Bo Yibo

Bo Yibo (17 February 1908 – 15 January 2007) was a Chinese politician.

While studying in Beijing he joined the Chinese Communist Party, four years after it was founded, in 1925.

Between 1925 and 1928 Bo held a number of minor, local positions as a Communist Party organizer in his home city of Taiyuan.

After Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) began to violently suppress communists across China in 1927, Bo went into hiding and continued to organize Communist activities in rural areas.

He was promoted to organize Communist guerrilla movements in northern China from a headquarters in Tianjin in 1928, but he was arrested and imprisoned by Kuomintang police in 1931.

In 1928 Bo was sent by the Party to work underground as a Party organizer in Tianjin.

He was arrested by the KMT three times; and, after the last time, in 1931, he spent several years in jail.

While imprisoned in a correctional facility for military personnel in Beijing, Bo held a formal Party title and was responsible for spreading communism and organizing communist activities in the prison.

In 1936, with the tacit support of the Communist Party, Bo signed an anti-communist confession to secure his release.

In late 1936 the Kuomintang warlord governing Bo's home province of Shanxi, Yan Xishan, began to fear that the Japanese Empire was planning to invade China and formed a "united front" with the Communists to resist the Japanese in Shanxi.

Yan then began attracting Shanxi natives across China to return and work for his government in various patriotic organizations.

Yan arranged for Guo Yingyi, one of Bo's former classmates and a former Communist then working for Yan, to travel to Beijing and secure Bo's cooperation.

Guo succeeded in persuading Bo to sign an anti-Communist confession to secure his release (with the tacit support of the Communist Party) and Bo returned to Shanxi to work with Yan Xishan in October 1936.

After returning to Shanxi, Yan placed Bo in charge of his "Patriotic Sacrifice League", a local organization dedicated to organizing local resistance against Japanese invasion (which Bo organized as a front for promoting Communism).

While working under Yan, Bo organized a "dare-to-die" corps of young volunteers and used his good relationship with Yan to persuade Yan to release communists that he was holding in prison.

After the Japanese succeeded in taking northern Shanxi in 1937 and wiping out 90% of Yan's military forces, Bo collected the survivors of his unit and conducted anti-Japanese guerrilla operations in southern Shanxi.

When cooperation between Yan and the Communists ended in 1939, Bo led the survivors of his unit that were loyal to him and joined the Communist Eighth Route Army.

Bo worked until the Japanese surrendered, in 1945, as a commander and political commissar in the People's Liberation Army, fighting the Japanese in Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan.

He held a number of positions within the Party that recognized his administrative authority over much of these areas, and his prestige and influence grew throughout the period of the war.

During the later stages of Chinese Civil War, from 1946 to 1949, Bo worked closely under Liu Shaoqi and General Nie Rongzhen.

After his release Bo returned to Shanxi, rejoined the communists, and fought both the Kuomintang and the Japanese Empire in northern China until the Communists completed their unification of mainland China in 1949.

During Bo's career he held successive posts as Communist China's inaugural Minister of Finance, a member of the Communist Party's Politburo, Vice-Premier, chairman of State Economic Commission, and vice-chairman of the party's Central Advisory Commission.

After the Communists won the civil war in 1949, Bo worked as China's finance minister and chairman of the State Planning Commission.

During the early 1950s he was Mao's swimming partner.

In 1956, the State Economic Commission was established under Bo in order to ease administrative burdens on the State Planning Commission.

Bo served in a number of other similar positions, including vice premier (from 1957) under Zhou Enlai.

He promoted moderate economic policies until he lost Mao's favour in 1958.

In 1964, Bo and Li Fuchun traveled to southwest China to relay Mao's selection of Panzhihua as the base for steel industry development during China's Third Front construction.

Bo was purged in 1966 by the Mao-backed Gang of Four, but he was brought back to power by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, after Mao's death.

He was one of the most senior political figures in China during the 1980s and 1990s.

After joining the Chinese Communist Party when he was 17, he worked as a Communist Party organizer in his native city of Taiyuan, Shanxi.

Bo was one of a select group of powerful veterans centred on Deng who were informally known as the "Eight Immortals" for their political longevity and for the vast influence they commanded during the 1980s and 1990s.

After returning to power Bo supported economic liberalization, but was a moderate conservative politically.

He initially supported both Hu Yaobang and the 1989 Tiananmen protesters, but he was eventually persuaded by hardliners to support both Hu's dismissal in 1987 and the use of violence against protesters in 1989.

Bo's political involvement declined in the 1990s, but he used his influence to support both Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, and to promote the career of his son, Bo Xilai.

He was the last remaining, and longest-lived, of the Eight Elders at the time of his death on 15 January 2007, just a little over a month short of his 99th birthday.

Bo Yibo was born in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, which had become one of the poorest provinces in China by the early 20th century.

His father was a craftsman who produced paper, but the family was so poor that they were forced to drown one of Bo's newborn brothers because they were not wealthy enough to feed him.

As a student, Bo was politically active, and once organized a protest against local land taxes.

After graduating from high school in Taiyuan he attended Beijing University.