Lin Biao, the
son of a landowner, was born in Wuhan, China,
in 1908. At the age of 18 he joined the Socialist Youth League. He
attended the Whampoa Military Academy where he met Zhou
Enlai.
In 1926 took part in the Northern Expedition to suppress the warlords
who had ruled the countryside since the collapse of the monarchy in
1911.
In 1927
Chiang
Kai-Shek emerged
as the leader of the Kuomintang.
He now carried out a purge that eliminated the communists from the
organization. Those communists who survived, including Lin Biao, managed
to establish the Jiangxi Soviet.
The nationalists now imposed
a blockade and Mao
Zedong decided
to evacuate the area and establish a new stronghold in the north-west
of China. In October 1934 Mao, Lin Biao, Zhou
Enlai,
Zhu
De and some
100,000 men and their dependents headed west through mountainous areas.
The marchers experienced
terrible hardships. The most notable passages included the crossing
of the suspension bridge over a deep gorge at Luting (May, 1935),
travelling over the Tahsueh Shan mountains (August, 1935) and the
swampland of Sikang (September, 1935).
The marchers covered about
fifty miles a day and reached Shensi on 20th October 1935. It is estimated
that only around 30,000 survived the 8,000-mile Long
March.
Lin Biao played an important
role in developing the military tactic of guerrilla
warfare. As soon as the Japanese surrendered, Communist forces
began a war against the Nationalists led by Chiang
Kai-Shek. He
was seriously wounded in 1938 and received medical treatment in the
Soviet Union.
Lin Biao became commander
of the North West People's Liberation Army in 1945. Lin Biao's strategy
was to abandon the cities to the Nationalists and to concentrate on
winning the support of the peasants in the countryside. He isolated
the Nationalist troops in their garrisons and gradually forced unit
after unit to surrender. By 1948 his soldiers had conquered the whole
of Manchuria.
Lin's Biao's army also
played an important role in the capture of Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou
and Hainan Island. The People's Liberation Army gradually gained control
of the whole country and on 1st October, 1949, Mao
Zedong announced
the establishment of People's Republic of China.
Lin Biao was responsible
for Chinese forces during the Korean
War (1950-53)
and was promoted to the rank of marshal in 1955. As Minister of Defence
he worked closely with Mao
Zedong during
the the Cultural
Revolution. On
3rd September, 1966, Lin Biao made a speech where he urged pupils
in schools and colleges to criticize those party officials who had
been influenced by the ideas of Nikita
Khrushchev.
Mao and Lin Biao
were concerned by those party leaders such as Liu
Shaoqi, who favoured the introduction of
piecework, greater wage differentials and measures that sought to
undermine collective farms and factories. In
an attempt to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model
of communism, Mao galvanized students and young workers as his Red
Guards to attack revisionists in the party. Mao told them the
revolution was in danger and that they must do all they could to stop
the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what
had happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph
Stalin and Nikita
Khrushchev.
It was Lin Biao
who compiled some of Mao's writings into the handbook, The
Quotations of Chairman Mao, and arranged for a copy of
what became known as the Little Red Book,
to every Chinese citizen.
Zhou
Enlai
at first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when
fighting broke out between the Red Guards
and the revisionists. In order to achieve peace at the end of 1966
he called for an end to these attacks on party officials. Mao
Zedong remained
in control of the Cultural
Revolution and
with the support of the army was able to oust the revisionists.
The Cultural
Revolution came to an end when Liu Shaoqi
resigned from all his posts on 13th October 1968. Lin Biao
now became Mao's
designated successor. He was also a supporter of the Gang
of Four.
In September 1971, Lin
Biao was killed in an airplane crash in Mongolia. The official explanation
given at the time was that he had been involved in a failed plot to
kill Mao
Zedong and
was killed while fleeing to the Soviet Union.
Lin
Biao and Mao
Zedong during the Cultural
Revolution.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
