Lin was a radical who served as the enforcer through the military of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) launched by Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a decade earlier. The aim of the Cultural Revolution was to "cleanse the Party of capitalist roaders", i.e. those who sought a less radical policy that Mao was favouring. Lin Biao was the only senior minister who had from the start of the Cultural Revolution, backed the GPCR energetically, most other CCP leaders being opposed to the turmoil it caused within the CCP and the country.

After a decade, during which his suspected and known critics (including President Liu Shao-Chi), Mao was confident he had fully consolidated his grip over the CCP. Now he was ready to adopt a new course, that suggested by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, of switching the role of main enemy from the United States to the USSR. The new course was hinted at by Mao in a 1970 poem where he wrote of "swimming down the Mississippi river". The hint was picked up by a Hong Kong based friend of Richard Milhouse Nixon, then President of the United States. She confided in Nixon that Mao was ready for "peaceful cooperation with the US with the intention of jointly finishing off the USSR". Although his national security and foreign policy team rubbished the suggestion to make overtures to Beijing, President Nixon was adamant and sent his National Security Advisor (NSA) Henry Kissinger to Beijing on a secret mission with a missive from Nixon.

Just as the Hong Kong lady had predicted, Kissinger was given a warm welcome in Beijing by Premier Zhou, and even had an audience with Mao himself. The NSA was entranced and quickly switched to the Nixon view rather than that of his staff at the NSA. From his return, matters moved swiftly and within a relatively short period, there was a visit by President Nixon and his First Lady to China. The visit created headlines across the world, and before a year had passed, in effect a SinoUS alliance was formed against the Soviets. Defence Minister Lin had opposed such a switchover of foe as friend and Mao decided he had to go. Lin got wind of this and left for the USSR to warn the leadership about the impending change in diplomatic currents, but could not reach as his flight crashed before he could reach Soviet airspace. The father of the present General Secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, was close to Lin Biao and was opposed to any alliance with the US.

The senior Xi and his family paid a heavy price for holding on to such a view (to in effect, opposing "capitalist roaders"). The punishment meted out to his father had a heavy influence on Xi Jinping, and so when the time came to choose a new General Secretary of the CCP after Hu Jintao had completed his two terms in power, the Party elders opted for Xi as the more liberal than his challenger Bo Xilai, who was a follower of Mao and who favoured radical methods. The Party elders saw Xi as the liberal and Bo as the radical, and chose Xi over Bo as CCP General Secretary for the customary two terms. Once in office, Xi showed that he could be as ruthless as Mao, forget Bo Xilai, and began persecuting his rivals within the Party as also loyalists of his main supporter, former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin and his cohorts, known as the Shanghai clique. Jiang had been chosen as CCP General Secretary by Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping for his commitment to economic development and to the "peaceful rise of China", silently to the Primero Uno position on the world stage, replacing the US.

To his shock, Xi turned on his associates and jailed several for corruption, a catchall phrase used to weed out his rivals real and perceived from their positions of power. Despite, or perhaps because of, the suffering his family endured under Mao, Xi became all powerful within the CCP, unlike the more easy-going Jiang and Hu. The final humiliation was for Hu Jintao himself, who was forcibly removed in public from the annual conference of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and never seen nor heard of since. All this took place in full view of world television. After he secured an unprecedented third term as CCP General Secretary, it was clear that Xi saw himself as the lifetime chieftain of the Party, with a fourth term on the cards. It could have been a coincidence that Xi skipped the official dinner on September 13 and headed back to Beijing the same day as the conference ended. Such a departure must have had nothing to do with Lin Biao and his death through an airplane crash, but it does show the insecurity that Xi felt in being in India, a country he last invaded at Galwan seven years ago.

Even his limousine had a black cloth covering it "to keep out the heat and dust" but others claim it was fear of radioactivity that persuaded the security detail of Xi to cover his limousine with a black cloth that they claim was coated with lead to keep out radiation. It is clear that the straight talk of Prime Minister Modi about the need for peace, not war, and against weaponization of strategic material (rare earths) would have irked Xi, coming from India, a country from the Global South. For weeks before his visit, Chinese media has been awash with reports about the "decline and chaos" of India in contrast to the growth of the PRC into superpower status. Not mentioned is the GDP of India in Purchasing Power Parity terms of 19 trillion US dollars, or the vast human resources of India as they work in countries such as the US and within the EU in highly technical fields such as Artificial Intelligence.

BRICS is not, and as long as India is a member, will not be an anti-West grouping. Nor will India forsake its friends, including Israel, whose Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received a festive greeting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi the day the BRICS conference officially began. India will not work against the Gulf sheikhdoms, who were represented at the highest levels at the BRICS conference. This was not a message Xi wanted to hear, and unlike President Putin of Russia, he did not stay back for the official dinner. Conspiracy theorists are theorizing that Xi fainted just after the conference, but these were just speculation, part of the rumour mill covering the CCP General Secretary. Were the reports to be factual, Xi would not soon be on his way to Washington for a state visit. Anyway, from the singing of Bollywood songs by the Prime Minister of Malaysia and the President of Indonesia to the camaraderie between the Indian delegation and those from Africa and South America, it is clear that to India, the world is one family, provided each country walks on the path of peace and conciliation.