nazis if they hadn't.

So that, you know, this kind of started, you know, turning the cogs in my head of, like, you know, we need something else. This system is evil. This world we live in is terrible. But there's got to be a better way. So one day, my mom was throwing out some old books from her high school and college textbooks, and she asked me if I wanted any.

Well, in it, there were three biographies. One was Adolf Hitler. One was Katherine the Great. And one was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And I read all three, and I was horrified by the Hitler book, intrigued by the Katherine the Great book. But the Lenin book, that inspired me.

I read that book, and it was oddly a sympathetic, you know, young adult biography of Lenin. And I was like, this is it. I want to learn more about communism. So I went down to my local library and read the Communist Manifesto. And, you know, at 10 years old, there's only so much you can really grasp. But what I did understand, I was like, yeah, this is it.

And so at 10 years old, I get on the internet, dial up 56k modem, and I look up, is there a Communist Party in America? And I find the homepage of the CPUSA. Now, it was not cpusa.org at that time. It was harford-hwp.com backslash tilde CPUSA. And it took about five minutes to load the page. And I started reading People's Weekly World, and I read the Program and Constitution of the Young Communist League USA.

I started reading works by Gus Hall. And I decided to use my allowance one day to— I started— I saved up my allowance for a couple of months, and I printed out the membership application to join the Young Communist League USA. And I sent it in. And at 10 years old, I was in the YCL USA.

And yeah, that— my parents were just like, oh my God, what the fuck? What's going on? And that's also when I started really getting into Russia, Russian culture. I tried to teach myself Russian from some of those, like, you know, Pimsleur audiobooks and textbooks I found at Barnes and Noble.

And I, you know, I wasn't particularly active with the YCL ever. I, you know, I subscribed to Dynamic Magazine and People's Weekly World. I kept studying and reading. And I continued to, on and off, with what I could, you know, earning allowance through chores or walking people's dogs or mowing people's lawns. You know, I paid and, you know, I was in the YCL, I guess, from, let's see, '96 to 2001.

I mean, as much as you could be. I never actually, like, went to any meetings, never went to any, like, never marched in any contingents with them, never went to any protests.

But, you know, I was supportive. And technically, on paper, I had the YCL USA membership card. And I upheld their line. Except, except I always was— I very much opposed their support of the Democrats. That was one thing I was like, come on, guys. No, we need a revolution. Even at 10 years old, I saw the folly of electoral politics. So in 2001, I got so tired of, you know, I talked with communist adults on the internet through, like, internet message boards and Usenet, stuff like that, MarxMail, if any of you guys remember them, MarxMail mailing list.

And, but I felt like the CPUSA officials that I would talk with, that they never really gave me a clear understanding of why did the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries fall? Why was China so capitalistic now? Why is the DPRK like it is? And they never gave me a really good answer. Now, I was still strictly anti-capitalist, and I started reading some other stuff. I started reading, like, Democratic Socialist Theory, Trotskyist Theory, Maoist Theory, Anarchist Theory. And I decided, well, Marxism obviously doesn't work, so I'm going to become an anarchist.

So at, like, oh gosh, what was it, man? I was, like, 13 or 14. I started calling myself an anarchist and started hanging around in those online circles. I was still very much interested in Soviet history and Chinese history, but I was also really weirdly sectarian against communists. I thought, like, what was it I would always say? I said, communists are just as bad as Nazis.

Therefore, we should treat them just like Nazis, and we should fight them in the streets, anti-fascist style or anti-racial action style. It was just— it was dumb. Dude, I was 13. Cut me some slack.

But then, as time went by, you know, over the course of that year of me being an anarchist, I kept on thinking, well, wait, once we overthrow the government and try to institute these anarchist communes, how are we going to keep the bourgeoisie from coming back? And I was like, disorganized people's militias aren't going to work. Communities' militias aren't going to work. We're going to need a centralized general staff army with tight discipline.

So I was like, okay, we need a people's army. We need a red army or a black army. But that's going to need a leadership. It's going to need a political leadership. Oh, wait, we're going to need a vanguard. And that's when I went, you know what? No. Marxism actually works. Marxism actually is something. But I didn't want to join the CPUSA again. I was just— I was done with their bullshit. I really was. So I looked around, looked at the ISO.

