Western analysts of Mao Tse-tung's China have long marveled at his regime's capacity for surviving repeated self-destructive outbursts. It has been at it, with greater or lesser intensity, since 1966, when Mao launched the convulsive Cultural Revolution in an effort to shake out the "revisionists" and strengthen his own slipping grip on the party machinery. The whole shebang very nearly came apart last September when an abortive barracks coup by his own Defense Minister and heir apparent, Lin Piao, forced Mao to ground the entire Chinese air force for weeks, and subsequently to cashier several Politburo members and carry out...
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