Lin Zhao

Lin Zhao 林昭
Lin Zhao, undated photo
Born	Peng Lingzhao (1932-12-16)16 December 1932 Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
Died	29 April 1968(1968-04-29) (aged 35) Longhua Airport, Shanghai, China
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Alma mater	Peking University
Parent(s)	Peng Guoxian (彭国彦) Xu Xianmin (许宪民)
Relatives	Xu Jinyuan (许金元) (uncle)

Lin Zhao (Chinese: 林昭; December 16, 1932 – April 29, 1968), born Peng Lingzhao (彭令昭), was a prominent dissident who was imprisoned and later executed by the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution for her criticism of Mao Zedong's policies.

Peng Lingzhao was born to a prominent family in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. By age 16, she had already joined an underground Communist cell and was writing articles criticizing the corruption of the Nationalist government under the pen name Lin Zhao. Three months before the Communists took power in mainland China, she ran away from home in order to attend a journalism school run by the Communists. During her tenure, she was assigned to work in a group to administer land reform in the countryside, where she took an active role in the torture and violent deaths of landlords as justified by the principle of class struggle.

Lin later enrolled in the Chinese literature department at Peking University where she became an outspoken dissident during the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1957. During this time, intellectuals such as herself were encouraged to criticize the Communist Party of China, but were later punished for doing so. As punishment, Lin was ordered to perform menial tasks for the university which included killing mosquitoes as part of the Four Pests Campaign and cataloguing old newspapers for the reference library of the university's journalism department.

In October 1960 while on medical parole in Suzhou, Lin Zhao was arrested along with other dissidents for helping to publish an underground magazine that criticized the Communist Party in reaction to the devastation wrought on the Chinese people by the government during the Great Leap Forward. She was later sentenced to 20 years imprisonment as a political prisoner where she was repeatedly beaten and tortured.