Nah, they're just college students. I was in high— you know, I was just getting into high school. So nah. SWP? Nah. The RCP? And I was like, wait, aren't they a bunch of Stalinist, Maoist, tankie red fascists? But the more I read the Revolutionary Worker newspaper, I was like, wow, this is, like, the best newspaper on the left. Better than People's Weekly World, Socialist Worker, the Militant, Workers' Vanguard.

What was— oh gosh. People's Tribune. I read them all. I read them all online as a kid. But that one, the Revolutionary Worker, was always the one with the best analysis, the best coverage, hard-hitting, partisanly Maoist, but actually had a little nuance to it. Backed their sources up. And I also would read reports about the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade and how uncompromisingly militant they were.

Like, the RCYB used black bloc tactics. You know, they fought Nazis in the streets. There was, you know, Texas versus Johnson, the flag burning. And I was like, hell yeah. Like, this is my kind of thing. And I started doing more research, but I was like, but didn't— don't the RCP support Stalin and Mao? And Stalin and Mao killed, like, a bajillion people just for fun?

And then I went and I started realizing. I read Ludo Marten's Another View of Stalin. I read, did Mao really kill 20 million people (edit: on Monthly Review) or something like that? And I realized, oh, no, this— I've been lied to by the bourgeoisie. Like, this is not— this is not real. You know, Mao and Stalin were good guys. They made mistakes.

They might have done some bad things, but they weren't, like, evil dictators like Hitler or Mussolini. So there you go. So I rang up the Revolution Books bookstore in Atlanta and said, is there a way you could, guys, come out and meet me someday? And two comrades, a husband and wife from the RCYB, they came and met with me.

And I became a candidate member. And within, like, two months, they decided that I was ideologically reliable enough that I became an RCYB cadre. And so this was 2000 and— 2001, I started, like, you know, following the RCP and its line. I think it was 2002, I actually met up with those comrades, and I became an official member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. And I'm— yeah, I was 15. Wow. I was 15 years old.

How about that? And I immediately threw myself into the work. Like, I joined the RCYB. I started writing for the Revolutionary Worker newspaper. I was on the Revolutionary Worker newspaper web team to help disseminate the RW articles on various mailing sites and newsletters and things like that. I joined not in our name. I joined Refuse and Resist, the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, the Rim Solidarity Committee.

Like, if there was an RCP front group or mass org, I was a member. World can't wait. Ugh. But yeah, like, that's how it went. That's how it went. And it was crazy, man. Unfortunately, when the new synthesis came about, I was like, guys, this is too weird. This isn't what I signed up for. Like, I'm a Maoist. And I will always be a Maoist. So around 2007, also, I should note that the internal culture, because of the cult that was solidifying around Chairman Avakian, became very abusive.

I won't get into it, but it was very traumatic. And so along with the way the culture changed so domineeringly, and the fact that we were abandoning Maoism for this gobbledyremoved, I finally was like, I'm out. I'm out. But I will tell you guys some more later. Let's get on to the next question. But yeah, that's how I became a Maoist. And I still am one today.

Our next reader says, is your wife a Maoist like you?

No. The miss is, is unfortunately not a Maoist. She's not— she's rather politically apathetic. She was in the Young Pioneers and Communist Youth League of China in, you know, primary school, secondary school, and college. But would you say— would you say she's a Dengist, Marxist-Leninist, an ML? Like, maybe kind of, in the sense that, like, that's the default setting of all Chinese people in this day and age. And, you know, her parents are party members who are Dengist. Her aunts and uncles are party members and they're Dengist, MLs.

Grandma is a party member, but she's like— she's more sympathetic to Mao. She's more sympathetic to Mao. But that makes sense because she grew up during that time. So no, she's like— so if I had to say, Guo Youkun, she's politically apathetic, bordering on Dengist, ML. And with the ML-Maoism, she's just kind of like, okay, that's nice, honey. That's pretty much it. Let's see.

The next question, how did you become so interested in Chinese culture?

