Lin Piao (1907-), Chinese Communist military leader who became a marshal of the People's Republic of China in 1955, minister of defense in 1959, and the second-ranking member of the party in 1966.

A native of Huangkang hsien, Hupeh, Lin Piao was the son of a small landholder (listed in Chinese Communist biographies of Lin Piao as a peasant) who owned a dye-works and who later worked as a purser on a steamer which sailed the Yangtze between Hankow and Shanghai. One of Lin Piao's elder cousins, Lin Yü-nan, was active in the Socialist Youth League in the 1920's and was arrested and executed by the Nationalists in the 1930's. After attending primary school in his native village, Lin Piao went to Wuchang, where he studied at the Kung-chin Middle School from 1921 to 1924. The activities of Lin Yü-nan, who was about 20 years older than Lin Piao, and the programs of the Social Welfare Society, which had been established in Wuchang by Yün Tai-ying (q.v.) and others, soon aroused Lin Piao's interest in radical movements, and he began to participate in politically oriented student groups. In 1 925, having been graduated from middle school, Lin went to Shanghai as a Hupeh delegate to the National Student Federation meeting held to discuss demonstrations protesting the Alay Thirtieth Incident. In Shanghai, Lin joined the Socialist Youth League; an elder brother belonged to this organization, and Yün Tai-ying was head of its propaganda apparatus.

In 1925, at the age of 18, Lin Piao went to Canton and enrolled at the Whampoa Military Academy, where Yün Tai-ying was serving as an instructor. Lin soon came to the attention of General 'asily K. Bluecher known in China as Galin), the principal Soviet military adviser at Whampoa, and of Chou En-lai (q. v.), then deputy director of the academy's political department. While at Whampoa, Lin joined the Young Soldier's Association, a Communistinfluenced organization at the academy (see Ho Chung-han). He later became a member of the Communist Youth League. After the fourth class, of which Lin was a member, was graduated from Whampoa, Lin was assigned to an independent regiment, commanded by Yeh T'ing, which was attached to the Fourth Army of Li Chi-shen (q.v.). He participated in the first phase of the Northern Expedition, which began with a drive into Hunan in July 1926 and ended with the capture of the Wuhan cities in the autumn of 1926, and rose in rank from platoon leader to company commander. He joined the Communist party in 1927. On 1 August 1927 Yeh T'ing's forces, which had become the 24th Division of the Eleventh Army in the Second Front Army of Chang Fa-k'uei (q.v.), joined with the Twentieth Army of Ho Lung (q.v.) in staging an insurrection at Xanchang, later celebrated as the birth of the Chinese Communist army. When Nanchang proved untenable, the rebels marched southward to establish a base in Kwangtung. The Communist forces were defeated at Swatow in September. Lin Piao managed to save the supplies and equipment assigned to his unit, and he joined the forces of Chu Teh (q.v.) at Jaop'ing. By the end of 1927 these troops, with Chu Teh as commander and Ch'en Yi (1901-; q-v.) as political commissar, had moved into southern Hunan. In January 1928 they established a base at Ichang. Lin Piao, not yet 21, attracted Chu Teh's attention when he defeated a force much larger than his own at Laiyang. In April, Chu's group joined with a small band of Communists led by Mao Tse-tung in the Ching-kang mountains on the Hunan-Kiangsi border. They formed the Fourth Red Army, with Chu Teh as commander, and Mao Tse-tung as political commissar.

Chu Teh regarded Lin Piao as one of the most able and active young officers under his command and took a special interest in his career. When Chu became commander of the First Army Group of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, composed of the Third, Fourth, and Twelfth Red armies, Lin succeeded him as commander of the Fourth Red Army. Lin steadily rose in the military hierarchy as the Communists consolidated their central soviet base in Kiangsi from 1931 to 1934. He served as head of the Red Army Academy, the principal training center for guerrilla commanders at Juichin, until 1933, when he was succeeded by Ch'en Keng 'q.v.). Lin played an important role in military actions against the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, which launched five campaigns to annihilate the Communists. After Chu Teh became commander in chief of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, Lin succeeded him once again, becoming commander of the First Army Group. Nieh Jung-chen (q.v.) was his political commissar, and Tso Ch'uan (q.v.) was his chief of staff.

