Lin Yurong, better known by the nom de guerre Lin Biao (December 5, 1907 – September 13, 1971) was a Chinese Communist military leader who was instrumental in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China, and was the General who led the People's Liberation Army into Beijing in 1949. He abstained from becoming a major player in politics until he rose to prominence during the Cultural Revolution, climbing as high as second - in - charge and Mao Zedong's designated and constitutional successor and comrade - in - arms.

He died in a plane crash in September 1971 in Mongolia after what appeared to be a failed coup to oust Mao. After his death, he was officially condemned as a traitor, and is still recognized as one of the two "major Counter - revolutionary parties" during the Cultural Revolution – the other being Jiang Qing.

The son of a small landlord and a native of Huanggang, Hubei province, Lin was born Lin Yurong. Lin left home in 1919 and went to Shanghai, where he attended secondary school.

Lin joined the Socialist Youth League (1925) and matriculated at Whampoa Military Academy when he was 18. While at Whampoa he became the protégé of both Zhou Enlai and the Soviet General Vasily Blyukher. Less than a year later, he was ordered to participate in the Northern Expedition, rising from deputy platoon leader to battalion commander in the National Revolutionary Army within a few months. Lin graduated from Whampoa in 1925 and by 1927 was a colonel.

After the Kuomintang - Communist Party of China split, Lin was a participant in a communist uprising in Nanchung on August 1, 1927. Following the failure of the revolt, Lin escaped to the remote Communist base areas and joined Mao Zedong and Zhu De in Jiangxi in 1928. Lin proved to be a brilliant guerrilla commander and during the 1934 breakout he commanded the First Corps of the Red Army, which fought a two year running battle with the Kuomintang, which culminated in the occupation of Yan'an in December 1936.

Lin and Peng Dehuai were generally reckoned to be the Red Army's best battlefield commanders. They do not seem to have been rivals during the Long March. Both of them had supported Mao's rise to de facto leadership at Zunyi in January 1935. According to Harrison E. Salisbury's The Long March, by May 1935 Lin Biao was dissatisfied with Mao's strategy. He says of Mao's circlings to evade the armies of Chiang Kai-shek: "the campaign had begun to look like one of Walt Disney's early cartoons in which Mickey Mouse again and again escaped the clutches of the huge, stupid cat." According to Salisbury, Lin Biao in May 1934 tried to persuade Mao to turn over active command to Peng Dehuai.

"Lin Biao did not present the bluff, lusty face of Peng Dehuai. He was ten years younger, rather slight, oval - faced, dark, handsome. Peng talked with his men. Lin kept his distance. To many he seemed shy and reserved. There are no stories reflecting warmth and affection for his men. His fellow Red Army commanders respected Lin, but when he spoke it was all business... "The contrast between Mao's top field commanders could hardly have been more sharp, but on the Long March they worked well together, Lin specializing in feints, masked strategy, surprises, ambushes, flank attacks, pounces from the rear, and stratagems. Peng met the enemy head - on in frontal assaults and fought with such fury that again and again he wiped them out. Peng did not believe a battle well fought unless he managed to replenish -- and more than replenish -- any losses by seizure of enemy guns and converting prisoners of war to new and loyal recruits to the Red Army."

Edgar Snow in Red Star Over China focuses more on the role of Peng than Lin, evidently having had long conversations with, and devoting two whole chapters to, Peng (more than any individual apart from Mao). But he says of Lin:

With Mao Zedong, Lin Biao shared the distinction of being one of the few Red commanders never wounded. Engaged on the front in more than a hundred battles, in field command for more than 10 years, exposed to every hardship that his men have known, with a reward of $100,000 on his head, he miraculously remained unhurt and in good health. In 1932, Lin Biao was given command of the 1st Red Army Corps, which then numbered about 20,000 rifles. It became the most dreaded section of the Red Army. Chiefly due to Lin's extraordinary talent as a tactician, it destroyed, defeated or outmanoeuvered every Government force sent against it and was never broken in battle... Like many able Red commanders, Lin has never been outside China, speaks and reads no language but Chinese. Before the age of 30, however, he has already won recognition beyond Red circles. His articles in the Chinese Reds' military magazines... have been republished, studied and criticised in Nanking military journals, and also in Japan and Soviet Russia.