Oh, well, I already answered that. So we'll continue on.

So were you around for Texas versus Johnson?

I was not.

I was born in 1986, and Texas versus Johnson happened in 1984. I have met Joey Johnson, however. He was a pretty cool guy. He was pretty— he was an OG. All right.

Our next listener asks, can you talk about how the RCP discussed the People's War in Peru?

Sure. We were very openly partisan towards the Communist Party of Peru. We did not, you know, by no means were we, like, you know, all about, like, you know, the RCP never called itself Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist, with contributions that are universal from Chairman of Universal Validity with Chairman Gonzalo. No, we never did that.

We always just called ourselves Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. But we were uncompromising in our support of the People's War in Peru and the Communist Party of Peru. Like I said, I was a member of this committee to support the revolution in Peru. The Revolutionary Worker was always, you know, had the People's War in the headlines for many, many years.

On the first page of the Revolutionary Worker, when you opened it up, I guess on page two, if the front page is page one. In page two, there was always a call to free Chairman Gonzalo and defend his life. So we were very open about that. And I remember during that time, we used to, at our literature table, when we would go to, like, punk shows or festivals or something like that, we would always have the International Emergency Committee to defend the life of Dr. Abimael Guzmán.

We would always have those newsletters and pamphlets on our table. I used to have a sticker that said, "Yankee, go home, Partido Comunista del Peru," on my locker in high school. I used to wear the Peru 1509 badge with the prison stripes. I used to have that button on my backpack in high school. So, you know, we were, you know, a lot of people think that for some reason, and I don't know why, I see a lot of kids on Twitter say that the RCP never supported the People's War in Peru.

I— let me— trust me, as someone who was there at that time, that's not true. We were uncompromising and very militant in our support that the People's War in Peru was just, and that the Communist Party of Peru was the vanguard of the Peruvian proletariat. And we demanded the freedom of President Gonzalo. President Gonzalo. So that's what I got to say.

Our next question was, what did your regular activities look like in the RCYB? This is good.

We did a lot of taking out and selling the newspaper in ghettos and barrios and trailer parks. We would often do, like, wheatpasting posters in those, you know, in working class and impoverished areas. We would take the Obrero Revolucionario to, like, Mexican neighborhoods, Puerto Rican neighborhoods. We would be at every anti-war or immigrants' rights or pro-Palestine demonstration.

During the anti-globalization movement and during the anti-war movement, we did do some black bloc and direct action tactic. I won't go too deep into that, but I'll let you leave that to your imagination. We would face down the Klan or the National Socialist Movement. When they came into town, we would block up with antifa and anti-racist action and the local anarchists. And, you know, it would be going down, man. It would be going down.

Like, it's crazy, like, how I look back and how reckless and fearless I was when I was 15, 16, 17, getting into that kind of action. My mother would have had a heart attack if she found out what I was doing. You know, I'd come home, you know, back home all scuffled and sweaty,

and Mom would be like, "So how was the protest here?" I was like, "Yeah, it was great. It was great." You know? But, you know, we put in work, man. You know, we were doing things that no other youth league for any other Communist Party, whether it was the Young Socialists or the YCL, the YPSL, the Young People's Socialist League of the CPUSA, they weren't putting in work like we was.

So our next question is, what is your favorite memory of your time in the RCYB?

Well, gosh, that's a good question. So there's two ones that really spring to mind. Number one was when I went to Chicago under false pretenses. I told my parents I was going to a social justice or, like, US Social Forum, Left Forum kind of conference. It was really to go see Chairman Avakian. So I was, like, on this, like, super secret mission when I was 17, got in a van, and, you know, the party briefed us of, like, "Hey, you know, don't mention the chair's name when you were in the van." You know, we were briefed on, like, security. And we went from Atlanta to Chicago.

That was a long trip. And at DePaul University in a secret, super secret meeting group place, I got to see an eight-hour-long speech by Chairman Avakian. It wasn't the Revolution DVD speech. That was different. That was, I think, a year before. I think a year before, yeah. This was in '04. And yeah, I got to see— I got to see Bob speak.

