15.
The Chinese civil war began a new phase of conflict in the spring of 1971. Mao’s government opened offensives to the south and west, against Kang and Lin. The dictator hoped to seize control of productive agricultural lands near to his territory, to keep his warlord state alive.
Mao’s forces were ill-equipped to go on the offensive. He could only muster Red Guards (poorly trained and disorganized child soldiers) and the more ideological elements of the PLA, which was still organized in an ideological fashion on the concept of a rankless, egalitarian force. To contrast, Kang and Lin had taken the time to reorganize their forces on a more orderly concept, improving unit cohesion and strengthening the chain of command. Lin had also been making use of the advisors sent by the Soviets, many of whom had also helped train fighters in Vietnam. Kang had no such help, but he received advisors from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to train his forces in guerilla techniques.
The republican forces continued to advance cautiously to their own detriment. The Taiwanese had been strong enough to overwhelm the other combatants at the beginning of the war, but as battle lines stabilized and warlords consolidated their forces, advances became more and more impractical. On the other hand, the Taiwanese forces remained well-equipped and were able to integrate their territorial gains together into a defensible whole.
This period was, all-in-all, a bad time to live in China. Standards of living varied, with the best being in Lin’s and Chiang’s territories, where Soviet and American aid, respectively, helped stave off starvation and keep some semblance of order. The worst were most likely in Mao’s territory, where purges and government-sponsored banditry were the rule instead of the exception. The Red Guards perpetrated incredible acts of violence in this period, pillaging when they were hungry and killing when they were angry.
It is unclear if Mao was aware of how bad the situation had become. Increasingly isolated from the world, surrounded by his most fanatical supporters, and insulated from bad news by the deaths of “disloyal” messengers and administrators, he refused to acknowledge the disarray of his territories. The reported outbursts appear to have increased in frequency and severity, culminating in Mao’s assault and strangulation of an advisor. Sometime in April of 1971, he authorized the use of chemical weapons on the two breakaway territories, but not against the Taiwanese, perhaps fearing retaliation in kind.
…
Being Mao’s chief of staff was no easy task, especially as of late. Jiang was the third person to occupy the position in the last year. The others were dead.
The first one had been killed in a fit of anger, when he failed to procure exotic liquor for Mao’s refined palate. The second had solved this problem by clever relabeling and dressing-up of grain alcohol. Jiang supposed that Mao’s smoking habit, now reaching absurd heights, had killed enough of the old man’s tastebuds that he couldn’t tell the difference. The second had been killed when he failed to obtain beef for Mao, a problem which Jiang had solved by clever preparation of dead house pets. The soldiers he sent to shoot stray cats and dogs, however, were starting to find them in short supply. It would be a problem, but a problem for the future.
A shout told Jiang that he ought to check in on the dictator. The old man was in the bunker’s war room, where Jiang was permitted but not expected. He ducked through the doorway into the room, and saw Mao standing over one of his generals, who had been thrown to the ground. Everyone else stood back, uncertain of what to do, and the man on the floor seemed more confused than angry. Jiang felt that it was prudent to stay out of the matter, and so did everyone else.
“Chairma-“ the general started speaking, but Mao was suddenly on top of the man, his hands wrapped around the unlucky officer’s throat. The general didn’t even struggle, and just looked up in fear. Jiang watched as the man’s face turned purple, and, with some vestigial survival instinct, he tried to claw at Mao’s face with the last of his strength.
The general was pushed up against the ovoid shape in the corner, and he tried to push it back behind him, to gain some room to breathe. In response, Mao slammed the man’s head into the side of the warhead. The old dictator wasn’t strong enough to do any real damage, but it didn’t matter. The general was already gone.
The room was quiet except for Mao’s panting and the humming of a ventilation fan. His victim had stopped twitching, and the crowd simply waited for Mao. A few minutes, and then the dictator stood, with effort. He saw Jiang and gestured to the corpse.
“Clean this up.”
Jiang nodded. But when he called in guards to move the body, he instructed them to place it in the empty freezer. He suspected that Mao might one day enjoy being served the general more than he enjoyed being served by the general. The floor of the war room was scrubbed as best as possible. There was no bloodstain, but Jiang didn’t want to take chances.
Jiang didn’t know that Mao’s argument had been about chemical weapons. He didn’t know that the general had begged Mao not to use them, to think of the Chinese people. He did know that the general was relatively free of disease, was relatively well-nourished, and could be the starring ingredient of dozens of meals.
…
The attacks were not coordinated and tended to be unsophisticated. The details are also extremely sparse due to lack of records, but it is believed that sarin gas, as well as less sophisticated blistering agents and poisons, were used. In some cases, these were delivered by artillery shells, but there are numerous accounts of Red Guard suicide charges, carrying spray canisters of poison gas. These offensives claimed many lives, but these were just as often from Mao’s side as from those of his enemies.
