Lin kept a low profile in Beijing as a contributor to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and retired in 2002. After her retirement she opened a restaurant in Beijing, and has since spoken at a few public events.
Lin opposed Project 571, an alleged plan by her brother Lin Liguo to depose then CCP chairman and Chinese paramount leaderMao Zedong. On 7 September 1971, Liguo confided to Liheng his discovery that Mao had made critical remarks about their father and presented three possible courses of action. The Lin family were to either assassinate Mao, fly to Guangzhou where they could establish an alternate central committee in opposition to the central authorities in Beijing, or flee to the Soviet Union.[1] Liheng rejected all of her brother's proposals and suggested that their father resign from all his positions like Zhu De to avoid trouble.[1] Liguo rebuked the suggestion, believing that their father would be detained and die in custody due to his waning health.[1] After the conversation, Liheng immediately contacted the leaders of PLA unit 8341, the unit responsible for her father's security. She tried unsuccessfully to convince them that her brother and mother were planning to pressure her father into leaving China for an unknown destination, against his wishes.[1]
On 13 September 1971, Lin's father, mother, and brother died in a plane crash in Mongolia; Lin was detained and investigated by the Chinese authorities, even though she had informed Chinese premier Zhou Enlai of her family's flight the evening prior.[2] In March 1974, the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign was started by the Gang of Four, which labelled Lin as "the nail left by Lin Biao".[3][4] She attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills but was rushed to an air force hospital and survived.[5] Over the course of her detainment and interrogation, Lin lost half of her hair and six of her teeth. She was released on 31 July 1974 on Mao's personal orders.[6]
After the Cultural Revolution
In October 1975, then Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation ArmyDeng Xiaoping proposed to transfer Lin from the military to local civilian work. Lin made a failed request to return to Beijing and was sent to work in an automobile factory in Zhengzhou, Henan, as a section-level cadre-deputy director of the factory's revolution committee. During her time in Zhengzhou, her movements were often restricted by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Following the Gang of Four's "Criticize Deng" campaign in 1976, Lin was stripped of her position and downgraded to a factory worker. Sometime afterwards, she broke the phalanx bone in her right foot in a workplace accident. In 1984, she was admitted to a hospital after suffering severe allergic reactions to pesticides being produced at a factory near her home.[7]
In the mid-1980s, Lin wrote a letter of appeal to then CCP general secretaryZhao Ziyang. With the help of Zeng Zhi, the wife of her father's old subordinate Tao Zhu and the then deputy head of the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee, her letter of appeal was received by Zhao. Soon after, Zhao ordered Lin to be rehabilitated and she was allowed to return to Beijing.[8]
Upon arriving in Beijing, she began working for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and changed her name to avoid public attention. She was a co-founder of the Chinese Modern Culture Association in 1989. She retired in 2002.
Later life
With money donated from her hometown of Huanggang, Hubei, Lin opened a restaurant in Beijing after her retirement and served as its general manager. The restaurant managed to attract a large number of diners from home and abroad.[citation needed]
^Daily Report: China, Issues 150–159 (Report). Foreign Broadcast Information Service. 1988. Lin Biao's daughter Lin Liheng has been transferred to work and live in Beijing as a result of the policy implemented on her recently.... Zhao Ziyang gave instructions on the above-mentioned arrangement.
