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History’s greatest mysteries: why did Mao’s chosen successor flee China?

发布时间 2021-12-31 20:00:00    来源

摘要

Fifty years ago, in September 1971, Lin Biao boarded a flight out of the country, only to crash in the Mongolian desert shortly afterwards. Was this the result of an aborted coup on Lin’s part? And where exactly was his plane heading? In the latest in our series on history’s biggest conundrums, historian Rana Mitter answers these questions and more about the mysterious “Lin Biao incident”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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中英文字稿  

Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's Best Selling History Magazine.
你好,欢迎收听BBC History Magazine的History Extra Podcast。这是英国最畅销的历史杂志。

Hello and welcome to History's greatest mysteries. I'm Rob Atta, the editor of BBC History Magazine. This is episode four of this series and it finds us in Communist China in the final years of Chairman Mao.
大家好,欢迎收看《历史上最大的谜团》。我是BBC历史杂志的编辑Rob Atta。这是本系列的第四集,我们将回到毛主席任职的最后几年,在中国共产党中。

In 1971, the likely successor to Mao was the Army General Lin Biao. But that September, he inexplicably boarded a flight out of China which crashed shortly afterwards in the Mongolian desert. 50 years later, numerous questions remain about the mysterious Lin Biao incident. And to try to answer them, I spoke to Professor Ran Amitur, an expert in Chinese history at the University of Oxford.
1971年,林彪将军被视为毛泽东的最可能接班人。然而,那年9月,他莫名其妙地登上了一架飞离中国的航班,很快便在蒙古沙漠坠毁。50年过去了,林彪事件仍有许多谜团尚未解开。为了试图回答这些问题,我采访了牛津大学中国历史专家Ran Amitur教授。

Ranat, could you please tell us a little more about Lin Biao and his backstory? How has he risen to become one of the leading figures in Communist China?
Ranat,请问你能否告诉我们更多关于林彪以及他的背景呢?他是怎么成为中国共产党的主要领导人之一的呢?请尽量用易于理解的方式表达意思。

Lin Biao's claim to the legitimacy, Rob, really comes from the fact that he was probably, even without exception, the finest general that the Chinese Red Army, the Communist Army, had during the 20th century. There are other figures, Pung Dahuai is one who comes to mind who were very close in that sense, but I think many people would argue that overall Lin Biao was the most important.
林彪声称自己的合法性真正来源于他可能是甚至毋庸置疑地是中国红军、共产军在20世纪期间最好的将军。虽然还有其他人如彭大将军等也有很高的威望,但我认为许多人会认为总体而言林彪是最重要的。

And in a sense, his life story tracks much of that bigger story of the Chinese Communist Revolution across the 20th century. He was, for instance, present in the 1930s and 1940s alongside Mar-Zhidung, Chairman Mao, as he became, and other top Communist leaders in the city or town, really, we should say, of Yanan in Northwest China. That was where the diehard Communist revolutionaries ended up at the end of the famous Long March of the 1930s. And Lin Biao, we know, was there living in these cave dwellings, very much part of this little revolutionary base that became a rather big revolutionary base.
从某种意义上说,林彪的生命历程跟20世纪中国共产主义革命的较大故事联系紧密。例如,在1930和1940年代,他与毛泽东(后来的主席)及其他顶级共产主义领袖一起出现在中国西北的延安市镇中。那里是顽强革命家们在1930年代著名的长征之后的最后落脚之地。而我们知道,林彪当时住在这些山洞里,成为这个革命小基地中的一员,随后发展壮大。

But the place that was almost a thinking shop, you might say, a place to think again about how the military and political nature of China might change once they had achieved their revolution in 1949. But Lin Biao really comes of age, really makes his mark in the Civil War in the years 1946 to 1949.
这个地方几乎可以称为思考的场所,它是一个重新思考中国军事和政治性质在1949年革命之后可能发生变化的地方。但林彪真正成熟,真正在1946年至1949年的内战中留下了自己的印记。

This is after World War II. The Japanese were defeated by an uneasy combination of the Chinese nationalists and Chinese Communist armies, but those two armies then turned on each other, the nationalists under Changkai Shik, the leader of China and the Communist led by Mar-Zhidung. And essentially for three years, three very vicious years, China's Communist and nationalists fought each other on successive battlefields. The major battle really took place between, well, that's in 1947 and 1949, very early 1949. And Lin Biao, in particular, was central to that.
这是第二次世界大战后的事情。日本被中国国民党和中国共产军队的难以相容的联合打败,但随后这两支军队互相攻击,国民党由中国领袖蒋介石领导,共产党由马克思主义者主导。在接下来的三年里,即三年中,中国的共产党和国民党在连续的战场上互相战斗。其中一场主要的战斗发生在1947年到1949年初。林彪在这场战斗中发挥了至关重要的作用。

And I guess we would say that his particular contribution came in an understanding gained over time about how to balance set peace warfare, you know, big regiments, big battles, big order of battle with guerrilla warfare, the classic form of cut and run, chase and run that had been actually in some ways pioneered against the Japanese during the Second World War and then was brought to bear again in various ways during those Civil War years.
我想我们可以说他的特殊贡献在于随着时间的推移,他所得到的一种平衡的理解,即如何平衡设置和平战争,大规模军队,大规模战斗,大规模战斗序列与游击战争,即切割和逃跑,追逐和逃跑的经典形式,这在二战期间实际上在某些方面是针对日本人进行开创,并在那些内战年代以各种方式再次发挥作用。

Essentially Communist China's finest general, that was what gave Lin Biao tremendous amounts of prestige. And then by the time of the incident we're going to talk about, is it fair to say that Lin is at the height of his powers and the height of his influence within China?
实际上,林彪被视为中国最杰出的将领,这是他所享有的巨大威望之源。到我们要谈论的事件发生时,可以说林彪已经达到了他的权力和影响的巅峰,这个说法是否公正呢?

