Lin Zhao (16 December 1932 – 29 April 1968) was a Chinese political dissident, poet, and writer. A former member of the Chinese Communist Party, she was an idealist who initially supported the party's rise to power, joining an underground communist cell prior to the 1949 revolution at age 16, but turned against it after seeing its growing intolerance to free speech and criticism during the "Hundred Flowers" period in 1957. She ended up being incarcerated by the Communist Party regime, during which time she famously used her own blood to write hundreds of pages of criticism of communist leader Mao Zedong, which were smuggled out of prison. In 1968 she was executed by the regime via gunshot. She was posthumously exonerated of her "crimes" by the regime during the rule of Deng Xiaopeng in 1981, but Chinese authorities remain reluctant to allow discussion of her life and writings.