Lin Biao had the longest border with Mao and had the military resources and organization for a strong push, but he first wanted to gain a temporary truce with Kang Sheng. He knew that the spymaster could not be trusted, but he felt that temporarily relieving pressure on his flanks, and presenting a combined offensive against Mao, would be advantageous in the short term. Kang Sheng accepted, and the two began advancing to the northeast.
By July, their forces were in Hebei, near the center of Mao’s power. Advances slowed as they fought greater concentrations of troops, and the deficiencies of the Red Guard seemed to disappear on the defensive. Fighting turned into entrenched forces battling in the Chinese countryside, and the fragile truce between Lin and Kang collapsed at some point in the middle of the month.
Popular culture has often depicted Lin as being taken by surprise when this happened, but this is a mischaracterization. The general was no fool, and he kept a close eye on Kang’s forces near the border. It was not Lin’s incompetence, but Kang’s cunning that allowed for his surprise attack to go over so effectively.
It appears that Kang somehow infiltrated Lin’s military. It is possible that he had arranged for several units loyal to him to “defect” to Lin’s army, or he may have turned individual officers with promises of wealth, power, or patriotism. Most likely it was a combination of the two. In any case, several key motorized units on Lin’s southern flank worked with Kang’s forces and penetrated deep into Lin’s territory, moving north. It appeared that the objective was to cut the general off from the Soviet Union, his main source of support.
Lin’s options were limited. He did not have the units in place to respond, now that some of his troops had turned against him. He also could not afford to leave such a long flank unguarded. Instead, he decided to consolidate western forces eastward, and push forward into Beijing. There, he would be able to form a new border with the Soviets in the north, crush Mao, and defend a smaller flank against Kang, who would have trouble removing entrenched, well supplied troops from the northeast of China. It would mean the loss of significant resources, but the alternative was trying to protect an enormous frontier against better equipped and more mobile troops, and Beijing would be a worthy prize. The massive city, for all it had been through, was still a center of industry and home to a large population, one that would probably turn to Lin’s side as soon as Soviet supplies arrived.
Lin’s forces moved quickly, crushing the disorganized resistance they found. Now, they were driven by a deep desperation, to reclaim their supply line and to finally defeat the insane ruler of the northeast. Despite their enthusiasm, they were horrified by what they found as they advanced.
Where the Red Guard retreated, they scorched and salted the earth. Every village was looted, then killed to the last man or forced to march, then burned to the ground and covered with a miasma of poisonous gases. No life stirred in the lands that Mao’s forces left, and Lin had to slow his advance to move around the clouds of nerve gas, but it did not stop him.
One interesting thing to note is that Mao may have not actually ordered these scorched earth tactics. The Red Guards seem to have been operating more and more independently, as a grassroots terrorist organization, and seem to have clashed with the more regular units of Mao’s PLA several times at this point. On the other hand, scorched earth was certainly in his playbook.
Whatever the case, Lin’s forces entered the outskirts of Beijing in early August of 1971. The city was in ruins, even worse than after the Soviet strike. Buildings were reduced to defensible piles of rubble, with chunks of concrete and masonry being used to block the streets from armored advance.
Irregulars took potshots from second story windows on the advancing troops, only fleeing when the buildings were about to be leveled. Urban warfare is often described as a special type of hell, and Beijing was its innermost circle.
Every evil of war was committed, and the most lurid details will be spared. All these atrocities could not stop Lin’s advance, as his forces continued to close in on Mao’s location. On August 16th, 1971, the Maobunker, and everything else in the vicinity, was vaporized, as he or one of his advisors detonated the thermonuclear warhead that had been smuggled away in the Maobunker.
Unfortunately for the Maoist forces, and for Kang, the nuclear weapon had been detonated too early. Lin’s army was almost entirely outside the range of the explosion, and the underground detonation meant that the ensuing firestorm was very small. The explosion did succeed at effectively ending Beijing’s storied, millennia-long history as one of the world’s largest cities, as nearly everyone left alive evacuated or perished in the ensuing anarchy. Swarms of flies descended on the city, and most wild animals would avoid the haunted place for decades.
Unfortunately for China, Mao’s ideological remnant would remain. But Lin Biao had secured his position in the Northeast, even if he was battered and denied the prize of Beijing. Soviet aid began to flow once more, and his army dug in for the fall and winter season.