By the time of the Cultural Revolution, which is generally reckoned to have lasted from 1966 to 1976, a decade, Lin Biao essentially reached the peak of his influence. It's just worth noting what kind of personality he had to make it clear why in some ways this was a slightly unexpected outcome.
在文化大革命时期,通常认为是从1966年持续到1976年的十年间,林彪基本上达到了他影响力的巅峰。有必要注意他的人格特质,以便更清楚地了解在某些方面,这是一个稍微意外的结果。

Lin Biao, unlike some of his top communist rivals, I think rivals is not too strong word, but certainly comrades, was not a particularly personable character. He was regarded as being in some ways a bit standoffish, not someone who necessarily was very kind of a bonnemy, not hail fellow, well met.
林彪与一些共产党的高层领导不同,他不是一个特别有亲和力的人。他被认为在某些方面有点冷漠,不是那种非常友好、平易近人的人。

He was often said to be quite photophobic. In other words, bright lights bothered him and he preferred to sort of be a little bit in the dark. Certainly it was said that when younger women were brought close to him in Yanan and the wartime years against Japan, that being close to Lin Biao, it was not something they much liked to do.
他常被认为是光线恐惧者,也就是说,明亮的光线会困扰他,他更喜欢稍微待在暗处。当他在延安和抗战时期与年轻女性密切接触时,据说那并不是她们想做的事情。因为当时她们靠近林彪时,他就在旁边。

So he was not a personality who was generally charismatic in the ways that, of course, Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao, absolutely was. Well yet he rose tremendously in terms of the party leadership in the 1960s and 1970s.
他并非一般意义上的有魅力的领袖人物,就像毛泽东主席那样绝对有魅力。但是,在20世纪60年代和70年代,他在党的领导层中却得到了极大的晋升。

And that was really for several reasons. One was that what you might call the conventional leadership of the party, the conventional civilian leadership of the party. If you do my spire, perhaps more than anyone else by Liushaochi, Liushaochi was the chairman of the Republic and president of the Republic of China.
这实际上是有几个原因的。其中之一是由于党的传统领导层,即党的传统民间领导层。如果你问我,也许刘少奇比其他人更多地影响了我的思想。刘少奇是中华民国的主席和总统。

Now, that's different from being the chairman of the party, which actually even today is really the more important post in terms of power. But nonetheless, Liushaochi was very much second in command to Mao from that whole period from the 20s up to the 1960s.
现在,这与成为党主席是不同的,事实上在权力方面,即使到今天,成为党主席仍然是更重要的职位。但尽管如此,从20世纪20年代到1960年代,刘少奇一直是毛泽东的二把手。

And yet Mao came to distrust him in large part because Liu had had a quite significant role in shutting down the great leap forward of the 1950s, 1960s as socialist experiment in collective farming, collective industrialization that went horrifically wrong.
然而毛泽东开始不信任刘少奇,主要是因为刘少奇在1950年代和1960年代的大跃进(一个社会主义集体农业和工业化实验)中扮演了相当重要的角色,而该实验出现了严重问题被迫中止。

The bottom line was that the agricultural calculations were made so badly that essentially more than 20 million people starved to death in the countryside. So absolutely horrifically so policy making, eventually after much effort brought to an effort in 1962 and Liushaochi, and another one of his Virginia comrades, Deng Xiaoping, who would go on to become, of course, the man who was felt to have modernized China's economy after Mao's death.
底线是,由于农业计算错误,导致乡村地区超过两千万人饿死。这是一个非常恐怖的政策制定错误,最终在许多努力之后,在1962年由刘少奇和他的弗吉尼亚同志邓小平共同推动实施。邓小平在毛泽东逝世后被认为是使中国经济现代化的人。

They basically pulled Mao's great leap forward policies away from the front line. They instituted, instead, actually limited market reforms that look very much like capitalism to many looking on. And since she tried to send Mao to an elevated but actually less powerful position, and to put it its most concise, he wasn't having any of it.
他们基本上将毛泽东的大跃进政策从首要位置撤下来。相反,他们实施了实际上类似于资本主义的有限市场改革,许多人看来如此。由于她试图将毛泽东送到一个地位高但实际上不那么有权的位置,最简洁地说,他不想接受这样的安排。

He felt extremely sideline. He felt extremely angry and looked to instead another center of power where he might be able to exercise his authority. And being quite cut out, but certainly sideline in the civilian leadership, he turned to the army. And Lin Biow, by that stage as Minister of Defence, was a figure who had essentially set up almost an alternative power base in the People's Liberation Army.
他感到自己十分被边缘化。他感到极度愤怒,开始寻找另一个权力中心,以便能够行使自己的权威。虽然他在民政领导层被排除在外,但他转向了军队。当时担任国防部长的林彪成为了一个几乎建立了另一个军队权力基础的人物。

The army, technically speaking, then and now, not all the people's Republic of China, but of the Chinese Communist Party. So the world's biggest party army, rather than national army, you might say. And learning from the People's Liberation Army, the learn from the PLA campaign with Lin Biow's name very much attached to that, became one of the catchphrases of the early to mid-1960s.
从技术层面上讲,中国的军队不是属于全体中国人民,而是属于中国共产党。因此,可以说这是世界上最大的党军,而不是国家军队。从解放军学习,学习由林彪带领的战役,成为20世纪60年代中期的一个流行语。

And that was then mixed in even more strongly when the Cultural Revolution began this huge internal revolt actually sponsored by Mao himself against his own party and against ultimately figures like the Oshouchi. And that context Lin Biow made a very powerful alternative second-in-command, and that use of China's army became particularly important in 1969.
当文化大革命开始时,毛泽东主导了一场大规模的内部叛乱,反对他自己的党派,最终反对像欧阳山尺这样的人物,这进一步加剧了那个时代的混乱。在这种背景下,林彪成为了一个具有强大代替性的副指挥官,并且中国军队在1969年变得尤为重要。

Because after three years of the face of the Cultural Revolution that listeners may be perhaps more familiar with in the number of Chinese history, the Red Guards, with their little red books, the Thoughts of Chairman Mao waving them in the air in Tiananmen Square, a million of them in front of the Chairman.
因为在文化大革命的历史面貌中,经过三年的时间,听众可能对红卫兵及其手持小红书、在天安门广场扛着毛主席像,百万红卫兵向主席起誓的场景更为熟悉。

That was really the first three years of the Cultural Revolution. 1966 to 1969. And by the end of that time, things were getting so out of hand that actually Mao and top leadership, the ones who were left, Liyou Shouchi was already pretty much on the way out to being essentially confined and then died through neglect.
这就是文化大革命头三年的情况,从1966年到1969年。到了那段时间的末期,事态变得无法控制,以至于实际上毛泽东和高层领导,那些留下来的人,李友柳、周恩来等,已经开始被限制自由,最终因疏于照料而去世。

But people like Mao, people like Lin Biow and others, essentially decided they had to shut this really tumultuous part of the Cultural Revolution down. And they used the army to do that. So by 1969, you could argue that the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, is the most powerful entity in China, even during the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and Lin Biow, this powerful, enigmatic figure, the Minister of Defence, this story general from China's Revolutionary War, he's very much in charge of it. And seen by that stage as Mao's eventual successor.
然而,像毛泽东和林彪这样的人,实质上决定关闭文化大革命这一极端动荡的阶段。他们动用了军队来达成这一目的。因此,到了1969年,可以说,解放军成为中国最强大的实体,即使在文化大革命中期也是如此。林彪,这个强大而神秘的人物,作为国防部长,是中国革命战争的故事性将领,他负责掌管这一切。到那个时候,人们已经认为他将成为毛泽东的继任者。

So most people had looked at Lin Biow in 1969, in the early 1970s and said, okay, he's sitting very, very pretty indeed. So Lin by the turn of the 1970s is essentially the number two figure within China. But am I right to say that things had already begun to unravel for him even prior to the incident?
在1969年和70年代初期,大多数人都认为,林彪的处境非常优越。因此,到了1970年代初期,林彪在中国几乎成为了第二号人物。但是,我的理解是,在这件事情发生之前,他的事情已经开始走下坡路了,我说得对吗?

