However, following her father's death and subsequent denouncement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1971, Lin was stripped of her positions and detained indefinitely.

A year later, Deng Xiaoping, who would eventually succeed Mao as China's paramount leader, gave Lin a minor position in a factory in Zhengzhou, Henan.

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.

[6] In October 1975, then Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army Deng Xiaoping proposed to transfer Lin from the military to local civilian work.

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.

[8] Upon arriving in Beijing, she began working for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and changed her name to avoid public attention.

With money donated from her hometown of Huanggang, Hubei, Lin opened a restaurant in Beijing after her retirement and served as its general manager.

In 2011, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Lin and her husband led an entourage to Öndörkhaan, Mongolia, where her father's plane crashed four decades prior, for a memorial service in honour of him.

[9] On 1 November 2014, she attended a symposium of Chinese Red Army descendants and gave a speech asking for further investigations into incidents covered up during the Cultural Revolution, including the death of her father.