He was born in the province of Hunan in 1886 and finished his secondary education in Chinas and then went to Japan where he studied at the University of Tokyo. After meeting and being influenced by Sun Yat-sen he returned to China and joined the revolutionary movement that saw the fall of the Imperial Dynasty in 1911.

He joined the Communist Party of China in 1922. In 1924 he was a member of the communist delegation to the first Kuomintang Congress. In 1924-1925 he headed the Kuomintang peasant department. In 1926 he was the political commissar with the Sixth Army. When the Kuomintang and the Communists split, he took part in the Nanchang insurrection of August 1, 1927. The insurrection was defeated he fled to USSR by way of Hong Kong.

He remained in the Soviet Union for four years where he studied at the Sun Yet-sen University and wrote on the economical and cultural problems in China. In 1928 he took part in the Sixth Congress of the CPSU and also in the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, both held in Moscow.

Returning to China and in October 1934 took part in the Long March. In 1937 when the Communists formed the government in the Yenan region, he was named its chairman. In 1944 he took part in the negotiations with the Kuomintang In March-April of 1949 after the Communist victory he was in Peking to negotiate with the Kuomintang and after the final victory, he was elected as head of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. At the Seventh Congress of the CPC he was elected to the CC CPC and its Politburo.

In April of 1955 Lin became the youngest member of the CC Politburo. In 1959 he was named Minister of Defence. In August of 1966 (the year of the Cultural Revolution) he emerged second to Mao Tse-tung in the CPC. He was called the "closest companion of Mao Tse-tung and at the Ninth Congress of the CPC he became the Vice Chairman of the CPC and was designated as Mao’s successor.

But he was then purged in second half of that year and his name disappeared from the media altogether and his liquidation became certain at the end of that same year.

Of course there those people who think otherwise and consider the Chinese path as the only road towards Socialism. WE know that Imperialism is very happy to go along such a road!