Lin Biao

Lin Biao (Chinese: 林彪; 5 December 1907 – 13 September 1971) was a Chinese politician and Marshal of the People's Republic of China who was pivotal in the Communist victory during the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeast China from 1946 to 1949. Lin was the general who commanded the decisive Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns, in which he co-led the Manchurian Field Army to victory and led the People's Liberation Army into Beijing. He crossed the Yangtze River in 1949, decisively defeated the Kuomintang and took control of the coastal provinces in Southeast China. He ranked second among the Ten Marshals. Zhu De and Peng Dehuai were considered senior to Lin, and Lin ranked directly ahead of He Long and Liu Bocheng.

Lin abstained from taking an active role in politics after the war ceased in 1949. He led a section of the government's civil bureaucracy as one of the co-serving Vice Premiers of the People's Republic of China from 1954 onwards, becoming First Vice Premier from 1964. Lin became more active in politics when named one of the co-serving Vice Chairmen of the Chinese Communist Party in 1958. He held the three responsibilities of Vice Premier, Vice Chairman and Minister of National Defense from 1959 onwards. To date, Lin is the longest serving Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of China. Lin became instrumental in creating the foundations for Mao Zedong's cult of personality in the early 1960s, and was rewarded for his service in the Cultural Revolution by being named Mao's designated successor as the sole Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, from 1966 until his death.

Lin died on 13 September 1971, when a Hawker Siddeley Trident he was aboard crashed in Öndörkhaan in Mongolia. The exact events of this "Lin Biao incident" have been a source of speculation ever since. The Chinese government's official explanation is that Lin and his family attempted to flee following a botched coup against Mao. Others have argued that they fled out of fear they would be purged, as Lin's relationship with other Communist Party leaders had soured in the final few years of his life. Following Lin's death, he was officially condemned as a traitor by the Communist Party. Since the late 1970s, Lin and the wife of Mao, Jiang Qing, have been labeled the two major "counter-revolutionary forces" of the Cultural Revolution, receiving official blame from the Chinese government for the worst excesses of that period.

Lin Biao was the son of a prosperous merchant family in Huanggang, Hubei. His name at birth was "Lin Yurong". Lin's father opened a small handicrafts factory in the mid-late 1910s, but was forced to close the factory due to "heavy taxes imposed by local militarists". After closing the factory, Lin's father worked as a purser aboard a river steamship. Lin entered primary school in 1917, and moved to Shanghai in 1919 to continue his education. As a child, Lin was much more interested in participating in student movements than in pursuing his formal education. Lin transferred to Wuchang Gongjin High School (武昌共进中学) at 15. Lin joined a satellite organization of the Communist Youth League before he graduated high school in 1925. Later in 1925 he participated in the May Thirtieth Movement and enrolled in the newly established Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy in Guangzhou.

As a young cadet, Lin admired the personality of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), who was then the principal of the academy. At Whampoa, Lin also studied under Zhou Enlai, who was eight years older than Lin. Lin had no contact with Zhou after their time in Whampoa, until they met again in Yan'an in the late 1930s. Lin's relationship with Zhou was never especially close, but they rarely opposed each other directly.

After graduating from Whampoa in 1926, Lin was assigned to a regiment commanded by Ye Ting. Less than a year after graduating from Whampoa, he was assigned to the Northern Expedition, where he rose from deputy platoon leader to battalion commander within a few months. During this time Lin joined the Communist Party. By 1927 Lin was a colonel.

When he was twenty, Lin married a girl^{[clarification needed]} from the countryside with the family name "Ong". This marriage was arranged by Lin's parents, and the couple never became close. When Lin left the Kuomintang to become a communist revolutionary, Ong did not accompany Lin, and their marriage effectively ended.

After the Kuomintang-Communist split, Lin's commander, Ye Ting, joined forces with He Long and participated in the Nanchang Uprising on 1 August 1927. During the campaign Lin worked as a company commander under a regiment led by Chen Yi. Following the failure of the revolt, Lin escaped to the remote Communist base areas, and joined Mao Zedong and Zhu De in the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet in 1928. After joining forces with Mao, Lin became one of Mao's closest supporters.