Special Section: Comrade Chiang Ch'ing Tells Her Story

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system. They also offered to establish a joint fleet that would have enabled them to dominate all of China's waters, coastal and inland. As a matter of fact, the Chairman agreed to the last proposal, but only on the condition that the Chinese pay for such a system. Chairman Mao told Khrushchev, "This is a matter of principle: otherwise you'll take every thing away."

FIGHTING A COUP

During the 1950s, Chiang Ch'ing faded almost entirely from the political scene. Reason: cervical cancer and other ailments. In the 1960s, her health finally restored, she emerged from relative obscurity to dazzling prominence. At first she worked from behind the scenes, playing an increasing role in the arts, particularly as a chief critic of "bourgeois" plays and movies. Early opposition to her was swept aside by the Cultural Revolution. Conceived by Mao as a way of re-revolutionizing the Communist Party, the massive assault on the bureaucracy soon got completely out of control, degenerating into constant factional violence in which tens of thousands were killed. But it was Chiang Ch'ing's chance for power as China's cultural dictator, and she reached a kind of political apotheosis. Yet as violence mounted, Chiang Ch'ing's offices were attacked several times, and, as she reported, students occasionally threatened to "fry her in oil and strangle her."

A serious threat to the Peking leadership came in 1969, only months after the fighting among Cultural Revolutionary factions had been quelled by the army. Defense Minister Lin Piao, who had been formally named Mao's successor, allegedly attempted to assassinate Mao and take supreme power for himself. When his plot failed, the official but as yet unverified account continues, he died in a plane crash over Mongolia while he was trying to flee to the Soviet Union. Chiang Ch'ing recounted the entire case in great detail during her interview, disclosing several new elements in the Lin-Mao struggle:

"[Lin Piao's] men drew up a sketch map of our residences and were going to attack and bomb them and finish us off all at once." More pointedly, she said that during the time Lin Piao's men controlled their residence he arranged for toxic substances to be added gradually to the meals consumed by Chairman Mao and her. They became ill, and she remained ill, especially neurologically, during most of 1969. Only recently had she recovered, she added.

Chiang Ch'ing then went on to say, "Comrades like the Premier and myself were on the side of Chairman Mao. They [Lin Piao's Ultra-Left] set fires everywhere, and we acted like a fire brigade. [In 1971] Chairman Mao continually advised the Premier on how to deal with such clashes, but Mao's ideas were not easily carried out. During the peak of the crisis she flew to the side of the Premier several times to help "cool things down." Constant threats, divisiveness among the people, and conspiratorial actions made it almost impossible for them to work—even at their home at Chung-nan-hai, which had also become infiltrated by the enemy. Nor could they sleep or eat there safely. Just to survive the Chairman and their defenders quietly evacuated Chung-nan-hai and established themselves at the Chinhai Hotel. That was inconvenient, so they moved on to the Great