So that was pretty crazy. Another was when the G8 Summit was in Brunswick, Georgia, in Savannah, Georgia. That was a great trip. You know, facing down the riot cop and getting into scuffles with, like, local right-wing, far-right-wing counter-protesters that were, like, there— like, the protest warrior types that were there to support Bush. And that was crazy.

And the great thing is that, like, me and my comrades, we all ended up going on a beach trip afterwards. So that was fun. That was really fun. Like, we actually— we were friends. That was the nice thing. We weren't just comrades. We were friends. We were lovers. We were, you know, companions. And it was— it was beautiful, man. It was beautiful. The School of the Americas protests were always fun.

The Republican National Convention in 2004, that was crazy. That was huge. I think there was, like, 500,000 people marching. That was great. That was a great memory. So, oh, man. You know, for all their fault, if, you know, the RCP made me the man I was in today. It gave me a strong sense of justice and discipline. And yeah, man, that's my story.

The next question. The next question. Let's take a look. And what do you think of the current student youth movement in the U.S.?

You know, I'm a little disappointed. I mean, like, I still see that the youth are still, you know, fearless and brave. Like, the pro-Palestine protests were beautiful. You know, seeing the kids out there in the streets during the uprisings of 2020, that was very nice and beautiful.

But, you know, I'm not— and I see promise in, like, the revolutionary student unions and some of the small campus-based Maoist collectives. I'm not shitting on them. Like, you know, I'm in full support of that. But, you know, more broadly, the student movement in the U.S. is kind of— it's kind of toothless.

Like, I see a lot more reformism than I used to. And just kind of that— this wave of postmodernism and identity politics and that kind of rad-lib stuff. What right-wingers call SJWs, you know, I don't use that word because it has a homophobic and misogynistic connotation to it. But unfortunately, a lot of kids who call themselves anarchists, call themselves communists, they don't really have a Marxist, you know, bearing.

A lot of it is just intersectional postmodernism wrapped in a red flag or in a black flag. And that's kind of disappointing because I'm not saying that those kids have bad intentions. I support them when they are part of good social struggles. But the theoretical level of the student movement these days is— it's kind of lower than I remember it being in the '90s and early 2000s.

You know, I feel like the Obama presidency really demobilized a lot of people, and we just haven't really recovered from it. But hey, you know, I see potential. I see— I hope things will get better soon.

I hope my comrades in, like, those RSU groups and the revolutionary study groups, you know, kids that are working on the campuses and the pro-Palestine and Black Lives Matter kind of stuff, the young sisters who are out there fighting for abortion rights, especially in this time that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, you know, the young Chicano youth that are fighting for immigrants' rights, especially with Trump attacking them so much. I see potential. I see potential.

But I'm going to be honest, y'all need Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. But that's just my opinion.

Why did you leave the RCP and what are your feelings about them?

Well, like I said, the new synthesis, that stuff, I was just like, "Yo, this guy, I'm out. I'm here to be a Maoist.

That's what I'm about." And like I said, the internal culture got so abusive and domineering. They were burning everyone out. There was no time for self-care or to, you know, go to school, go to work. They were telling us to quit our jobs and drop out of school to, you know, spend our entire lives just popularizing BA. (Bob Avakian)

And I wasn't down with that. I wasn't down with that.

What are my feelings about the modern RCP today?

I feel nothing but pity for them. Like, the few times I've run across them since leaving, it's just sad. Like, they just come to a demonstration and they, you know, pass out pamphlets and copies of basics and, you know, DVDs of Revolution, nothing less. And just, they don't really— yeah, they attend demonstrations, but do they do anything? No. And I'm sure there's only maybe, like, less than 100 members left. And yeah, it's just— it just kind of is just slowly fading out of existence. So there you go. There you go. What can you do?

Our next question. This is interesting. Favorite anime of all time.

Well, yes, one thing you guys got to understand is that Drew is an insufferable weeaboo. I mean, like, I'm not— I don't really like modern Japanese culture. I like Japanese history and traditional Japanese culture. But modern Japan, I have— I'm not really interested, but I love anime and I love manga. I was a cosplay kid. I was a convention kid. I was always at anime conventions and cosplay meetups as a kid and even in early college. I sold the revolutionary worker in cosplay at Anime Week in Atlanta. True facts.

