Lin Baio

Lin Baio ( Lin Piao) (b. 1907, d. 13 Sept. 1971). Minister of Defence of China 1959–71 Born at Huanggang, he joined the Socialist Youth League when at school and in 1925 enrolled at the Whampoa Military Academy, where he graduated with high honours before joining Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition in July 1926. On the split between the Guomindang and the Communists in 1927, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and became one of the military commanders of the Jiangxi Soviet. He commanded the 1st Army Corps in the Long March to Yan'an, where at 28 he became head of the Red Army Academy. In 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War, he scored a morale-boosting victory at the battle of P'inghsing Pass. He was injured in 1939, and went to Moscow for medical treatment (until 1942). During the Chinese Civil War his capture of Manchuria from the Nationalists was achieved through patient wooing of the peasantry, building up an army of a million men, capturing Mukden (now Shenyang) in October 1948, and then moving down to take Beijing in January 1949. A loyal supporter of Mao Zedong, he was created a marshal (1955). As Minister of Defence and commander of the army, his support for Mao in the Cultural Revolution was crucial. He used the upheaval to his own advantage by insisting that he receive constitutional guarantees for his succession, and using the purges to remove his opponents and increase his control over the army. Growing ever more fearful of his power, Mao blocked his attempt to become Chairman of the Republic in 1970. After an ostensible coup attempt against Mao failed, he was killed in an air crash in September 1971 while fleeing to the Soviet Union.