I think most of the Beijing watchers, I think in those days they still would have called this other West actually Peaking Watchers, because people didn't tend to use the kind of properly pronounced name for Beijing until probably the 1980s. Most of the Beijing watchers at the time would have said that Lin Biow seemed pretty much to be clearly designated as the successor to Mao, the number two in very opaque, very non-transparent leadership of the Chinese Party by the early 1970s. And yet, yes, there are many ways we can now see that clearly things were beginning to crumble away.
我认为大多数北京观察家,那时候他们可能称其为“Peaking Watchers”,因为人们通常不会在20世纪80年代之前使用准确发音的“北京”名称。当时,大多数北京观察家都会说,到了20世纪70年代初,林彪似乎被明确指定为毛泽东的继任者,是中国党领导非常深奥且不透明的第二号人物。然而,现在我们可以看到,明显的事情正在开始瓦解。

There were quite a few factors involved. One was that he may have been number two, but there were other people in the leadership who were unhappy about that. And wanted to try and take China a different path. And perhaps the most significant is the thing we haven't yet mentioned, but in some sense is the only other figure who Mao really felt he had to listen to him. They didn't always agree with him, sometimes treated him rather contemptuously. That was the Prime Minister, Joe N. Li.
有好几个因素起了作用。其中一个是,他可能是第二高层,但是在领导层中还有其他人对此不满意并想尝试走一条不同的道路。或许最重要的是,我们还没有提到的一件事,但在某种程度上是毛泽东真正感到必须听取意见的另一个人物,他们并不总是赞同他,有时会对他非常蔑视。那就是总理李宁。

And Joe N. Li is often regarded as the figure who perhaps relatively speaking tried to moderate at least some of the aspects of the culture revolution, although that may be more in rhetoric than reality to be honest. He was not happy by the direction of travel, the way in which essentially the army and the Giao would be brought to the forefront in terms of the way in which China was going.
乔·N·李常常被看作是试图在文化大革命中至少在某些方面缓和情况的人物,尽管实际情况可能比较口头上的说法更为真实。他对于中国前进的方式,即基本上通过军队和交响乐将其推到前台,并不满意。

China was a revolutionary state. China was run by Communist Party, but Mao himself had made a very powerful statement decades before, which I suspect was in Joe's mind. And it's one of the most famous quotations from Mao. I'll give it to you now. It's that power comes from the barrel of a gun. That's the phrase that people tend to know. They often forget what comes in part two. And that is, therefore, the party must always control the gun, the gun must never control the party. And people like Joe and Li, I think we're very worried that essentially if China became a military state, rather than a civilian, but authoritarian state, that would send China in the wrong direction.
中国是一个革命性质的国家,由共产党领导。但是,毛泽东几十年前曾经说过一句非常有力的话,我猜测乔可能有这句话在脑中。这也是毛泽东最著名的引言之一,现在我告诉你。就是,“枪杆子里面出政权。”这是人们通常知道的那句。但往往忽略了第二部分。即,“因此,党必须始终掌握枪杆子,枪杆子决不能掌握党。”像乔和李这样的人特别担心的是,如果中国成为一个军国主义国家,而不是一个民主但威权的国家,那将会使中国走向错误的方向。

But there are also factors to do with Lin Biao himself. And this is something that again, perhaps only became obvious later to the outside when members of his family and other people were interviewed and asked some rather discreet questions. Lin himself wasn't actually that interested in politics, which was seen by this time. One of the questions we have to ask, we still need to have partial answers is, was his rise to the top more to do with a very ambitious family? Wife, son, other people in his entourage, rather than Lin himself.
但这也与林彪本人有关。对普通外界而言,或许只有在采访他的家人和其他人,并问一些谨慎的问题后,才会变得更加明显。事实上,林本人对政治并不是非常感兴趣。我们需要探究的一个问题是,他的崛起更多是因为他雄心勃勃的家人,如妻子、儿子和随行人员,而不是林本人。

It was always said that Lin himself was never a very natural politician, even back in the 1940s and the 50s. Of course, he was in the top leadership, but it was general ship, not political maneuvering that really made his name. And that may have been one of the other factors that meant that actually his dedication to taking on that role as the second in command may have come from others around him rather than from the man himself.
一直以来,人们都说林彪本人并不是一个很自然的政治家,即使在1940年代和1950年代也是如此。当然,他是高级领导人,但真正让他名声大噪的是航海,而不是政治策略。这可能是导致他作为二把手承担角色的献身精神实际上来自他周围的其他人,而不是他自己的原因之一。

And what do we know of Lin's relationship with Mao at the time when the incident took place? One of the things we do seem to see is that Mao himself continued to be quite fond of Lin to regard him as a serious figure who was high up in the leadership. But he also became clear at about that time that new international moves were happening and those created a split within the leadership, it would appear that probably exacerbated the sense of difference between them.
在那时发生事件时,我们对林与毛的关系了解多少?我们似乎能看到的一件事是,毛本人继续非常喜欢林,认为他是高层领导中的重要人物。但在那个时候,毛也清楚地意识到新的国际变化正在发生,这导致领导层内部出现了分裂,这可能加剧了他们之间的分歧感。

And the most important of those splits and the one that has has become most globally famous was the decision whether or not become closer to the United States. I mean, just a reminder that although China was, of course, a communist state, it had had an alliance with the Soviet Union that had gone horribly wrong about a decade before it.
其中最重要的分裂之一,也是最为全球知名的,是决定是否要与美国走得更近。我的意思是,虽然中国当然是一个共产主义国家,但十年前与苏联的联盟已经彻底失败了。

At the beginning of the 1960s, the two big communist giants had fallen out and essentially by the period we're talking about by the late 60s, early 70s, China was pretty isolated from the rest of the world. It wasn't talking to the capitalist world, but it also wasn't talking to what had been its old Soviet allies. And this created, disquiet, in the minds of many of the top leadership.
在1960年代初,两个大型共产主义大国发生了分裂,到了我们谈论的晚期60年代和早期70年代,中国与世界其他地方基本上是孤立的 它不与资本主义世界交谈,但也不与它的老苏联盟友交谈。这在许多高层领导的心中引起了不安。