Red Star Over China also has an indication that Lin and Mao were close personally. "Between acts at the Anti - Japanese Theatre, there was a general demand for a duet by Mao Zedong and Lin Biao, the twenty - eight year old president of the Red Academy, and formerly a famed young cadet on Chiang Kai-shek's staff. Lin blushed like a schoolboy, and got them out of the 'command performance' by a graceful speech, calling on the women Communists for a song instead."

A different view is taken by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in Mao: The Unknown Story (2005), the authors argued that like Mao, Lin put personal power above the interests of the country.

"Lin lauded Mao to the skies in public, although he felt no true devotion to Mao, and at home he would often make disparaging and even disdainful remarks about him, some of which entered his diary. It was out of pure ambition that Lin stood by Mao and boosted him – the ambition to be Mao's No. 2 and successor. He told his wife that he wanted to be 'Engels to Marx, Stalin to Lenin, and Chiang Kai-shek to Sun Yat-sen.'"

In August 1937, Lin was named commander - in - chief of the 115th Division of the Communist 8th Route Army. In this capacity, Lin orchestrated the ambush at Pingxingguan in September 1937, which was one of the few battlefield successes for the Chinese in the early period of the Second Sino - Japanese War (which began before World War II, though it merged into it).

After the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Chinese troops captured many of the personal items that belonged to Imperial Japanese Army personnel. Among them is a cloak and a katana which was favored by Lin. He tried the cloak on and took the katana by his side, jumped onto a horse and went for a ride. He was then spotted alone by one of the sharpshooters from Fu Zuoyi's troops, who later became the mayor of Beijing after surrendering the city of Beijing to the Communists. The soldier was surprised to see a Japanese officer riding a horse in the desolated hills all by himself. He took an aim at Lin Biao in the head and severely injured him.

Recovering from his wound and ill with tuberculosis, Lin left for Soviet Russia at the end of 1937, where he served as the representative of the Communist Party of China to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He remained in Moscow in Moscow until February 1942, working on Comintern affairs and writing for its publication.

After returning to Yan'an, Lin was involved in troop training and indoctrination assignments.

With the resumption of Civil War after World War II, Lin was made Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the Communist Party and commanded the Red Army forces that conquered the Manchurian provinces and then swept into North China. Mao and other communist leaders intended to take over the whole Northeast China as their base, but with the retreating of the Red Army of Soviet Union it was clear that they would have to fight for it. For the sake of bargaining with the Nationalists (Kuomintang) in the peace negotiation, Mao ordered Lin to assemble key armies to defend key cities, which was against the previous strategy of the CPC Red Army. Lin suffered a major defeat in Si Ping, and retreated before receiving clear orders from Mao. Lin suggested seriously that the Red Army should change its strategy. In achieving victory, he abandoned the cities and employed Mao's strategy of guerrilla warfare and winning peasant support in the countryside.

Within a year he had entrapped the core of Chiang Kai-shek's American armed and American trained armies, capturing or killing a total of thirty - six generals. Then came the 'Three Great Campaigns'. Lin directed the Liaoshen Campaign, eliminating 450,000 nationalist soldiers. Following the victory in Manchuria, Lin encircled Chiang's main forces in northern China, known as the Pingjin Campaign. The Communists took over Tianjin. Finally in Peking (Beijing) General Fu Zuoyi and his army of 400,000 men surrendered to him without a battle. The Pingjin Campaign saw Lin eliminate a total of approximately 520,000 enemy troops.