So anyways, so my favorite anime of all time. So there's, like, my favorite classic and then my favorite contemporary classic. My favorite classic will always be Neon Genesis Evangelion. That sounds, you know, "Oh, that's a normie entry-level anime." Well, so be it. It's popular for a reason. It's beloved for a reason. It's mainstream for a reason. It's a great anime. And it's an epic tale.

My favorite contemporary classic is Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, which is about a mentally ill teacher and his mentally ill students and just doing stuff. It's weird. But the thing is, is also, like, Koji Kumeta, I'm pretty sure the manga author and the anime director, Koji Kumeta, I'm pretty sure that dude's left-wing because he talks about the Frankfurt School, Jean-Paul Sartre, Juche, the Japanese Socialist Party, the Japanese Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution, the Cuban Revolution. All of these are mentioned or referenced in this anime.

Y'all should check it out. It's quite something. It is quite something. It's pretty high-brow humor. If you don't understand a lot about, like, certain aspects of Japanese society, you might not get it. But if you do, yeah, check it out. Check it out. I've been really digging Apothecary Diaries lately. I liked Sosou no Frieren. I'm digging Chainsaw Man still, ready for the movie to come out. But yeah, I mean, like, I still watch anime, like, at least once a week. So yeah, there you go. Ooh woo.

What are your interests in Chinese studies besides the history of the People's Republic?

That's a good question. So I really am interested— I live in Xi'an, which was the capital for thousands of years. So I'm really interested in Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty, Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty. I like the Mongols. The Mongols were cool. I like the Ming Dynasty a good bit. When it comes to Chinese culture, I'm a big fan of calligraphy. I'm a big fan of— I wouldn't say I'm a big fan, but I like, like, the traditional theater. Like, Peking Opera is very interesting to me. Shadow Puppetry. If you've ever seen traditional Chinese shadow puppets, that's really interesting.

Let's see. What are some other things I love? I like Hanfu. I'm sorry. I like Hanfu. I think it's cool. I think it's pretty. My favorite Chinese cuisine is Hunan, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Shaanxi, of course. And my favorite food in the whole world is Peking roast duck. So there you go. There you go. I love everything about China, y'all.

That's the truth of it. I love everything about China. It's just— that's what I am, man. You know, I'm a sinophile in all shapes and sizes. Okay. Our next is, "What's your favorite city in China to travel to?" I would say Beijing. My in-laws live in Beijing. They're originally from Nanchang, but they all moved up to Beijing a few years back. So yeah, my father-in-law's family all live in Beijing. And there's always a lot to do in Beijing. It's a really fun town. Chengdu is great too.

Urumqi is actually a fun town. It's a little out of the way, but it's cool. Shanghai's okay. It's a little— it's a little too modern. So I don't know. I wouldn't say— definitely wouldn't say Shanghai's my favorite to travel to. There's not enough old-world charm.

Beijing. I'd say Beijing is my all-time favorite because it's got that right balance of world city, modern, futuristic, cool LED lights on skyscrapers. And it's got the old-world charm of being the old imperial capital. And just the museums there are fantastic. The food there is fantastic. And Beijing people, Beijingren, they really don't have big city syndrome, in my opinion.

They're very friendly. They're almost like Midwesterners, eh? You know, they're super hospitable, super friendly, real down-to-earth, real chill. So yeah, got to give love to Beijing.

Our next one is— oh, we have a little hate mail. "Why are you such a Baizuo idiot who hates China's success? Kill yourself, f-slur."

Well, okay. So this is interesting because I get— I hate to say this, but I get a lot of DMs on my GPCR podcast Twitter account that are, you know, there's a lot of kill-yourself Baizuo, kill-yourself ultra, the China stands really just, you know, I seem to be a very polarizing figure among them. Anyways, I think I'm actually going to answer this. So I don't hate China's success.

Nobody. I want to say this. Nobody on left Twitter or whatever you want to say wants China to succeed more than Drew Smith. I'm going to say it again. Nobody wants China to succeed more than Drew Smith. And that's why I'm a Maoist. And that's why I oppose the Dengist economic policies. Boom. Yeah, there. I said it. I think that China would be even more powerful. I think it would have— it will be even more economically successful.

