Background
He was probably born in Kwangtung (although some sources say 1915 in Hunan).
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Lo Kuei-po
Edit ProfileEducation
Most of the information on Lo’s early career comes from journalist Harrison Forman, who interviewed Lo in 1944. He told Forman that he left his family to join the Nationalist armies when he was 15 (about 1926) and that when he was 16 he joined the Communists, not long after the KMT-CCP split in mid-1927.
Career
He later became a Red guerrilla fighter in the rural parts of Kiangsi province. About 1932 he was a deputy commander of a military unit numbering some 5,000 men, and in the 1933-34 period he was a deputy commandant of the Red Army Academy in the Juichin (Kiangsi) area. Lo made the Long March (1934-35) to north Shensi as head of a detachment of political workers.
After his arrival in the northwest Lo was assigned to Ho Lung’s 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army, the division which maintained a base in the Shansi-Suiyuan area throughout the Sino-Japanese War. Lo was a political commissar during most of the war, although he also assumed military commands for brief periods. By 1938 he had become propaganda director of the Political Department of the 120th Division, as well as propaganda director of the Party’s sub-bureau for Shansi and Suiyuan. In 1939 Lo was also serving as political commissar of the 120th Division's 358th Brigade with Commander P*eng Shao-hui. From the earliest part of the war the Communist armies in northwest Shansi had been cooperating against the Japanese with guerrilla units of the so-called “Shansi New Army,” a military force which consisted mainly of Communist-infiltrated udare to die’’ corps. The “New Army” was commanded by KMT member Hsu Fan-fing and was ostensibly under the control of Shansi warlord Yen Hsi-shan. This three-cornered arrangement had been satisfactory to the beleaguered Yen in the early war years when he believed that cooperation with the Communists and Communist-infiltrated organizations was the only feasible means to hold off the Japanese Army. However, by 1939 Yen’s fear of the growing strength of the Communists in Shansi caused him to take a series of political and military steps which led to the defection in December 1939 of Hsu Fanning. Hsu took some 3,000 of his men and joined the Communist forces.
Lo is credited with an important part in Hsu's defection, and when the New Army, he was reorganized under the Communists, Hsu was appointed commander of the provisional headquarters and Lo was made his political commissar. These developments paved the way for the formation in 1940-41 of the Communists' Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Region (see under Lin Feng).
Lo apparently continued to conduct guerrilla sub-region of the Shansi-Suiyuan Military Region. He remained in the area after the cessation of hostilities in August 1945 and by 1948 was serving both as the military commander and as the Party official in charge of an 'area which was formerly under the jurisdiction of the Shansi-Suiyuan base. At that time he was secretary of the Shansi-Suiyuan Sub-bureau of the CCP Northwest Bureau and commander and political commissar of a newly organized military district in central Shansi.
Communist armies took Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi, in April 1949 and immediately established a military control commission, upon which Lo served as a member. Among his fellow members were Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien, Lo Jui-ch’ing, Lai Jo-yii, and Chou Shih-ti. Following this appointment were four years of obscurity, though at some time between 1950 and 1953 he moved to Peking. There he was assigned to the leading PRC military body, the People's Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC), untit its dissolution in September 1954 when the constitutional government was established. A 1953 report identified Lo as a political commissar with the air defense command of the PRMC. He was also identified as the “former” director of the PRMC Staff Office in August 1954 when he was appointed ambassador to North Vietnam. These identifications are somewhat puzzling because the post with the Staff Office was also held by other men between 1952 and 1954. There are reports that Lo was a member of the Chinese delegation to the Geneva Conference of 1954, which led to the partition of French Indochina. However, his participation in Chou En-lai’s delegation to Geneva cannot be established. It is possible that he was initially named to the delegation but did not go.
In September 1956 Lo was elected in absentia as an alternate member of the Central Committee by the Eighth National CCP Congress. The following year he was called back to Peking. Appointed vice-minister of Foreign Affairs in October 1957, he left Hanoi on December 2 and was officially replaced a few days later by Ho Wei. The only position he has received since that time was given to him in late 1964 when he was named as a representative of “organizations for peaceful and friendly relations with foreign countries,' to the Fourth National Committee of the CPPCC. (The Fourth Committee held its initial session in December 1964-January 1965.)
Since returning to Peking Lo has been seen frequently at diplomatic and semi-official gatherings for foreign visitors, though the functions he attends are not those of the highest importance. In mid-July 1959 he made a 10-day visit to Iraq to attend the celebrations marking the first anniversary of Iraqi National Day. Apparently Lo’s most important activity in Peking since his return there was in June 1961 when he participated in the talks between premiers Chou En-lai and Pham Van Dong of Vietnam during the latter’s visit to China.
Politics
Lo presented his credentials in Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh on September 1, 1954. China and North Vietnam had recognized each other in early 1950, and the Vietnamese had sent a “delegate” with ambassadorial rank to Peking in 1951. However, prior to Lo’s arrival in Hanoi there had been no report of Chinese diplomatic representation in Vietnam. During the next three years he was an active member of the diplomatic set in Hanoi. He twice accompanied Ho on visits to China: in June-July 1955 when the latter went to Peking to sign an agreement by which China promised aid to North Vietnam and in July 1957 when the Vietnamese leader was en route to North Korea and satellite nations of East Europe. Lo was also on hand in Hanoi when Chou En-lai visited there in November 1956, an important occasion because the Chinese premier was making a tour of Southeast Asia to visit Communist and non-Communist leaders there in the wake of the Communist revolt in Hungary.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party