Bo Yibo

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Bo.

Bo Yibo
Bo, aged 38
Vice Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission
In office 1982–1992 Serving with Xu Shiyou, Tan Zhenlin, Li Weihan, Song Renqiong
Leader	Deng Xiaoping Chen Yun
Vice Premier of the PRC
In office 1956–1975
Premier	Zhou Enlai
In office 1979–1982
Premier	Hua Guofeng Zhao Ziyang
Minister of Fiance of the PRC
In office 1949–1953
Succeeded by	Deng Xiaoping
Personal details
Born	17 February 1908(1908-02-17) Dingxiang, Xinzhou, Shanxi, Qing Empire
Died	15 January 2007(2007-01-15) (aged 98) Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, People's Republic of China
Relations	Bo Xiyin (eldest daughter) Bo Jieyin (second daughter) Bo Xiyong (eldest son) Bo Xilai (second son) Bo Xiaoyin (third daughter) Bo Xicheng (third son) Bo Xilin (fourth son) Bo Guagua (grandson)
Alma mater	Central Party School of the Communist Party of China

Bo Yibo (Chinese: 薄一波; pinyin: Bó Yībō) (February 17, 1908 – January 15, 2007) was a Chinese politician and one of the Eight Immortals of the Communist Party of China.

He was alternate member and then member of the Politburo, deputy prime minister, chairman of State Economic Commission and vice-chairman of Central Advisory Commission of the Communist Party of China. Bo was one of the revolutionary veterans purged by the Mao Zedong-backed Gang of Four who returned to power after Mao's death.

Bo Yibo was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, in 1908. He joined the CPC in 1925, at the age of 17. He first surfaces in 1925 as CPC secretary of the party branch at Shanxi Civic Teachers’ College, and later deputy secretary and secretary of the party committee in Northern Taiyuan. In 1927, Bo became CPC secretary-general of the Northern Bureau of the Central Military Commission. A year later, he was secretary for military affairs of the Tianjin CPC Committee and chief of the military committee for North China. He was captured by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang police in 1931 and, under orders from the CPC, signed an anti-communist confession. After his release, he returned to Shanxi where he became secretary of the provincial party working group in 1936 and was instrumental in recuriting warlord Yan Xishan to the communist cause. Bo joined the final stages of the Long March.

Bo was one of a select group of powerful veterans centred around late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping who were informally known as the Eight Immortals for the vast influence they commanded until gradually succumbing to old age and death mostly in the 1990s. By some reckonings Bo was the last immortal to – in Deng’s phrase – “go to meet Marx”, but he is survived by 93-year-old Wan Li, another former vice-premier widely considered to have been one of the eight.

Pre-1949 Career

During the Yan'an era, Bo was Executive Vice Chair of the Shanxi border region and Vice Chair of its CPC committee. His career from the late 1930s into the 1950s was closely aligned with that of Liu Shaoqi. In 1947, Bo’s Jin-Yi-Lu-Yu Bureau was merged with General (later Marshal) Nie Rongzhen’s Jin-Cha-Ji Bureau into the new CCP North China Bureau. General Nie ran military affairs, and although Liu Shaoqi was nominally in charge of the party and government, his duties elsewhere gave daily control to Bo.

This North China organization eventually evolved into the core of the national government established October 1, 1949. Among the North Bureau’s key players were Peng Zhen, An Ziwen, Lu Dingyi, Liu Lantao, Liao Luyan and Yang Xianzhen.

Post-1949 Career

In the first years after 1949, Bo was Minister of Finance, a position he lost in December 1953 to his political ally of the time, Deng Xiaoping. His ouster was as much the result of a factional dispute with Gao Gang and Rao Shushi as it was about fiscal policies deemed insufficiently pro-state.

Later in the 1950s, he was among the veteran planners resistant to Mao Zedong’s economic policies. Others in opposition to the Great Leap Forward and similar extreme economic measures included Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Li Fuchun and Yao Yilin. Bo served as Vice Chair (1952–1956) and later Chair (1956–1959) of the State Planning Commission, when he presided over the economic policies of the Great Leap Forward.^{[citation needed]}

Bo Yibo was a member of the CPC Politburo from the 8th National Party Congress in 1956 to the beginning of the GPCR, and again in the early Deng Xiaoping era, from 1979 until the 12th National Party Congress in 1982, when most of the elders retired.

During the Cultural Revolution, Bo was imprisoned as a political prisoner by Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao's wife, for his pro-democratic activities and for advocating freedom of trade with western countries. He was held in a prison with some of the worst conditions available for fifteen years, during which time his wife was beaten to death. His sons and daughters were either imprisoned (e.g. Bo Xiyong, Bo Xilai and Bo Xicheng, at the ages of sixteen, seventeen and seventeen again respectively) or sent to some of the poorest places in China (e.g. Bo Xining, at the age of fourteen). On February 9, 1967, a large struggle rally targeting Bo was held in Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium. Bo was reportedly more defiant than other Cultural Revolution victims, demanding (unsuccessfully) to be allowed to speak in his own defense. Bo was tortured by the Red Guard during most of 1967.

Bo important contribution toward the Chinese economic reform was mainly in the early 1980s, when the reform was at its difficult time in its infancy. During the debate on whether free market economy should be allowed or not, Bo was firmly on the reformers' side. Once the free market economy was allowed, the hardline conservatives attempted to restrict it by limiting the maximum number of employees each private enterprise could have: no more than eight according to the orthordox Marxism, because anymore would be exploitation. Bo Yibo's support of private enterprises in free market economy was instrumental in helping to defeat the hardline conservatives' attempt to thwart the market reform. Bo's further support of economic reform came from one of his trips to Boeing facilities in the United States in the 1980s. During his visit, Bo discovered that there were only two airplanes parked at the facility. He asked the Boeing executives whether there would be any left if the two were gone. Boeing executives answered that it was exactly what they wanted because their production is based on customers' order and anything more than necessary would be a waste of money and other resources, for example when they could not fill customers' orders according to the schedule. After this visit to Boeing, Bo became much more critical to the Chinese practice of planned economy, accurately pointing out that the excess production plans were in fact a waste on resources, and even for the planned economy, it should be planned market economy instead of the rigid Soviet style planning.

Despite his support of economic reform, Bo was by no means a reformer like Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Wan Li and Hu Qili in the political reform arena: after the 1982 12th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Bo was kicked upstairs to the vice chairmanship (equal to politburo rank) of the toothless CPC Central Advisory Committee, but remained instrumental in removing CPC Secretary General Hu Yaobang from power. He returned to a leadership position when he urged a crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and actively supported the removal of Zhao Ziyang. Bo died of old age at almost 99 in a Beijing hospital.

Family

His son Bo Xilai is called one of the "Crown Prince Party" and is head of the Communist Party in Chongqing, while the rest of his children obtained foreign residency, such as his daughter, who obtained American citizenship and resides in the U.S.

External links

• Searchable biography of Bo Yibo, China Vitae
• Report of death
• Bo Yibo, Chinese revolutionary, dies at 98 - Financial Times obituary
• Bo Yibo, leader who helped reshape Chinese economy, dies at 98 - New York Times obituary
• Obituary in The Guardian

Government offices
Preceded by none	Minister of Finance of the People's Republic of China 1949 – 1953	Succeeded by Deng Xiaoping