Lo Jung-huan

Background

Lo was born in 1902 in Nan-wan village in Heng-shan hsien, a community about 80 miles south of Changsha, the Hunan capital. His father was a grocer.

Education

After Lo graduated from a Changsha middle school he attended San Yat-sen University in Canton, then the revolutionary center of China. Active in the student movement, he joined the Communist Youth League and the CCP in 1927 when he was 25. In the summer of that year he took part in the famed Nanchang Uprising, which marked the final break between the Communists and the Nationalists and which is generally described as the birth of the Red Army.

Career

Escaping from Nanchang, Lo was sent by the CCP to southern Hupeh to organize and incite peasant rebellions, a campaign usually described as the Autumn Harvest Uprisings. Lo I-nung was the leading Party official in the area where Lo worked, and in neighboring Hunan Mao Tse-tung was similarly occupied. When the uprisings failed in both provinces, Mao and a small band of followers went to the Chingkang Mountains on the Hunan-Kiangsi border. En route to Chingkangshan Mao’s battered units paused and reorganized their forces at San-wan village in Yung-hsin hsien (a few miles from Chingkangshan). In a commemorative article by Lo regarding his early association with Mao, he wrote that the “San-wan reorganization was in essence the rebirth of our army, for it was there that the Communist Party firmly established its leadership over the revolutionary armed forces. Lo was still with Mao in the spring of 1928 when the latter was joined by the forces of Chu Te. He remained with the Chu-Mao army when it retreated from Chingkangshan in early 1929, moving with it across Kiangsi into Fukien. Lo was also a participant in the important Ku-fien Conference in December 1929 (see under Mao Tse-tung). By this period Lo had advanced from company to battalion level, and finally, in January 1930, he became political commissar of the Second Column of the Chu-Mao Fourth Red Army.

The Chu-Mao forces settled down on the Kiangsi-Fukien border, making their headquarters in Juichin until the Long March began in 1934. The army was constantly on the defensive in these years and was savagely attacked by the Nationalists in a series of “annihilation” campaigns. Forced to regroup following these attacks, the Communist army nonetheless grew in size as it brought together other guerilla units that were operating in the areas over which it fought. In the span of a few years the army was frequently reorganized and redesignated, but it continued to be the force commanded by Chu Te and Mao and had on its staff a number of young officers who later became top Chinese Communist military leaders. Known as the Fourth Red Army after Chu and Mao merged their forces in 1928, it was expanded into the First Army Corps in June 1930 and the First Front Army in August, retaining this name up to and during the Long March. At approximately the time of the June 1930 reorganization, Lo became the political commissar of Lin Piao's Fourth Army, and from that time the two men worked in close cooperation for many years. When Lin's Fourth Army was expanded into the First Army Corps, Lo was made director of the Corps’ Political Department, and for a period in the early 19305s he was also commander of the Kiangsi Military District.

Though he was attached to the 115th Division headquarters at the Wu-fai base in Shansi, in March 1939 Lo was put in charge of the division's operations in Shantung where he spent a large part of the war period. From the start of the war a number of separate anti-Japanese resistance forces operated in Shantung, some of them infiltrated by Communist Party cadres. In August-Scptember 1938 elements from the Eighth Route Army began entering Shantung when Ch’en Keng’s 386th Brigade (a part of Liu Po-ch’eng’s 129th Division) infiltrated into northern Shantung. These actions brought forth savage retaliations from the Japanese. The Communists, in turn, decided in late 1938 to send further aid to the Shantung guerrillas, especially those in northwest Shantung in the Liao-chang area. Hence, in the spring of 1939 the 115th Division headquarters at Wu-t'ai dispatched the 343rd Brigade through Hopeh to Shantung. The Brigade was commanded by Ch’en Kuang (not to be confused with Ch’en Keng). Attached to the 343rd Brigade was Hsiao Hua, who was to become one of Lo’s principal commanders in Shantung. By the late spring of 1939 the Brigade had made contact with the local resistance at Yun-ch’eng, south of the Yellow River from Liao-ch’eng. Probably about the time Ch'en Kuang's brigade was pushing toward Shantung, Lo was made commander and political commissar of the Shantung Military District, positions he held until 1944 or 1945. By 1943 he was also secretary of the CCP Shantung Sub-Bureau, thus combining the Party leadership and the military command for the province under his authority. During the later war years an important part of (he military operations of the 115th Division were conducted by Lo's forces in Shantung. This was reflected in the military assignments that Lo held at the time. Dating from some time in 1943 or early 1944 he was acting commander of the 115th Division (in charge of its forces in Shantung), in addition to holding the posts mentioned above. In Shantung Lo was aided by Hsiao Hua, who first commanded the West Shantung Military District and later took charge of the political work in the same area (and possibly in some of the border territory in Hopeh and Honan).

In April-June 1945, when the Party held its Seventh Congress in Yenan, Lo was elected to the Central Committee. Soon after the war ended in 1945 he was sent to Manchuria to take part in the establishment of the Northeast Democratic Allied Army (NEDAA) under Lin Piao. An important segment of the NEDAA consisted of the troops Lo had previously commanded in Shantung. From 1946 to 1948 he was director of the NEDAA's Political Department and deputy political commissar (under P’eng Chen) of both the NEDAA and the Northeast Military Region. Although he was mainly concerned with military affairs in these years, he was one of the speakers at the Sixth Labor Congress held by the Communists in Harbin in August 1948. He was also identified at this time as a deputy secretary of the Party’s Northeast Bureau. By the same year, as the Communists prepared for the final battles in Manchuria, Lo succeeded P’eng Chen as political commissar of the Northeast PLA (the new designation for the NEDAA) and retained this post when Lin Piao’s troops were redesignated the Fourth Field Army in the winter of 1948-49. Lo was with Lin in January 1949 during the military takeover of Tientsin and the negotiations for the surrender of Peking. During these important but short-lived operations he was political commissar of the Peking-Tientsin Field Headquarters.