You know, the social progress that would happen under it, the influence among oppressed peoples around the world would expand. I really do say with the bottom of my heart, I think that if China were to restore socialism, it would become even more successful than it is today. Yeah, and you can quote me on that. You can quote me on that. So yes, I want China to win.

I want China to succeed. And that's why I'm a Maoist. Full stop. All right. So we got two more questions.

We got, "Okay, how do you reconcile working for the CPC while being a Maoist?"

This is a good question. So one thing you guys got to understand is that the average CPC grassroots cadre on, like, a district, village, township, county, municipal level, prefectural level, they're good people. And they want to help. And they want to serve the people. They just don't know any better. They've never been, you know, they don't really get a lot of access to serious Marxist philosophy.

They might have, like, study materials and catechisms, but they don't really get to read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. They just basically, like I said, they get catechisms. They get Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought textbooks. And that's all they really get. They can read Xi Jinping's The Governance of China, but yeah.

So seeing that they are good people and they want to work, you know, they want to do good work, I want to help them with that. I want to contribute to Chinese society. It's a great— you know, working with the CPC is a really great networking opportunity. It could very well help advance my career. I can help the community, giving back to the community, and also just the lack of an alternative.

Now, are there Chinese Maoists? Yes. But I'm not really at liberty to discuss that. Just know that they're there.

But the Chinese Maoists have specifically asked me to not get involved or get active with them because a foreigner in their ranks is going to place them under far more scrutiny than they already are. They said, "Just do grassroots work with the party. Do your podcast. Keep researching. Keep collecting Mao badges and cultural revolution antiques so that those things are preserved. Keep, you know, interviewing old comrades and getting that eyewitness testimony. Keep setting the record straight." And I said, "You know what? That's fair enough. That's fair enough." So that's all I can say about that. (editor note: yeah wouldn't want to be mistaken for foreign-backed NGO lol)

So I really enjoy my work for the party. And I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing it. And I just— I really hope that we can go back to the socialist road someday. All right. So we have one more question. We have one more question. And that is,

"Do you endorse any particularly American leftist party or pre-party formation?"

I got to say, no, I do not support any particular formation. I'm not partisanly— I'm a Maoist, so I'm not going to support CPUSA or PSL, FRSO. I don't support them. I think there's good people in their ranks that have good intentions and I can unite with them tactically, but I would never support or endorse their parties. You know, but when it comes to, like, RSG, RSU, MCU, OCR, CRCPUSA, any of the other smaller study groups and publishing houses, you know, I wish them all the best.

And I wish them all to work towards a correct line and unite around a correctly Maoist line, put politics in command, a principled, proper unity that will last, that will get us to revolution. (Editor note: lol, sounds like 'hate the sin, not the sinner' thought)

So, you know, shout out to anybody who calls themselves a Maoist and is working towards reconstituting a Marxist-Leninist Maoist vanguard party to lead the proletariat within North America. Like, I fucks with you. I fucks with you. But to say, "Oh, I support RSG. I support the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries. I support the CRCPUSA." Nah. No, I don't. I'm not tied down to one group.

Besides, I don't even live in America anymore, so how can I? All right. Well, dang, that was really fun, guys. I think that's all the questions we have for today. I hope you guys learned a little something-something about the Drewski and had a lot of fun doing that. I know I did. I'm 38 years old and I've been through a lot, y'all. I've considered myself a communist for 28 years, and I've been an active communist for 23 years. So how's about that?

How's about that, y'all? All right. So it's a Friday afternoon. It's a beautiful sunny day. I think I'm going to go take a little walk outside and enjoy the fresh air. It's finally warm. So next month, next month, I guess around April 30th, yeah, April 30th, we will have our next chronological episode where we will be talking about the Ninth Party Congress of April 1969 and the Sino-Soviet Border Conflict of 1969, part one. So get ready for that, y'all. All right. From the ancient city of Chang'an in beautiful Shaanxi province, I say, zai jian.