Lin Biao

(1907–1971)

   Lin Biao was a leading communist military commander during the Chinese Revolution, and a key figure in the country’s leadership from 1959 until his death. Born in Hubei province, Lin was above all a military man, attending the Whampoa Military Academy, and serving in the Kuomintang (KMT) army before joining the communist Red Army. He commanded the First Red Army during the Long March, and after World War II led the communist Northeast Liberation Army to victory over the nationalist KMT forces. He became minister of national defense and head of the People’s Liberation Army in 1959. His political appointments included vice chairman of the party in 1958, and he was viewed as the second-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party from 1966 until his death, and the officially designated successor to Mao Zedong. For most his political career Lin was close and loyal to Mao, and he sought to educate first the military and then society at large in the thought of Mao. He was responsible for the (in)famous “Little Red Book,” the book of maxims from Mao’s thought that was widely issued in the People’s Republic of China and beyond. Lin not only inculcated the army with Mao’s ideology, but also contributed to militarizing Chinese Marxist ideology. He espoused the notion of a “people’s war,” which painted the world as a battlefield between rural and urban societies (such as China and the United States respectively), and which encouraged guerrilla warfare in people’s wars around the globe. Lin gradually became a rival to Mao, opposing both the policies and direction of Mao after the Cultural Revolution. He died in an airplane crash in 1971 when apparently trying to flee to the Soviet Union after the failure of an attempted coup against Mao.