Lin Piao accompanied Mao Tse-tung on the Long March, arriving at Paoan, Shensi, in October 1935. At Paoan, and later at the Chinese Communist wartime capital of Yenan, Lin devoted his attention to the training of Communist officers. He headed the Red Army Academy, which was renamed Anti-Japanese Military and Political University after the Sino-Japanese war began. W^hen the Chinese Communist forces in northwest China were reorganized as the Eighth Route Army, with Chu Teh in command, Lin became the commander of its 115th Division, with Xieh Jung-chen as deputy commander and political commissar. His military reputation was enhanced in September 1937 by a decisive victory over a Japanese unit commanded by General Itagaki on the Hopei-Shansi border at the P'inghsing pass. Leaving Xieh Jung-chen to hold the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei border area, Lin Piao and the main force of the 115th Division moved into Honan and Shantung, where they won control of the territory that became the Communist Hopei-Shansi-Honan border region in May 1938. About this time, Lin Piao was wounded in action and was sent to the Soviet Union for medical treatment. Although some Communist sources state that he studied military medicine and Soviet military techniques, little is known about his activities during his three-year stay in the Soviet Union.

After returning to Yenan in February 1942, Lin was ordered to Chungking, the wartime capital of the National Government, where he represented the Eighth Route Army and served as a member of the Communist liaison mission headed by Chou En-lai. He returned to Yenan in 1943 to be deputy director of the Party School, headed by Mao Tse-tung. At the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Yenan in the spring of 1945, Lin was elected to the Central Committee. As the War in the Pacific came to an end, both the Nationalists and the Communists recognized the crucial importance that Manchuria would assume in the approaching struggle for control of China. Lin Piao, who was serving in the headquarters of the Chinese Communist forces at Yenan, was assigned to field command as commander of the Shantung military district. However, he was not sent to Shantung. More than 100,000 troops and 50,000 political cadres were transferred to Manchuria from Shantung and other parts of north China, and Lin received over-all command of them, his mission being to accept the surrender of Japanese and Manchoukuo troops and to cooperate with the Soviet Red Army. He and his staff moved to Manchuria in October 1945, where he assumed command of the newly established Communist Northeast military district and responsibility for civil administration and party affairs. He then organized the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army, a force composed of anti-Japanese guerrilla units, and began training new recruits at Chiamussu. In the meantime, the Nationalists attempted to send military forces to Manchuria, but Soviet units commanded by Marshal Rodion Ya. Malinovsky, which had moved into Manchuria in August 1945, refused them permission to land at Antung, Dairen, Yingkow, or Hualutao. By the time Nationalist units reached the principal cities of Manchuria, Lin Piao's forces had consolidated control of the surrounding areas, and the departing Soviet units had transferred much of the equipment taken from the Japanese Kwantung Army to the Chinese Communists. This equipment served to counterbalance the military aid given the Nationalists by the United States. Li May 1946 the Nationalists captured Ssu-p'ing-kai and forced Lin Piao to retreat to the area north of the Sungari River. However, the Nationalists were unable to maintain their position for long. Beginning in the summer of 1947, when Lin Piao ordered a counter-offensive, the Chinese Communist troops achieved victory after victory. The battle at Chinchow in October 1948 and the fall of Mukden on 1 November 1948 brought the Manchurian campaign to an end arid ensured Communist control of the region.

Lin Piao's forces were reorganized as the Fourth Field Army, with Lin as commander and political commissar. He moved south of the Great Wall, captured Kalgan in December 1948, and occupied Tientsin and Peiping in January 1949. As commander of the Peiping- Tientsin front, he served on the delegation headed by Chou En-lai that held unsuccessful peace talks with a Nationalist delegation from February to April. Units of the Fourth Field Army captured Wuhan in May and then moved southward. Their advance was aided by a series of important Nationalist defections, including that of Ch'eng Ch'ien (q.v.), the governor of Hunan. Changsha, the provincial capital, fell to the Communists on 5 August. The occupation of Hengyang in October completed the conquest of the Hupeh-Hunan region. The Fourth Field Army then marched into Kwangtung and took Canton in October. Lin Piao, who had remained at Hankow to supervise consolidation of his home region, became commander of the Central China Military District and first secretary of the Central Committee's bureau in that region. He was elected to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, held at Peiping in September 1949, even though he was not a delegate to the conference.