Lin went on for the conquest of the whole country. His army, now numbering one and half million soldiers, swept across China from the most north area, Northeast, to the most southern area, island of Hainan.

During this period, several separate communist armies fought on different fronts, including Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping's achievements in Central China, which were important to his subsequent power. Leading the 2nd Group, they set off the Huaihai Campaign with Chen Yi and Su Yu leading the 3rd Group, eliminating a total of 550,000 KMT soldiers. Lin Biao led one of the three main army groups of Liberation Army, and was regarded as the most brilliant general together with Liu Bocheng, and the 4th Group was regarded as the best group of the four.

Lin Biao's exact role in the 1950s is unclear. It seems he was frequently ill, and so had less of a role than his achievements might have entitled him to.

In his autobiography, Dr. Li Zhisui, then one of Mao's personal physicians, writes that Lin was mentally unbalanced rather than suffering from any chronic physical illness. Li's account of Lin's condition is quite a bit different from the official Chinese version, both before and after Lin's fall.

Although Snow writes that Lin led Chinese forces in Korea, this is incorrect. Lin and the rest of the Politburo initially opposed China's entry into the Korean War. In early October 1950, Peng Dehuai was named commander of the Chinese forces bound for Korea, and Lin went to the Soviet Union for medical treatment. Lin flew to the Soviet Union with Zhou Enlai and participated in negotiations with Stalin concerning Soviet support for China's intervention, suggesting that Mao still trusted Lin despite his opposition to joining the war.

Due to periods of ill health and physical rehabilitation in the USSR, Lin was slow in his rise to power. In 1958 he was named to the Politburo Standing Committee. In 1959, after the Lushan Conference, Peng Dehuai was removed from his position as Minister of Defence and replaced by Lin Biao. As Defence Minister, Lin's policies differed from that of his predecessor. "Lin Biao's reforms aimed at 'de-Russification'. 'Professional - officer - cast' mentality was fought, titles and insignia of rank were abolished, special officer privileges ended, the Yenan type of soldier - peasant - worker combination was restored, and the Thought of Mao Tse-tung superseded all other ideological texts..."

In 1965, an article on revolution in developing countries, entitled Long Live the Victory of the People's War!, was published in Lin's name. The article likened the 'emerging forces' of the poor in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the 'rural areas of the world', while the affluent countries of the West were likened to the 'cities of the world'. Eventually the 'cities' would be encircled by revolutions in the 'rural areas', following the Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Lin made no promise that China would fight other people's wars, however. They were advised to depend mainly on 'self - reliance'. Lin worked closely with Mao, creating a cult of personality for him. Lin compiled some of Chairman Mao's writings into a handbook, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, which became known simply as "the Little Red Book."

Lin Biao's military reforms and the success of the Sino - Indian War (1962) impressed Mao. A propaganda campaign called "learn from the People's Liberation Army" followed. In 1966, this campaign widened into the Cultural Revolution.

After the purging of Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution, on April 1, 1969, at the CPC's Ninth Congress, Lin Biao emerged as the primary military power and second in rank behind Mao Zedong in the party. Even the party constitution was modified to name Lin as Mao's special successor. As the Cultural Revolution spun out of control, the People's Liberation Army, under Lin's command, effectively took over the country from the party.

Despite Lin's apparent interest in politics and increasing amount of political power during the Cultural Revolution, in private Lin expressed very little interest in Mao's policies and current political trends of the movement. In fact, some sources suggest that Lin was aloof and extremely introverted in private, leaving important policy and family duties to his wife, Ye Qun. Concomitantly, Lin also seemed plagued by psychological problems that incapacitated his abilities to administer in his position as Mao's second - in - command and so-called "close comrade in arms."

The circumstances surrounding Lin's death remain unclear. Lin disappeared in 1971, the standard claim being that he died after attempting a coup. He became China's second - in - charge on April 1, 1969, and advocated the restoration of the position of State President, which had previously been held by Liu until his removal from the position. The alleged purpose of the restoration was to ensure an orderly transition of power in the event of Mao's death. On August 23, 1970, the CPC held the second plenum of its Ninth Congress in Lushan, where Lin would speak for the restoration of the position of President along with his supporter Chen Boda.