In between those who were, the relationship with the Soviets might get so bad that actually there could be a war. In 1969, there were actually shots fired over the Jambar Islands in the Asuri River, which marked them parts of the River Island border between the Soviet Union and China at the time.
在那些国家之间,与苏联的关系恶化到可能爆发战争的地步。1969年,在亚述河的查姆巴尔岛上,实际上发生了枪战,这标志着当时苏联和中国之间的河岛边界。

And while it didn't turn into an all-out war, many people at the time thought that it could well have escalated, so that kind of incident was something they were really keen to try and get away from. And what this meant in practice was that there had to be debate about if they weren't going to get close to the Soviet Union, that just looked impossible at the time, was there a way in which they could start talking to the Americans, particularly at the time when, as we know, thanks to the approach of Richard Nixon, who had been elected president of the United States just a few months before, and had taken office in January of 1969. And of course, the National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, who undertook at Chinese encouragement, secret visits, Fire Park Star, to China.
虽然并未演变成全面战争,但当时许多人认为这种情况可能会不断升级,因此他们非常渴望远离这种事态。而在实践中,这意味着必须就是否能够接近苏联进行辩论,但当时似乎不可能,是否有一种方法可以开始与美国人谈话,特别是在著名的理查德·尼克松接任美国总统仅几个月后,即1969年1月上任。当然,国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格进行了中国的秘密访问,其中中国鼓励了这一举动。

There was clearly an opening that was being made that might lead to a rapprochement. And what we think we know now, and again, it's still very hard to know because the documentation has never been made openly available.
明显有一个可能导致和解的机会正在出现。我们现在所知道的是,尽管很难确定,因为相关文件并未公开发布。

What we think we know is that some in leadership, Joe and I, the Prime Minister, being good example, were pretty keen to push the opening to the United States. Others were not keen, and it would appear that Lin Biao himself, or those around him, thought this was an extremely bad idea. And therefore, this growing sense of a split within the very top leadership, with Mao himself, perhaps I'm prevalent about what he felt about this idea of opening to America. And of course, himself, very ill by the stage, don't actually live for a few years.
我们认为我们知道的是,一些领导人,例如乔和我,以及像总理这样的人,相当热衷于推动向美国开放。另一些人则不热衷,似乎林彪本人或其身边的人认为这是一个极为糟糕的想法。因此,出现了一种在最高领导层内部出现分裂的趋势,毛自己可能对开放美国的这个想法感到不满。当然,在他病得非常重的时候,他本人只剩下几年可活。

After that, we now know that Mogenura and disease, which she was suffering from, was beginning to encroach on Mao's powers during that time. So all of these factors were under the surface when that fateful decision to open to up to America was being made, and that probably fed into decisions that Lin Biao and his family made when it came to how to react.
在那之后,我们现在知道Mogenura和她所患的疾病开始侵蚀毛的权力。因此,在做出开放给美国的命运决策时,所有这些因素都潜在地存在,这可能影响了林彪及其家人在应对方式上所做的决策。

And so then, on the morning of the 13th of September, Lin Biao and a small group of his family supporters boarded a plane in China and soon after crashed in Mongolia.
因此,就在9月13日的早晨,林彪和他的一小群家庭支持者乘坐了一架飞机在中国起飞,之后不久在蒙古坠毁。

First of all, what do we know about the crash itself? So the crash of Lin Biao's plane in which he died along with various members of his family and some of his own to Raj, was something that seemed pretty amazing at the time.
首先,关于飞机事故本身,我们知道什么?林彪坠机身亡,和他的家人以及一些同伴一起死亡,这在当时被认为是一件相当惊人的事情。

We don't really have good documentation. A much of it we have had through various sources, a suggestion that was destroyed actually afterwards.
我们实际上没有很好的文档。我们拥有的大部分文档都是从各种来源获得的,但后来被销毁了。

But it does seem to have come as something of a surprise to many in the top leadership. It wasn't expected that he was going to try and flee. The plane that was basically fuelled and took off from an airport in northern China was actually a British trident plane, British mate.
但对许多高层领导来说,这似乎有些令人惊讶。没有人预料到他会试图逃离。这架从中国北部机场加满燃料并起飞的飞机实际上是英国三叉戟飞机,大英雄。

And the original story, which is still, I think, the official version of the story that has it, I think, been a adjustment, but essentially the version of the story is that Lin Biao and family were launching an attempted military coup against Mao, against leadership.
而原始的故事,我认为仍然是官方版本,它已经进行了一些调整,但基本上故事的版本是,林彪和家人试图发动一场针对毛泽东领导的军事政变。

They were found out. They fled to the plane. They got in it. They flew off towards the Soviet Union, whether we're going to try and seek some kind of sanctuary.
他们被发现了。他们逃到了飞机里。他们上了飞机。他们飞向苏联,希望能找到某种庇护。

But the plane ran out of fuel, crashed in Mongolia, and there was forensic work done by the Soviets and others afterwards, which suggested that this was what had happened. It wasn't Lin Biao and others who were there and killed, and that was the end of the story.
但是飞机燃料用尽,坠毁在蒙古,之后由苏联和其他国家进行了法医鉴定,结果表明这就是发生的事情。那里没有林彪和其他人,并且这就是故事的结局。

This version of the story has been subjected to quite a lot of questions. First, some people have asked, would it have been logical for them to actually go to the Soviet Union, yes, the Soviet Union wasn't enemy of the PRC at the time.
这个版本的故事受到了不少质疑。首先,有些人问道,他们真的去苏联会合是否合乎逻辑,毕竟当时苏联并非中华人民共和国的敌人。

But in terms of the next stage of what they'd be able to do, would it not, for instance, have made more sense to fly to Taiwan, where, of course, the nationalist government continued to be in exile on the island?
但就下一阶段他们所能做的事情而言,飞往台湾不会更有意义吗?毕竟,在那里,国民政府仍然流亡于该岛上。

More suspicious than that, though, perhaps, is that it would appear apparently from evidence that the crash site, which is expected more than once by Soviet inspectors, did it appear to be at the time of crash flying not towards the Soviet Union, but away from the Soviet Union? Again, is there a clear explanation for that? There hasn't been one, but it does suggest that something more complex may have been going on.
然而更加可疑的是,根据证据显示,该坠机地点曾经多次被苏联检查员检查,但在坠机时它似乎是向着苏联而非远离苏联飞行的。这是否有一个明确的解释呢?目前还没有,但这暗示着可能有更加复杂的情况发生。

