林彪

Lin Biao was one of the most consequential military figures in twentieth-century communist China, a major commander in the revolutionary wars, and later a central but deeply controversial figure in the Maoist political order. His career links insurgent warfare, civil war victory, military doctrine, personalist politics, and the destabilizing overlap between army power and party succession.

He rose as one of the Chinese Communist movement's most capable commanders and later became bound up with the ideological and political turbulence of the Cultural Revolution. His experiences illustrate how battlefield prestige can become both a source of power and a source of danger within revolutionary regimes.