When the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China was inaugurated on 1 October 1949, Lin Piao became a member of the Government Council. In February 1950 he received command of the entire Central-South Military Region, which included six major provinces. In the autumn of that year, units of his Fourth Field Army formed the vanguard of the so-called Chinese People's Volunteers which crossed the Yalu River to participate in the Korean conflict. Many observers believed that Lin Piao did not assume field command of these units in Korea. His absence from an important meeting of the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee in September was believed to have been the result of ill health rather than command responsibilities in Korea. On several occasions in the 1951-53 period Yeh Chien-ying (q.v.), one of Lin's subordinates, served as his surrogate without explanation.

In 1954 Lin Piao was elected a deputy, representing the People's Liberation Army, to the National People's Congress. The congress, which convened in September, adopted a constitution and restructured the government. Lin then became a vice premier of the State Council and a vice chairman of the National Defense Council. On 23 September 1955 he was awarded the three top military decorations and was made a marshal of the People's Republic of China. Four of the other nine military leaders who received this honor were close associates of Lin Piao: Chu Teh, Ch'en Yi, Nieh Jung-chen, and Yeh Chien-ying. Lin also continued to rise in the party hierarchy. In April 1955 he was elected to the Political Bureau, and in May 1958 he was elected a vice chairman of the Central Committee, in which capacity he served as an ex officio member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. At this point, he was the sixth-ranking leader of the Chinese Communist party, the first five being Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch'i, Chou En-lai, Chu Teh, and Ch'en Yun.

In September 1959 Lin Piao replaced P'eng Te-huai (q.v.) as minister of defense. He also became senior vice chairman of the National Defense Council and first vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party's military affairs committee, which determined military policy. Late in 1961 he generated a campaign known as the 'Tour Firsts" which consisted of four fundamental relationships—between weapons and men, political work and other work, routine political work and ideological work, and theory and practice—and which established the basis for political activity in the People's Liberation Army. During the early 1960's Lin Piao was a dominant figure in stressing the omnipotence of the Thought of Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese Communist military forces. Lin Piao's political and military prominence was affirmed in September 1965, when he was chosen to make a major policy statement at the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the victory over Japan. "Long Live the Victory of People's War" appeared in the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] at Peking on 3 September. Lin argued that Mao Tse-tung's strategy, which stressed the necessity of establishing revolutionary bases in rural areas so that cities could be encircled and overcome, was of "universal practical importance for present revolutionary struggles." The cause of world revolution, then, depended on the successful transfer of Mao's doctrine to the international arena. With the gradual extension of "people's war" to and by Asian, African, and Latin American nations, the urban areas—Western Europe and North America — would be encircled and overcome. According to Lin, "everything is divisible, and so is this colossus of United States Imperialism. It can be split up and defeated. The peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other regions can destroy it piece by piece, some striking at its head and others at its feet." Throughout the early and mid 1960's the influence of Lin Piao and of the military forces he controlled grew steadily. On 1 January 1964 the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily], the official organ of the Chinese Communist party, called on the people of China to "learn from the political work experiences of the People's Liberation Army." Lin's forces played an important role in local, provincial, and national administration and politics. During the so-called Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, major policy announcements on national affairs appeared regularly in the Chieh-fang chün-pao [liberation army daily] rather than in the Jen-min jih-pao. In June 1966, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, articles in the theoretical journal Hung-ch'i [red flag] spoke of Lin Piao as an authoritative interpreter of Mao Tse-tung's doctrines. Lin Piao became the second-ranking member of the Chinese Communist party in August 1966, displacing Liu Shao-ch'i (q.v.). Little is known about Lin Piao's personal life. In 1937 he married Liu Hsi-ming, and they reportedly had a son and a daughter.