Some historians believe Mao had become uncomfortable with Lin's power and had planned to purge him, and that Lin's son, Lin Liguo, was planning a pre-emptive coup. Jin Qiu, the daughter of air force general Wu Faxian, also advanced the notion that Lin himself was not involved in planning a coup against Mao, and that his family, particularly Ye Qun and Lin Liguo, played pivotal roles. The Chinese government explanation was that Lin, with the help of his son Liguo, had planned to assassinate Mao sometime between September 8 and 10, 1971. According to the memoir of Dr. Li Zhisui, then one of Mao's personal physicians, Lin's own daughter, Lin Liheng (known by the nickname Doudou), inadvertently exposed her father's plot. Doudou had become estranged from her mother, Ye Qun, and incorrectly believed that her mother was plotting against her father.

Supposedly after the discovery of the planned coup, Lin and his family (his wife Ye Qun and his son) and several personal aides attempted to flee to the Soviet Union. It is said they were chased to the airport by armed PLA officers and guards. According to the PRC account of Lin's death, their prearranged Trident plane (CAAC B-256, piloted by Pan Jingyin (潘景寅), deputy commander of PLAAF 34th division) did not take aboard enough fuel before taking off, and as a result, the plane crashed near Öndörkhaan in Mongolia on September 13, 1971, after running out of fuel, and all on board were killed. The official Mongolian report on the crash investigation points out that the plane had plenty of fuel at the time of the crash. The investigators concluded that the plane crashed because of pilot error. The corpses were buried in a grave not far from the site of the crash. The Soviets reportedly sent a KGB investigative team, which recovered some of the remains for subsequent identification.

One view is that Lin opposed the rapprochement with the United States, which Zhou Enlai was organizing with Mao's approval. This was contrary to Lin's strategy of 'People's War'. Lin, unlike Mao, did not have a history of making compromises and retreats when it suited him.

There were also claims that Lin was secretly negotiating with the Kuomintang on Taiwan to restore the KMT government in China in return for a high position in the new government. These claims were never formally confirmed nor denied by either the Communist government nor the Nationalist government on Taiwan.

Most of the high military command was purged within a few weeks of Lin's disappearance. The National Day celebrations on October 1, 1971, were cancelled. The news of Lin Biao's plot and disappearance was withheld from the general public for nearly a year. When it did break, the people felt betrayed by Mao's "best pupil."

Professor Hu Xingdou noted that privately, Lin grew alarmed by the excesses caused by Mao's policies and cult of personality, to the effect that his private residence did not carry Mao's portraits and writings. According to Hu, Lin opposed Chinese entrance into the Korean War, the purging of Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution, as well as the disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign. Hu also noted that Lin refused to become Mao's successor, and despised the role of Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four in the Communist Party of China. Along with Lin's daughter Lin Liheng, Hu Xingdou called for the official rehabilitation of Lin Biao.

In the years after Lin's death, Jiang Qing, Mao's fourth wife and a former political ally of Lin's, started the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign, aimed at using Lin's scarred image to attack Zhou Enlai. Like many major proponents of the Cultural Revolution, Lin's image was manipulated after the movement; many negative aspects of the Cultural Revolution were blamed on Lin and after October 1976 blamed on Mao's supporters, the so-called Gang of Four. Lin was never politically rehabilitated, therefore the charges against him stand until the present day. In recent years Lin's photo appeared in many books especially ones on history, showing that the Chinese are changing their attitude towards him. Lin is regarded as one of the best military strategists in China. A portrait of him is shown at the Chinese Military Museum in Beijing from 2007, included in a display of the "Ten Marshals", a group considered founders of China's armed forces.