Lin Biao

Lin Biao the Chinese communist marshal and military strategist (1907-1971) who became one of the most successful commanders of the People's Liberation Army and, for a time, the designated successor to Mao Zedong. His long career of victories ended in a dramatic fall, death in an air crash, and a reputation condemned for an alleged plot against the leadership.

Early Years and Red Army Command

Lin Biao was born on 5 December 1907 in Huanggang county, Hubei province, the son of a modest landowning family. He entered the Whampoa Military Academy, the officer school founded by the Nationalists with communist participation, and as a young cadet he joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925. He served in the Northern Expedition and then took part in the Nanchang uprising of 1927.

After the failures of the southern risings he went with the surviving forces to the Jinggang mountains, where the communist base was being built under the command of Zhu De and Mao Zedong. He rose rapidly through the Red Army and by his early twenties commanded a corps. His extraordinary skill in mobile warfare and his taste for aggressive manoeuvre made him the most successful of the young Red commanders.

During the campaigns of encirclement in Jiangxi he won a series of celebrated victories that broke advancing Nationalist columns. He took command of the First Army Corps of the Red Army and led it through the Long March of 1934-1935, where his troops formed the spearhead of the columns and fought the hardest of the rearguard actions.

War with Japan and the Civil War

In the war with Japan Lin Biao commanded the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, and in September 1937 he directed the ambush at Pingxingguan, in which Chinese forces destroyed a Japanese supply column. It was one of the few clear Chinese victories of the early war and became celebrated as a symbol of resistance. He was wounded by friendly fire later in the campaign and spent several years recovering, partly in the Soviet Union.

Returning to China in the 1940s he was sent to the northeast, the strategic industrial region between the Great Wall and the Soviet frontier, and there he built the Northeast Field Army into the strongest communist force. In the campaigns of 1948 he surrounded and destroyed the Nationalist armies in Manchuria, taking Changchun and Shenyang after a great encirclement battle that cost the Nationalists their best troops.

He then led his armies through the Shanhaiguan pass into north China and directed the operations that took Tianjin and compelled the peaceful surrender of Beijing in early 1949, before driving south through central and southern China as far as Hainan island. By the end of the civil war he was regarded as the ablest strategist of the People's Liberation Army, the author of a doctrine of mobile, concentrated and offensive warfare.

Marshal, Minister and Author

Lin Biao was created a marshal of the People's Liberation Army in 1955, one of the ten commanders so honoured, and he served as a vice premier and in senior posts on the Central Military Commission. He encouraged the professional study of military science, and his recorded speeches and essays on the conduct of the civil war became required texts for officers of the new army.

He became the minister of national defence in 1959 after the removal of Peng Dehuai, and he directed the modernisation of the armed forces and the construction of defences along the northern and coastal frontiers. He had a reputation for austere personal conduct and for a reserved, thoughtful manner that contrasted with the more flamboyant style of some of his colleagues.

In 1966 he published a short essay on the people's war that was circulated widely and combined the military and political doctrines of the period. Under his supervision the army broadened its role, taking on tasks of political education and of civil construction, and he became closely identified with the cult of personality surrounding the political leadership of the late 1960s.

Political Rise and the Cult of Succession

During the Cultural Revolution Lin Biao advanced to a position of extraordinary prominence. He was named the sole vice chairman of the party at the ninth congress of 1969, and his stature in the official propaganda was elevated almost to that of the supreme leader. The constitution of the party was even amended to designate him as the successor, an arrangement without precedent in the history of the movement.

His rise was accompanied by the growing influence of the military in political life, and by an atmosphere of intense veneration in which his name was joined with that of the paramount leader in slogans and rituals. The young Red Guards were encouraged to study his words alongside the classical texts of the revolution, and his portrait appeared beside that of his patron.

The partnership did not endure. In 1970 and 1971 a dispute developed over the restoration of the presidency and over the political direction of the state, and the relationship between Lin Biao and the supreme leadership deteriorated sharply. Fearing the loss of his position, he was accused of having plotted to seize power.

The Flight, Death and Historical Judgement

In September 1971, according to the official account, Lin Biao and a small group attempted an armed coup and, when it failed, fled by air toward the Soviet Union. Their aircraft crashed on the night of 13 September 1971 at Undurkhaan in Mongolia, and all aboard, including Lin and his family, were killed. The episode shocked the country and was kept secret for a time before it was announced to the party and the public.

The official verdict condemned him as a traitor and a conspirator, and a great political campaign was launched against the remnants of his supposed faction. Historians have debated the exact circumstances of the plot and the crash, and the evidence remains contested, but the political fall was complete and his name was removed from the honours of the state.

Lin Biao's historical reputation remains paradoxical. He is acknowledged as one of the finest commanders the People's Liberation Army ever produced, whose campaigns in Manchuria and north China are studied as models of strategic concentration and speed, yet he is officially remembered as a betrayer of the revolution. The contrast between the brilliance of his military career and the catastrophe of his end has made him one of the most controversial figures of modern Chinese history.

See also

• Long March
• Pingxingguan campaign
• Cultural Revolution
• People's Liberation Army