Lin Biao

(1907-1971)
Born in the village of the county Huanggang (Hubei Province) in 1907. True to the name of Yu Rong, but while studying at the military school in the Kuomintang Whampoa he changed it to Lin Biao (tiger cat). In 1927 he began serving in the Kuomintang army platoon commander, then the company. After the anti-communist campaign, organized in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, Lin Biao was involved in the establishment of detachments of the Red Army in Jiangxi Province. In 1934-1935, after the Nationalists took the province in the ring, Lin Biao stood at the head of the vanguard of the communist troops, carrying out the 'Long March' in Yan'an. In 1937, during the first victorious battle the combined forces of the Kuomintang and the Japanese Red Army, Lin Biao was seriously wounded. In 1946, after the resumption of hostilities between the Kuomintang and the Communists, Lin Biao won several important victories in Manchuria, captured Peking, and threw the Nationalist troops to the southern coast of the country. Deteriorating health prevented his advancement in the early 1950's, but in 1954 he was deputy prime minister in the Chinese Government, and in 1959 became Minister of Defense of China. In 1966, actively helped Mao Zedong in the deployment of 'cultural revolution', and in 1969 was regarded as the successor to Mao. In 1971, the PRC government announced the death of Lin Biao, which, according to the official version, followed in a plane crash in Mongolia on Sept. 12, 1971, when Lin, after a failed military coup, was heading to the Soviet Union.