Kang Sheng had his own issues. Like the other warlords, the spymaster had spent much of the war carefully implying that he had nuclear weapons available to use in a time of desperation, but it was nothing more than a bluff. Kang’s territory now contained several nuclear facilities, both civilian and military, but they had been totally cleaned out of useable nuclear material. The missing warheads, which he had hoped to secure during the chaos of the initial collapse, were still missing. Even his contacts in Cambodia, where a nuclear weapon had passed up in the chaos of the early civil war, could not deliver him a warhead, and the South African option would take far too long.
Besides that, Kang’s territories were still starving. By 1971, most of the unusual weather patterns caused by the Red War had faded into the background, but agriculture was still difficult. Cities were ruined, communes were scattered to the four winds, and lands had been poisoned both accidentally and intentionally. He still had no way to secure advanced, chemical fertilizers from the outside world, and the Taiwanese and Linist forces had cut off most useful seaports. Still, he had most of the China to work with, and traditional methods of agriculture were possible, even if they were inefficient. Kang settled in for the winter, planning the next year’s battles.
In Mongolia and the territories of China which had newly changed hands to the Soviet Union, things were better, but still chaotic. These border regions had been choked by overwhelming numbers of refugees, fleeing the trouble in China. Refugees also made their way to North Korea, which was now closing itself off more than ever, and to farther locations such as South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Some refugees from there even made their way to the United States, driving a mild political controversy.
The nuclear detonation in Beijing was closely studied by intelligence groups around the world. As nuclear weapons spread to more and more countries, the prospect of nuclear terrorism seemed increasingly intimidating and plausible. The destruction of Beijing gave them a mixture of good and bad news. The good news was that the underground detonation did a lot to reduce the direct explosion, incident radiation, and fireball of the nuclear blast. This meant that a relatively small portion of the city was directly destroyed, and most of the explosion was redirected away from buildings and people, dissipating in the atmosphere. The smaller firestorm also meant that the nuclear cooling effect- now something specifically watched by researchers at NASA and other groups- was greatly reduced, but part of this might have been related to the fact that Beijing had already been burned once.
A more concerning phenomenon was also observed, however. The entire Beijing region had been deeply contaminated by nuclear fallout. It had been sent up in a huge plume in the lower atmosphere, instead of dispersed into the higher-altitude winds like a normal airburst. The underground detonation helped concentrate the fallout even more, ensuring that the city was deeply and dangerously contaminated.
This led planners to some new insights. City-destroying suitcase nukes were a potential problem, but not the worst potential problem. New research would be needed on mitigating and cleaning up nuclear fallout. Firestorms could be prevented with good planning and design. Nuclear winter might not be inevitable.
These revelations had both positive and negative impacts. The defensive preparations based on this information would save lives, but the increasing belief that nuclear wars might not be the end meant that more nuclear attacks were almost guaranteed. These attacks were also guaranteed by the sheer effectiveness of the Beijing explosion, which denied the entire city to Mao’s enemies, and anyone else.
For terrorist groups, rogue nations, and desperate dictators, this represented an opportunity. With nuclear weapons, the fall of one man could mean the end of a nation and the depopulation of its cities, forever. The world took note, and as always, began scheming.
Even after defeating Mao, Lin was in a tough spot. Kang had taken the opportunity to consolidate his hold on his territory and improve the infrastructure available to him. Food supplies remained unsteady, and starvation was epidemic in the Chinese countryside. Lin had new access to Soviet territory, via the northeastern part of China, but this was becoming something of a liability.
Propaganda, released by Kang and (the late) Mao, was doing an excellent job of painting Lin as a stooge of Soviet-Russian imperialism and an instrument to continue the humiliation of the Red War. The Republican forces released similar claims, but these tended to expand to communism as a whole. For his part, Lin Biao was not a very effective propagandist, and tended to rely on his own achievements to speak for him. This was occasionally wise, as his defeat of Mao played well with the public, but sometimes failed miserably. During the march east, his forces had lost significant amounts of morale, but with the connection to the Soviets re-established, things were once again improving. By spring, he might be ready to go back on the attack.
To Lin, it seemed unlikely that his enemies would have significant nuclear forces, or the means to use them. China was still reeling from radiation sickness and the effects of nuclear explosions. There were still rockets left from the original nuclear projects, which could potentially be used to launch an attack, but the infrastructure to transport and launch them was severely lacking by 1971. Nuclear weapons could, theoretically, be moved on the ground towards enemy forces, but this would be a suicide mission, and with dwindling manpower and an increased need to return conscript forces to farming, Lin’s enemies could hardly afford to waste resources on such an attack. Except, perhaps, for the Republicans. But the general was isolated from them by the bulk of Kang’s forces, which split China east-west through the middle.
As winter approached, it appeared that China would remain in three pieces.