Lin+Biao

=Lin Biao= Lin Biao (林彪) December 5, 1907– September 13, 1971) was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China. Lin was the general who commanded the decisive Liaoshen Campaign and Pingjin Campaign, co-led the Northeast battlefield army of the People's Liberation Army into Beijing, and crossed the Yangtze River in 1949. He ranked third among the Ten Marshals. Zhu De and Peng Dehuai were considered senior to Lin, and Lin ranked ahead of He Long and Liu Bocheng. Lin abstained from taking an active role in politics after the civil war, but became instrumental in creating the foundations for Mao Zedong's cult of personality in the early 1960s. Lin was rewarded for his service to Mao by being named Mao's designated successor during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 until his death. Lin died in September 1971 when his plane crashed in Mongolia, following what appeared to be a failed coup to oust Mao. Because little inside information is available to the public on this "Lin Biao incident", the exact events preceding Lin's death have been a source of speculation among China scholars ever since. Following Lin's death, he was officially condemned as a traitor by the Communist Party of China. He and Jiang Qing are still considered to be the two "major Counter-revolutionary cliques" blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

Youth
Lin Biao was the son of a prosperous merchant family in the village of 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, but 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 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 Military Academy in Guangzhou.

The "Lin Biao incident"
Lin died when a plane carrying him and several members of his family crashed in Mongolia on September 13, 1971, allegedly after attempting to assassinate Mao and defect to the Soviet Union. Following Lin's death, there has been widespread skepticism in the West concerning the official Chinese explanation, but forensic evidence conducted by Russia (which recovered the bodies following the crash) has confirmed that Lin was among those who died in the crash According to the Chinese government, Lin Biao was made aware that Mao no longer trusted him after the 9th Central Committee, and he harbored a strong desire to seize supreme power. In February 1971 Lin and his wife, Ye Qun (who was then a Politburo member), began to plot Mao's assassination. In March 1971, Lin's son, Lin Liguo (who was a senior Air Force officer) held a secret meeting with his closest followers at an Air Force base in Shanghai. At this meeting, Lin Liguo and his subordinates supposedly drafted a plan to organize a coup. Later that March, the group met again to formalize the structure of command following the proposed coup. Mao was unaware of the coup plot; and, in August 1971, scheduled a conference for September to determine the political fate of Lin Biao. On August 15 Mao left Beijing to discuss the issue with other senior political and military leaders in southern China. On September 5, Lin received reports that Mao was preparing to purge him. On September 8, Lin gave the order to his subordinates to proceed with the coup.

Aftermath
Graffiti with Lin Biao's foreword to Mao's Little Red Book. Lin's name (lower right) was later scratched out, presumably after his deathLin Biao was survived by Doudou and one other daughter. All military officials identified as being close to Lin or his family (most of China's high military command) were purged within weeks of Lin's disappearance. On September 14, Zhou announced to the Politburo that four of the highest-ranking military officials in China were immediately suspended from duty and ordered to submit self-criticisms admitting their associations with Lin. This announcement was quickly followed by the arrest of ninety-three people suspected of being close to Lin, and within a month of Lin's disappearance over 1,000 senior Chinese military officials were purged. The official purge of Lin's supporters continued until it was closed by the 10th Central Committee in August 1973. The incident marked the end of the myth that Mao was always considered absolutely correct within the Party. The National Day celebrations on October 1, 1971, were cancelled.

Edit by Luna Zhang

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