Po I-po (1907-), subordinate of Yen Hsi-shan who later became known as a Chinese Communist economic planner. He served as minister of finance at Peking in 1949-53. Tinghsiang, Shansi, was the birthplace of Po I-po. Little is known about his family background or his early life. About 1926 Po went to Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shansi, and enrolled at the Kuo-min Normal School. He soon was exposed to the more radical publications of the day, and in 1927 he joined the Chinese Communist party. After being graduated from the Kuo-min Normal School about 1930, Po and some of his classmates became active in radical student movements in the Peiping-Tientsin area. Po is said to have taken courses at Peking University, but he received no degrees from that institution. His radical activities led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1932. He was released in 1935 through the efforts of his schoolmate Liang Hua-chih, a nephew of Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.).

At the invitation of Yen Hsi-shan, Po I-po went to Taiyuan in 1936 as a leader of the Hsisheng chiu-kuo t'ung-meng [league for national salvation through sacrifice] and of its "Dare-to- Die" units, both of which were established to organize resistance to the Japanese. Soon after the Sino-Japanese war began, the Japanese occupied Taiyuan. Po and other guerrillas took refuge in the Taiyueh and Taihang mountains. Major Evans Carlson, an American military observer who traveled through Chinese Communist territory in 1938, met Po at Ch'inchow, a small city in the Taiyueh district. Ch'inchow was the administrative center for the ten surrounding counties, of which Po was magistrate. Po's Communist affiliation apparently was unknown to Major Carlson, who spoke of him as "the local representative of Yen Hsi-shan." Some sources of information about Po's activities during the late 1930's state that Po was a secretary to Yen Hsi-shan and director of the southeastern Shansi administrative office. However, his own account of the period, as told to the American journalist Jack Belden in 1947, tells only of Communist affiliations and posts. Po commanded a force known to the Chinese Communists as the New Army. It was formed about 1939 when Po and some of the Dare-to-Die forces left the service of Yen Hsi-shan and joined the Communist 129th Division of Liu Po-ch'eng (q.v.). From 1939 until 1947 Po I-po commanded the so-called New 1st Division of the Shansi-Hopei- Shantung-Honan Border Liberated Area and served in the region's government. In 1944-45 he also commanded the Taiyueh military subdistrict. He became deputy chairman of the border region government in 1945 and chairman in 1946. He held the chairmanship until 1948, during which time he also served as deputy political commissar of the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Military District. At the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Yenan in the spring of 1945, Po was elected to the Central Committee. Thereafter, he rose rapidly in the Chinese Communist political and administrative hierarchy. In 1948 he became political commissar of the North China Military District, secretary of the party's north China bureau, first vice chairman of the North China People's Government, and vice chairman of that government's finance and economics committee.

When the Central People's Government was established in October 1949, Po I-po became minister of finance, a post he held until September 1953. His other posts in the 1949-53 period included: vice chairman of the Government Administration Council's economic-financial committee, member of the Government Council, executive board member of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, member of the State Planning Commission, and standing committee member of the All-China Federation of Cooperatives. In 1953 he served on the committee charged with drafting a constitution, and in 1954 he served on the presidium of the National People's Congress, at which this new constitution was promulgated. Po was chairman of the State Construction Commission from September 1954 to May 1956 and director of the heavy industry and construction office of the State Council from October 1954 to September 1959.

Po I-po's importance in both government and party was confirmed in 1956, when he became chairman of the National Economic Commission and a presidium member of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. At the congress, he gave a report on the "Relationship Between Accumulation and Consumption in Socialist Construction," and he was elected to alternate membership in the Political Bureau. In November, he became a vice premier of the State Council. He attended the National People's Congress in 1958 as a delegate from Hopei. In 1960-61 he headed the State Council's industry and communications office, and in 1962 he was appointed vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission. Po represented Shansi at the National People's Congress in 1964 and served on the congress's presidium. Throughout this period, Po made speeches about various aspects of Chinese Communist programs for economic development. In the field of economic planning, he served for several years under Ch'en Yun (q.v.). Little is known about Po I-po's activities after 1964 or his status with reference to the Cultural Revolution of 1966. Po Ku: see Ch'in Pang-hsien. p'u-ju jf m H. Hsin-yu ,fc 0$