Following the establishment of the government in Peking, Lo returned to Lin Piao’s Fourth Field Army, participating in its campaigns of late 1949 and early 1950. With their victories consolidated, the Communists established the Central-South Military Region, with Lin as the commander and Lo as political commissar. He was also second secretary (again under Lin Piao) of the Party’s Central-South Bureau, which controlled the six provinces of Honan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi. In early 1950 he became political commissar of the PLA Central-South Military and Political Academy. However, all his positions in the central-south region were essentially nominal by the early summer of 1950, for by that time he had returned to Peking where he worked for most of the remainder of his career. Lo’s political tasks with the PLA in central-south China were assumed by T’an Cheng, and his work with the Party’s Central-South Bureau fell mainly to Teng Tzu- hui.

Lo attended the second session of the First CPPCC in Peking in June 1950 when the important land reform law was adopted, and soon after he was identified as the director of the General Political Department, then subordinate to the People’s Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC). In this capacity he made most of his relatively few public appearances between 1950 and 1954. For example, he addressed the National People's Armed Forces Work Conference in Peking in October 1950 on behalf of the Political Department. In 1950 he also assumed the directorship of the PRMC’s General Cadres’ (personnel) Department, thus being placed in charge of two key posts in the military establishment. Then in June 1954 he was appointed a vice-chairman of the PRMC, although he only held this post until September 1954 when the PRMC was abolished.

There are reports that Lo served as political commissar of the Chinese forces in Korea the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) during the Korean War. It is noteworthy that he was not reported in Peking after the CPV entered the war in October 1950. Moreover, units from the Fourth Field Army (to which Lo was still officially attached) bore the brunt of the fighting in the early days of the war. However, his presence in Korea cannot be confirmed, and in any event Lo was again reported regularly in the Communist press from October 1951 in connection with his various duties in Peking.

When the CCP held its Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, Lo was again elected to the Central Committee. Immediately after, at the First Plenum of the new Central Committee, he was elevated to membership in the Politburo, which then consisted of 17 full and six alternate members. Then in December 1956 Lo was relieved of his top military commands, being succeeded as head of the Political Department by T’an Cheng and in the Cadres’ Department by Hsiao Hua. Both men had been associates of Lo for a number of years. However, it appears that Lo returned to the Political Department as the de facto director after about 1960-61, from which time Tan Cheng, then in political difficulties, seems to have been divorced from the duties of this important department. The thought that Lo was reassigned to the Political Department is further buttressed by the fact that he took a prominent part in several Political Department-sponsored conferences, particularly in 1961. Moreover, the Canton Nan-fang jih~pao (Southern Daily) of December 16, 1963, noted that he headed the department at the time of his death (although this was not indicated in the more authoritative JMJP dispatches in connection with his death).

Politics

Lo played an important role in Party work within the Red Army prior to the Long March, but he apparently took a less active part in the political life outside the army. In November 1931 the Communists established the Chinese Soviet Republic as the principal governmental authority over the widely separated areas under their control. The capital was at Juichin, and the governing body was known as the Central Executive Committee (CEC). In January-February 1934, the Second Congress elected a new and much larger CEC. Lo was elected an alternate CEC member, apparently this was his only non-military post in this period. Not long before this, in 1933, Lo had been transferred from Lin Piao's First Army Corps to become head of the Eighth Army Corps’ Political Department. There is little information about the Eighth Corps, which, with the First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Army Corps, was one of the units under the Chu-Mao First Front Army, which evacuated Kiangsi in October 1934 to make the Long March. Maoist historians may have neglected the Eighth Corps for the simple reason that it was virtually wiped out in November 1934 as it was crossing southern Hunan. Lo apparently joined other elements of the Chu-Mao forces, because he is known to have arrived in north Shensi in the fall of 1935.

Lo continued as a prominent figure in the late fifties and early sixties. He served in the Second NPC from its convocation in April 1959 (representing the Shenyang Military Region) and was again elected to the NPC Standing Committee, a position he held until his death. But his work in connection with the legislature was clearly less important than his military duties. He was among those who spoke at the conference of the Party Central Committee's Military Affairs Committee (MAC) held from May to July 1958, a period coinciding with the crisis in the Middle East (when the United States landed forces in Lebanon and the British in Jordan). His membership on the MAC probably dated from at least that time, but by the spring of 1961 he was specifically identified as one of the members of the MAC'S Standing Committee, probably the most elite military group in China.

Membership

In October 1949, Lo received three major assignments. First, he was made a member of the Central Peopled Government Council, the most important government body from then until 1954. Second, he was made chief procurator of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the approximate equivalent of the United States Attorney General. Finally, under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet), Lo was made a member of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee. He was also a member of the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association from 1949 to 1954, the same years during which he held the three above-mentioned governmental positions.

Connections

Lo married Lin Yueh-ch’in in the spring of 1937 in Yenan. She had previously been married to a political worker in the Fourth Front Army of Chang Kuo-fao and Hsu Hsiang-chMen. At the time of his death Lo had at least one son and a daughter. His wife has been a member of the Executive Committee of the National Women's Federation since 1957 and a PLA deputy to the Third NPC since 1964. She wrote a commemorative article about her husband, which appeared in the December 25, 1963, issue of the JMJP.

Spouse:

Lin Yueh-ch’in