biography
| name: |
Lin Biao or Lin Piao
|
pronunciation:
[lin byow]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1907–71)
|
| biography:
| Chinese military leader, born in Huang-kang, EC China. He trained at Whampoa military academy in 1926, joined the communists, and became a marshal of the Red Army. He commanded the First Army Corps on the Long March (1934–5), and led the Red Army in Manchuria during the civil war. He was minister of defence from 1959, and in 1968 replaced the disgraced Liu Shaoqi as heir apparent to Mao Zedong. He was one of the promoters of the Cultural Revolution of 1966, and appears to have been a patron of extreme left-wing factions. In 1971, after a political struggle, he was killed in a plane crash in Mongolia, apparently in the course of an attempt to seek refuge in the USSR. |
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