There's also a great deal of dispute about how far ahead of that particular flight, in the sense of the word flight, the flight and the plane, but also fleeing from the capital from Beijing. What the role was of Yetchun, who was Libya's wife, and of Limeboa, one of his sons, and the most ambitious politically, whether or not intrigues concerning their desire to get to the top, along with, as I said, this idea that Libya himself made just to be really quite passive by the stage, not that interesting politics, but basically going along with what his family wanted to do. All of these rumors swirled around, not necessarily even resolved today, about what was going on when they fled for the plane and took off and then crashed within a few hours.
关于这次飞行和飞机的事故,以及逃离北京首都的行为,外界有很多争议,有人认为这次飞行以及逃离行为在此之前便已有所计划。利比亚的妻子叶春和最有政治抱负的儿子林波阿的角色是什么,以及他们是否打算通过阴谋爬上政治高峰,都备受争议。同时,利比亚本人在这个时期显得相对被动,对政治不是非常感兴趣,但基本上还是顺从家人的意愿。这些谣言不断传出,至今仍未得到最终解决,涉及到逃离机场、起飞后几小时坠毁等事情。

From your reading of it, how likely do you think it is that Limeboa, and potentially his family as well, would have tried to topple the Chinese Communist government? It sounds quite implausible. One of the things that we have come to realize is that politics at the top of the Chinese Communist Party over decades is both fiercely rival us and very, very opaque.
根据您的阅读,您认为Limeboa及其家人有多大可能试图推翻中国共产党政府?这听起来相当不可信。我们已经意识到的一件事是,中国共产党领导层的政治竞争非常激烈,同时非常不透明。

The example I give you as a parallel to that, which comes from a more contemporary example, happened only about ten years ago. Many listeners might remember either clearly or perhaps a bit vaguely, the case of Borsi Lai, who was a man in the eyes of many, not least himself, heading for the top of Chinese politics, senior communist official, very suave, he'd been the trade minister, seemed to be heading for the top echelon of the Chinese Communist Politburo. Then almost without warning in 2012, there was a warrant for his arrest.
我举个例子来帮助你理解,这个例子来自一个较为现代的案例,只有大约十年前发生。许多听众可能会清楚地或者有些模糊地记得波斯·赖的案例,他被许多人视为快速攀升到中国政坛高层的人,是一位高级共产党官员,非常机智,曾经担任过贸易部长,似乎正在向中国共产党政治局的最高层攀升。然而在2012年,几乎没有预警,他被通缉逮捕。

He was tried and convicted of essentially trying to undermine the Chinese Communist Party. I think is in jail to this day, as far as I know, even more spectacularly his wife was accused and convicted of having murdered a British businessman by essentially poisoning him in a lonely hotel in southwest China. Deeply lurid story, probably one for a future episode of the BBC History Podcast, mysteries series I have to say, because we still don't know all that we could do about that particular story.
他因试图破坏中国共产党而受到审判和定罪。据我所知,他至今仍在监狱中。更为惊人的是,他的妻子被指控并定罪谋杀了一位英国商人,通过在中国西南地区一家偏僻酒店里给他下毒。这是一个深深震撼的故事,可能会成为BBC历史播客中的一个未解之谜系列的主题。因为我们还不知道关于这个特别的故事的所有信息。

But the point is that Chinese Communist politics, which often looks very grey and very dull and full of men in grey suits with dyed hair from the outside, there's a lot of emotions under the surface. People mind a great deal about getting to the top, because of course the price very often for not getting to the top is not well, you've got second place, it's basically you may be purged or you may lose all your family assets or you may find yourself an exile never to be seen again. So the stakes are very high. And in that context, we don't know yet, even now, enough about the ups and downs of the culture revolution, but it is worth remembering that this all happened a few years into even by China's standards, the most turbulent, the most politically toxic period in recent Chinese history.
但是,要说的是,中国共产党的政治,从外表上看往往非常模糊、非常沉闷,充满了穿着灰色西装、染着头发的男人,但是在表面之下存在着许多情感。人们非常在意能否登上高位,因为往往不登上高位就要付出很大的代价,你可能会被清洗、失去家族的资产,或者你可能会成为一名被流放再也无法重见天日的人。因此,风险极高。在这样的背景下,我们尚不清楚文化大革命的起伏,但值得记住的是,尽管以中国的标准衡量,这是最动荡、最具有政治毒性的时期之一,但这一切都发生在几年之内。

And it seems to me that we can, you know, we can't, I don't know, we can never know, but we need a lot more archives to open up, not very likely in the near future, to be able to know quite what was in the minds of any of the top leadership at that time. But it certainly seems to me that, you know, a top leader might have looked at what had happened to other leaders. And you know, you're sure she, as I said, President of the People's Republic of China, he died. I think that was also in 1969 in the city of Kaifeng in an airless basement where essentially we held a prisoner denied medical care. So he died of neglect essentially. 20 of other top leaders, I mean, Deng Xiaoping, who would go on to become a paramount leader of China.
在我看来,我们可能永远也不会知道,但需要更多的档案被开放,以便更好地了解当时任何高层领导人的想法。然而,我认为,某位高层领导人可能会考虑其他领导人所发生的事情。如我所说,中国共和国的主席也在1969年在开封市一个没有空气的地下室里去世了。他实质上是因为被拒绝医疗护理而导致疏忽致死的。还有其他20位高级领导人,例如邓小平,后来成为中国的最高领导人。

He wasn't physically harmed, but he was his son, Deng Kufang was chucked out of a window by red guards. He's still alive to this day, he's in a wheelchair for decades because his back was broken. One other example, the man who lead to China now, Xi Jinping, not physically harmed, but essentially as a teenager, sent out the most remote part of the countryside from all accounts. He didn't have a great time there, didn't enjoy it very much. And presumably for years, I had no idea if he was going to get back or not.
他没有受到身体上的伤害,但他的儿子邓苦芳被红卫兵从窗户扔出去。他至今还活着,因为他的脊梁骨折而坐在轮椅上已经几十年了。还有一个例子,现任中国领导人习近平没有受到身体上的伤害,但在成为青少年时,据说被派往中国最偏远的乡村。他在那里过得并不开心,并且很多年以来,我不知道他是否会回来。

We know now that he got back and rose to the top, but he wasn't going to know that in 1967. So if you're Limpia, if you are at the top, I can see that there is a plausible scenario in which you and those around, you might say in this politics that we have around us, who want Earth knows what's going to happen tomorrow, or the day after, or next month, or next year, better act now. It doesn't mean he did it. It just means that it doesn't seem illogical that he could have done.
现在我们知道他又回到了巅峰,但是在1967年他不会知道这一点。 所以如果你是Limpia,如果你在巅峰,我可以想象有可能的情况是,你和身边的人,你可能在我们周围的政治中,想知道明天,或者后天,或者下个月,或者明年会发生什么,最好现在就采取行动。这并不意味着他做到了。这只是意味着他似乎也有可能这样做。

