Lin Biao (1907-1971), a native of Huanggang County, Hubei Province, joined the CPC in 1925. At the Fifth Plenary Session of the Party's Eighth Central Committee, held in May 1958, he was elected vice-chairman of the Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. In 1959 he was made Minister of Defence and took charge of the work of the Central Military Commission. During the "cultural revolution" he organized a conspiratorial clique in an attempt to usurp Party and state power and plotted a counter-revolutionary coup. When his plot was exposed, he fled the country in the small hours of September 13, 1971, but died when his plane crashed in Ondorhan, Mongolia. In August 1973 the Central Committee of the CPC decided to expel him from the Party posthumously.