144 China in World History
with the peasants and to be reformed through hard labor, just as they
had sent their victims to a similar fate. For thousands of young people
who had been members of the Red Guards, this was a sudden awaken-
ing from the dream of the glorious Cultural Revolution.
In poor rural villages, these “sent-down” youth discovered how
poor China really was, and they were often resented by the peasants
who saw them with their soft hands and city ways as burdensome
intruders. More shocks followed in quick succession. Actual shooting
between Russian and Chinese troops occurred at two points on the long
Soviet-Chinese border in 1969, and there were rumors that the Soviet
military might actually strike China’s nuclear facilities. In part to coun-
teract the Soviet threat, Mao and Zhou Enlai now decided to resume
offi cial contacts with the United States. In early 1972, in perhaps the
most dramatic diplomatic reversal in the twentieth century, the avid
cold warrior President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor,
Henry Kissinger, visited Beijing for extensive talks with Premier Zhou
Enlai and an ailing Mao Zedong. Nixon had his own reasons for seek-
ing improved relations with China, both to help the United States fi nd
a graceful way out of its war in Vietnam and to play off China against
the Soviet Union.
It was diffi cult for Maoists to explain to the Chinese people how the
United States could go in one day from being China’s greatest enemy
to being a potential friend, and another development at almost the
same time was even more diffi cult to explain. In 1972 it was offi cially
announced that defense minister Lin Biao, the hero of the Cultural Rev-
olution and Chairman Mao’s “closest comrade-in-arms,” was a traitor.
He had plotted to kill Mao, and when his plot was discovered, he died
in a plane crash on September 13, 1971, along with his wife and son,
as they were trying to escape to the Soviet Union. No one knew if this
report was true, but everyone had to ask how such “traitors” as Liu
Shaoqi and Lin Biao could ever have risen to such heights of power if
Mao was as wise as always claimed.
From 1949 onward, Mao dominated the People’s Republic of China
as no one else, so when his health steadily worsened in the early 1970s
(from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), anxieties mounted over who could
possibly replace him. Zhou Enlai had survived the Cultural Revolution
only by backing Mao and sacrifi cing some of his own closest associates.
Surprisingly, when Zhou fell ill in 1974, Mao brought Deng Xiaoping
back from political exile to assume the reins of government. Zhou died
in early 1976, and in April there were riots in Tiananmen Square when
police removed memorial wreaths dedicated to Zhou. Mao’s wife, Jiang