Now, clearly in the crash, Limpia lost his life and many of the closest people around him, but did anyone survive from Limpia's circle who could shed any light on what happened? Nobody survived from the crash, but he did have other family members, including one daughter, Lin Do Do, who from all accounts was not thought to have been, even by the very paranoid party state to have been involved in the plot at all, who afterwards were able to give some sorts of accounts of the state of mind of the family at that time. I think that's where some of these stories about Limpia himself, not seeming to be terribly involved with politics, but those around him, son, wife, and so forth being a little more enthusiastic about trying to be politically active. That's where this comes from.
很明显,在这次坠机事故中,林皮亚失去了自己的生命以及许多最亲近的人,但是有没有幸存者能够从林皮亚的圈子里提供任何关于发生了什么的线索呢?没有人从坠机事故中幸存下来,但他还有其他家庭成员,包括一位女儿林朵朵,据所有人所述,即使是非常偏执的党国在那个时候也认为她并没有参与阴谋。后来,这些家庭成员能够提供一些关于家庭当时情绪状态的描述。我认为,这就是一些关于林皮亚本人似乎并不太涉及政治,但是他周围的儿子,妻子等人对试图积极参与政治稍微热情一些的故事的来源。

It's fair to say it's been hard to find out more because the Chinese state has been very, very keen indeed, not to say anything very much about this. They say there's an official verdict given way back in the 1970s, there was an attempted coup, it was foiled, that's it. Much of the information we've had has come actually from the Soviets and then the Russians, who, as I mentioned, did the inspection on the ground in Mongolia, which at that point of course was a Soviet ally at state, to see what the wreckage might tell us.
可以说,由于中国政府一直非常热切地保持沉默,所以很难找到更多相关信息。他们声称在1970年代已经有了一个官方的结论,认为曾经有一次试图发动政变但被挫败了。我们所掌握的大部分信息实际上来自苏联和随后的俄罗斯人。正如我所提到的,他们在蒙古对墜毀飛機進行了地面檢查,那时蒙古是苏联的盟友国,以便看看残骸可以告诉我们什么。

Some of the evidence quite circumstantial, as I say, the direction of impact of the plane, apparently to those who know about these things, suggested it was flying away from the Soviet Union, not towards the Soviet Union, again, what that meant, not clear. Questions about where the corpses actually, who they appear to, because there was a room about Slimia, I'd never been on the plane. They discovered one of the corpses seemed to have scars from tuberculosis, which Lin was known to have suffered from. So there is a circumstantial, but a strong, so substantial sense, that it must have been here in that particular case.
其中一些证据相当牵强,正如我所说,飞机的撞击方向,对于那些了解这些事情的人,表明它是在远离苏联飞行,而不是朝着苏联飞行,然而,这意味着什么并不清楚。有关尸体实际上在哪里的问题,他们长成什么样子,因为有一个房间叫做斯利米亚,我从未进过那架飞机。他们发现一个尸体似乎有结核病的疤痕,而林恩知道他曾患过这种疾病。因此,在这种情况下有一种间接的、但强烈的、实质性的感觉,它一定在这里。

But nobody as far as I know had found any last minute notes or any particular documentation suggesting what they thought they were doing. I don't think there's ever been any suggestion that there was complicity from within the Soviet Union, in other words, this wasn't something that's been plotted from outside. This does appear to have been whatever it was, plot a coup, a attempt to get away, that was generated from within the Lin family and their entourage. And since, as I said, most of them perished in the crash, and the few who didn't seem to be the ones who weren't involved in the plot, or at least very wisely suggested that they weren't.
据我所知,没有人发现任何临时笔记或任何特别的文档表明他们认为他们在做什么。我认为从未有人暗示苏联内部有串谋,换句话说,这不是从外部策划的。这似乎是什么都不是,一个政变,一次脱身企图,源自林家及其随从内部。由于大多数人在坠机中身亡,而那些幸存者似乎是那些没有参与阴谋,或者至少非常明智地表示他们没有参与的人。

I think I would have said something quite similar, I have to say. We may never know much more than that, until files that are closed down are opened up.
我想我可能会说出相似的话语,我不得不说。除非关闭的文件被打开,否则我们可能永远不会知道更多的信息。

Has there been any suggestion that the crash itself wasn't an accident that either Chinese somehow brought the plane down, or perhaps the Soviets? It's difficult to say precisely, of course, because all of these things were, obviously someone must have, from the People's Liberation Army, Air Force must have, in fact, have been put on standby to be able to actually fly the plane, and therefore presumably someone within the structure of government must have known that this was going to happen. So could that have been in complicity with someone, could that have been maybe someone else who wanted them to get away or was planning to kind of trap them? These are things that aren't generally subject to much evidence.
是否有任何建议认为这场坠机本身不是意外,而是中国人或苏联人有意导致的?当然,很难确定,因为所有这些事情显然都必须有人,来自人民解放军空军的人必须实际上已经准备好飞这架飞机,因此,政府结构中的某些人必须知道这将发生。所以,这是不是与某人有共谋,或者是与想让他们逃脱或计划诱捕他们的其他人有关?这些事情通常没有太多证据。

As I've said, it does seem to be in the case that the vast majority of any of the evidence within China was actually destroyed pretty much after the official investigation. It was a coup, and that's it.
正如我之前所说的,事实似乎证明大部分中国境内的证据在正式调查后基本上都被销毁了。这是一次政变,仅此而已。

There have been rumors on other sorts of matters, rather than it being formally made to crash. The idea that there may have had to be contacts with Taiwan.
有传言称,除了正式意图将其坠毁外,还涉及其他各种问题。有可能需要与台湾进行接触。

As I've said, there is some suspicion that maybe the Soviet Union wasn't actually the intended destination of that particular flight in the first place at all, but it's not entirely clear quite what might have been done to sabotage a plane of that sort.
如我所说,有一些怀疑,也许苏联并不是那次特定航班的最初预定目的地,但是目前还不清楚会采取什么方式来破坏那样的飞机。

As I said, the official version that was given was that there wasn't enough fuel, basically it ran out of fuel at that time, and it hadn't been sufficiently fueled.
正如我所说的,官方给出的版本是燃料不足,基本上在那时耗尽了燃料,并未充足加燃料。

I suppose it's plausible enough that if you had a plane that had been put together at short notice because you were fleeing, then you might not have had time to make sure it was sufficiently well-fueled and properly treated by engineers before it actually went up in the up and year.
我认为这是很有道理的,如果您有一架紧急组装的飞机,因为您正在逃离,那么您可能没有时间确保它有足够的燃料并且在实际起飞前得到工程师的适当处理。

I should add, by the way, I said before, the Soviets had inspected the wreckage. In fact, the Chinese authorities were given access to it as well early on, but again, the products of their particular investigation have not been made public, and whether they've been destroyed is another question, but certainly they were not keen to provide documentation that would suggest any kind of wider sense of what had gone on.
顺便提一下,我之前说过苏联人已经对残骸进行了检查。实际上,中国当局也在早期被允许查看了,但是他们特定调查的结果并没有公开,而它们是否被销毁是另一个问题。但是显然,他们不热衷于提供文件证明涉及什么更广泛的事件。

