At 12:45 p.m. on August 25, 1990, a Chinese military plane landed at a military airfield in Vladivostok.
The pilot's name was Wang Baoyu, and he was responsible for China's last flight defection since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
【Wang Baoyu】
Why did he defect to the USSR, and what was the end of it?
Who is Wang Baoyu
Wang Baoyu was born in 1962, became an aviation school student and enlisted in the army at the age of 18, and officially became a pilot at the age of 22.
His flying skills are very good, he can always be quickly educated in new things, study various flight theory research, and he is also very set, so he is often praised by the leadership.
【Wang Baoyu】
In the eyes of everyone, Wang Baoyu is a silent and hard-spoken person, who is good and strong, and his overall quality is also high, but he has never liked to communicate with others.
In addition, he seems to be suspicious, because of work, he usually lives separately from his wife, and he often doubts his wife because of various trivial things.
It was precisely these characters and thoughts of his that led him down the wrong path.
Why defection
Among the pilots in the same batch as Wang Baoyu, there are many people with strong comprehensive qualities, and Wang Baoyu's ability is also very good, but he has a character shortcoming, that is, he thinks very highly of himself.
【Early Chinese Pilots】
When he found that his name was not in the list of several job promotions, Wang Baoyu was devastated and had a sense of injustice that he had never met with talent.
It just so happened that he liked to hold things in his heart, and he never thought of communicating with his superiors about these confusions and dissatisfactions, but he was just suffering from internal friction and soil so that his thoughts had been in a state of imbalance.
At this time, due to changes in the system, his wife, who had been with the army, was arranged to work at the division headquarters, and Wang Baoyu and his wife began to live separately.
His wife has a cheerful personality and is good at communicating with people, which makes Wang Baoyu extremely uneasy, and he specially found his old superiors and asked him to be transferred to work in the division headquarters, but the work is not child's play, not to mention that it is still related to national defense.
[Wang Baoyu and his wife's wedding photos]
So the old boss criticized Wang Baoyu, hoping that he would not only pay attention to personal problems, but Wang Baoyu did not reflect on the criticism because of his unbalanced mentality, but after missing the later promotion, he decided that the old superior was "making a stumbling block" for him, so he completely "messed up".
At this time, he began to understand Western philosophical works, and was brainwashed by "freedom and democracy" in various information, and for a time he was full of yearning for the Western world, and often illegally eavesdropped on foreign broadcasts.
The superiors here listed Wang Baoyu as a key person in ideological work, and while providing him with ideological guidance, they also helped him in his family life as much as possible.
[Group photo of Wang Baoyu and his wife]
Later, Wang Baoyu's performance became better and better, family quarrels became fewer, his work became more and more active, and he rarely complained about it anymore.
But this is actually Wang Baoyu's trick, he used this method to make everyone relax, so that he could escape later, at that time, he was actually an escape route.
Taiwan Province could not go because the old J-6 fighter plane he flew did not carry enough fuel to support a long-distance flight.
【J-6 fighter】
North Korea is close, but it can't go, because North Korea and China are on good terms, and if they go, they will definitely be arrested.
South Korea also can't go, because South Korea has cooperated with China in dealing with the smuggling problem before.
In the end, he chose to go to the Soviet Union, which had broken down relations with China as early as the 60s, and was prepared to let the Soviet Union send him to the United States for refuge when the time came.
So during the daily training on August 25, 1990, the team leader found that the fighter plane piloted by Wang Baoyu suddenly deviated from the track and flew rapidly into the distance.
The end of the defection
At the beginning, the J-6 piloted by Wang Baoyu was more inclined in the regiment to break down.
Because of the low-altitude aerobatics trained that day, it was very difficult, but based on political concerns, the regiment still reviewed Wang Baoyu's file and prepared for emergencies.
Here, after Wang Baoyu landed at a military airfield in Vladivostok, that is, Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, he asked the Soviet side to send him to the United States for refuge.
But what Wang Baoyu did not expect was that as early as May 1989, after the visit of the general secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to China, relations between China and the Soviet Union had been normalized, and the Soviet Union intended to reconcile with China.
[Gorbachev's visit to China in 1989]
Now Wang Baoyu is an opportunity to send it to the door, and the Soviet Union will definitely not let a defected pilot ruin the relationship between the two countries.
So a few hours after Wang Baoyu landed, China received it
During this period, Wang Baoyu did not know anything about it, and waited for the Soviet Union to send him to the United States, but as everyone knows, China and the Soviet Union immediately launched diplomacy and agreed that China's Tu-154 special plane would extradite him back to China.
[China's Tu-154]
Before boarding the plane, the Soviet military personnel blindfolded Wang Baoyu with a piece of cloth, explaining that it was because they wanted to transfer Wang Baoyu to another place to wait, but because of military secrets, they could not peep during the transfer, so they had to be blindfolded, and Wang Baoyu happily agreed.
In fact, at the moment of boarding, Wang Baoyu was already arrested, because China and the Soviet Union discussed that the Soviet Union would no longer interfere in Wang Baoyu's affairs by taking the door of the Tu-154 special plane as the boundary and entering the cabin.
After getting off the plane, Wang Baoyu was surprised to find that he had been sent back to China.
Then Wang Baoyu ushered in his trial, expelled from the party, the army, and deprived of political rights, and the whole process was quickly completed, and Wang Baoyu was finally sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.
[Trial scene]
This was also the last incident of the mainland's defection by plane.
postscript
This incident caused the Soviet authorities to dismiss many officials from their posts, because a Chinese military plane actually entered Soviet airspace without any problems, and was only discovered more than 10 minutes after landing at a military airfield.
Resources:
[1] The last flight defection of New China: the pilot flew the J-6 to defect to the Soviet Union, shocking Chinese and foreign Chinese Internet culture
[2] The last flight defection after the founding of the People's Republic of China: the former Soviet Union was taken by surprise, Chongqing Evening News
[3] The last flight defection: J-6 flew directly to Vladivostok and was not discovered