Beyond the official Chinese version of the story, have there been any other theories that have gained much currency? Interestingly, I think it is interesting, and perhaps oddly, I don't have a sense that there's one sort of definitive alternative explanation that people have put forward.
除了官方中文版本之外,是否有其他理论得到了广泛传播?有趣的是,我认为这很有趣,或许有些奇怪,我没有感觉到人们提出了一种确定性的替代解释。

It's a little like the Hushot JFK mystery in one sense in that, at one level, there's a very clear explanation of that. On the other hand, there's also lots of sort of penumbres of things that might have happened, but we're very hard to actually prove in that sense.
这有点像肯尼迪遇刺案中的神秘事件,因为在某个层面上,这有一个很清晰的解释。但另一方面,也有很多可能发生的事情的模糊区域,但在某种意义上,很难被证明。

I think what most people who wanted to explain the incident self-of-try to do is to follow some sort of logical thread as to who would have an interest in it happening and who would have an interest in preventing it.
我认为,大多数想要解释这件事情的人,会试图按照一些逻辑线索来推断出谁会有兴趣让它发生,以及谁会有兴趣防止它发生。

For that reason, I think it's probably fair to say that there might have been perhaps an interest in getting to Taiwan, rather than the Soviet Union. There are rumors that perhaps there may have been slightly more contact than has been realized with the Nationalist Authorities in Taiwan, who had been there in the 1970s, that that time, very much that Shanghai Shet was still alive at the time, although quite elderly by that stage.
因此,我认为可以说,可能存在一种想要前往台湾而非苏联的兴趣。有传言称,也许与1970年代曾在台湾的国民党当局存在比人们所认识的更多的联系,当时上海沙特仍然存活,尽管已经是非常年迈的阶段。

The island itself was still quite heavily fortified. It's still, of course, the 1970s was the year that it was only in 1971 that official recognition of China, the United Nations moved from Taiwan to the mainland. So it was still in some ways a relatively geopolitically quite fluid period, but even within all of that, there's no one definitive answer.
这个岛屿本身仍然被严密加固。当然,在1970年代,它依然是相对较灵活的地缘政治时期。直到1971年,中国得到了官方承认,联合国从台湾迁至大陆。即使是在这样的背景下,也没有一个确定的答案。

The answer that also some people who have found the idea of the coup unlikely have put forward is that it must have been obvious to anyone who was involved in the top leadership by that stage that Mao is a serious ill man.
有些人认为政变的想法不太可能实现,他们提出的另一个答案是,到那个阶段参与高层领导的人都明显知道毛泽东病情严重。

This was something that anyone close to him must have realized. And I think most Americans who finally got to meet him and said to realize that this was someone who was still functioning perfectly well, but it was clearly not in top health. So I suspect that for those sorts of interpretations, the idea that actually the successor, whoever that might be in Bia, would have actually got to take over quite quickly afterwards.
这是任何接近他的人都必须意识到的事情。我认为大多数最终有机会见到他并认识到他正常运转但明显身体不佳的美国人也是如此。因此,我猜测对于那些解读来说,实际上在Bia的继任者无论是谁都会很快地接管权力。

Would have been something you have to catch in mind. It was a double or quits thing. Do you hang on and get to take over as it turned out, it would have been four or five years later, or do you make the also possibly equi-rational calculation that five years with highly unpredictable, very violent form of politics is a very long time to wait. And maybe you should get out while the going is good. But there is, as of now, no one clear definitive answer. Lots of things in the mix, including attitude towards the mix and visit, try to work out with direction to travel or the culture revolution, personal ambition, of course, could want to be very important. But no one smoking gun or a piece of evidence that suggests that it was definitely done for one reason or another.
这件事情本应该被记在心里,这是个双赢或双输的选择。你可以坚守原位,等待四到五年后接手掌管,或者你可以考虑同样合理的计算,认为五年内高度不可预测的极其暴力的政治形势是一个漫长的等待时间。或许你应该在时机对你有利的时候离开。但是,目前还没有一个明确的答案。其中很多因素都在混杂,包括对于文化大革命的态度和参与程度,个人的野心当然也可能非常重要。但是没有明确的证据表明这件事情一定是出于某个原因。

Now you've mentioned the fact that the Soviets think they found in Limby Al's body, but am I right to say that having theories put forwards that Lim wasn't even on the plane and that he'd been done away with some other means? I think actually the sense is more, as I understand it, that there were such theories put forward quite early on actually after the crash, the idea that maybe this was a faint or a scarlet scar, and in fact, he'd been spiritually aware of it.
现在你提到了苏联人认为在林比·阿尔的尸体中发现了某些东西,但我说得对吗,有一些理论认为林甚至不在飞机上,而是通过其他手段被干掉了?我认为实际上理解是这样的,早在坠机后不久就有这样的理论提出,即也许这是一场假死或一场骗局,实际上,他已经对此有了灵感。

I think it was the later Soviet inspection that looked at the tuberculosis scars on one which one of the corpses had, which seems to suggest it was Limby Al who had tuberculosis and this was a known thing from earlier life. In any scenario which the corpse wasn't here and someone else, there would presumably have been a sort of alternative version in which Limby Al turned up somewhere or made his way to some other place. And I've not seen any significant or plausible alternative explanation for where he would have been at that time.
我认为是后来苏联的检查发现了其中一个尸体上的肺结核痕迹,这似乎表明是林比·阿尔曾经患有肺结核,而这是他早期生活中众所周知的事情。在任何情况下,如果尸体不是他,而是其他人,那么可能会有一种替代版本,其中林比·阿尔出现在其他地方或前往其他地方。而我还没有看到任何重要或合理的替代解释,说明他那时可能在哪里。

It also makes sense if one accepts the idea that actually himself may not have been terribly keen on being very actively, but his family were very close to him, that they would have taken him almost as the token, so to speak, in that trip to the plane to escape.
如果我们接受这个想法——实际上他自己可能并不特别渴望积极参与,但他的家人对他非常亲近,他们几乎会把他当作象征来到飞机上逃离——这也是有道理的。

And do you yourself have a personal view on this, on where do you come in the various explanations? My guess, and it's just a guess, would be that in this sort of balancing cock-up and conspiracy, there's perhaps more cock-up than people have realized. So I think the idea that there was a carefully laying down set of plans and plots and so forth may not have spoken to the reality of what life was like in Beijing at that time.
您自己是否对此有个人观点?您认为自己在众多解释中属于哪一种?我猜测(仅仅是猜测)在这种权衡失误和阴谋中,失误的因素可能比人们意识到的要多一些。因此,我认为那种精心制定计划和阴谋的想法可能并不符合当时北京的现实情况。

And that's one of the things we do know I think more about from the history of the culture revolution. Life was very unpredictable. I was going to say even for the top leaders, but you might say especially for the top leaders. This was a period when, as I say, people would be disappearing left, right, and centre. And I can see that at this point, all sorts of policy difference, something that might have been, in other circumstances, just been a disagreement over policy direction, should be let the Americans in or not. Might quite clearly in your mind turn into the idea that if we're on the wrong side of this argument, we might just lose. You might actually be purged, wiped out, killed.
这是文化大革命史上,我们更多了解的一件事情。那时的生活非常不可预测,即使是最高层领导人也一样。在这个时期,人们似乎随时随地都有可能突然失踪。在这种情况下,所有种类的政策分歧,比如是否应该让美国人进来,即使在正常情况下可能只是政策方向上的分歧,也很可能变成一个想法,即如果我们站在了错误的立场上,就有可能被清洗、消灭、杀掉。

And in that context, thinking, well, maybe just having a plane on standby, ready to take us away from all this just in case, might not have been a bad idea at all. I'd refer you back as I did earlier to that much more recent, but also in some ways inexplicable scandal about what you got. This was someone who in some ways appeared to be riding for the top anyway. There were questions about would he be able to get there because of his age or other means too.
在那种情况下,想到要准备一架备用飞机,以防万一需要逃离这一切,也许并不是一个坏主意。就像之前提到的那个比较近期但也有些难以解释的丑闻一样。这个人在某些方面似乎已经在朝着顶峰前进了,但也有疑问他能否到达那里,因为他的年龄或其他原因。

In a sense, the many risks he appears to have taken, which ended in disaster for him, in some ways, emphasised that even in the very fevered, very inward looking crucible that is the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. And I suspect that in different ways, that's just as true today as it was in the 1970s, or the 1950s. In that crucible, what might seem to us looking from the outside with distance as being a decision that doesn't make any sense rationally might seem deeply rational at the time, because you have to remember that of course they were not making these decisions in the cool, calculated circumstances that a leader might do in a capital city where there's lots of advisors, where there's free media, where people are discussing policy the whole time.
从某种意义上说,他看似冒着许多风险,最终导致他的灾难,从某些方面来看,强调了即使在中国共产党最高领导层这个非常狂热、非常内向的试验场中,这一点也是真实存在的。我怀疑,从不同的角度来看,今天和上世纪70年代或50年代一样真实存在这样的情况。在这个试验场中,对我们来说似乎没有任何理性意义的决定,在当时可能看起来是非常合理的,因为你必须记住,当时他们并没有在首都有许多顾问、自由媒体和讨论政策的整天环绕下做出这些决定。

We're talking about a very, very capsule-like sort of environment, and it seems to me entirely plausible in that sort of context. That's how Lin and his family may have got himself in the situation where they found themselves.
我们正在谈论一个非常非常局限的环境,我认为在这种情况下完全有可能。这就是林和他的家人可能陷入所处情况的原因。

Do you think that any documents or any other evidence will emerge from China at some point that might finally solve this mystery? At some point, yes. It has been said that everything was destroyed, but something about me tells me that the Chinese archives tend to hold all sorts of secrets, which with the current administration in place are never going to be released. We could be talking about decades or period even beyond that. It also seems to me that the Chinese state is very good at keeping tabs on people and having evidence just burning it doesn't seem to me the way in which the state and the party operate. I suspect there's more information somewhere, but I think it may be much later generation of historians than actually gets to find out what it is.
您认为在某个时候,中国是否会出现任何文件或其他证据,最终解决这个谜团?某个时候会的。已经有人说过,所有东西都被销毁了,但是我内心深处感觉到中国档案馆往往隐藏着各种秘密,但它们不会被当前政府发布。我们可能会谈论数十年或甚至更长时间。我认为中国政府很擅长监视人们并拥有证据,它们不会仅仅销毁它。我怀疑还有更多的信息,但我认为这可能是后代历史学家得知的事情,而不是当前的。

And just finally, Rana, we're talking now almost 50 years after Lin Bial's death. I'd be interested to know what his reputation is like in China today. His reputation has really shifted over the last half century in the immediate aftermath of the plane crash and the shock news, even in the highly buttoned down society that was late cultural revolution in China. The idea that Mao's designated successor had tried to launch to escape and then been killed was big and very depressing news for many people. So at that point, there was a huge campaign against him, the so-called criticise Lin Bial, criticise Confucius campaign that was essentially promulgated throughout the entire country.
最后,拉娜,林彪逝世近50年了,我很想知道他在今天的中国的声誉如何。在过去的半个世纪里,他的声誉发生了很大的变化,特别是在中国文化大革命后期封闭的社会中,飞机坠毁和极具震撼性的消息震惊了许多人,那时宣布毛泽东的指定继承人试图发起一场政变并被杀害的消息对许多人来说是很沉重和令人沮丧的。因此,那时对他进行了大规模的批判性运动,所谓的“批林批孔”运动在整个国家范围内得以传播。

50 years on, though, things have changed somewhat. I think it's still fair to say that his name sits a bit in the shadows because of that reputation of having tried to undermine Mao. But also the earlier part of his life that I talked about, in fact that he was this immensely skilled and brave general in the People's Liberation Army, that he was someone who had helped to bring about military victory in the 1940s and peed up to the establishment of the PRC in 1949. Those sorts of accomplishments are now remembered more openly. And while his reputation, I think, will never be in the top pantheon of leaders in a way that say, Joe and I, who almost regard this great rival, has remained very much the top of people's lists of those who were respected. Nonetheless, he is regard to someone I think today who, while committed this absolutely sort of fateful deed, nonetheless actually is a military commander and someone who was a contributor to the Chinese Revolution who is well worth remembering for those reasons.
时至今日,情况有所改变。我认为可以说,由于他曾试图破坏毛泽东的声誉,他的名字依然有些黯然失色。但是我刚才谈到的他早年生活的那部分内容,实际上他是人民解放军中一位极其熟练和勇敢的将军,是帮助在1940年代取得军事胜利并促成中华人民共和国成立的人物。这些成就现在被更加公开地记住。虽然我认为他的声誉永远不会在领袖中排在最高层级,就像我们几乎把周恩来和毛泽东视为伟大的对手一样,但是他在人们受到尊敬的清单中依然名列前茅。尽管如此,我认为他今天被视为一位军事指挥官和对中国革命做出贡献的人,并因这些原因而值得铭记。

Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Ben Yuert, Jack Vaatman and Bruttenham Colley.
感谢你们的收听。这个播客是由本·尤尔特、杰克·瓦特曼和布拉顿汉姆·科利制作的。