Lu Po-hung (27 March 1875-30 December 1937), known as Lo Pa Hong, was a successful Shanghai industrialist and a prominent Roman Catholic layman.

Shanghai was the birthplace of Lo Pa Hong. His ancestors had come there from Szechwan in the early seventeenth century, had entered the shipbuilding industry and the cotton and silk trade, and had become Roman Catholics. During the nineteenth century Lo's family often served as hosts to Catholic missionaries, who learned from them the elements of Chinese and something of the customs of the country. In addition to a traditional Chinese education, Lo Pa Hong was given religious instruction at the Tung-chia-tu parochial school (his greatgrandfather had given the funds to build the cathedral). He passed the examinations for the sheng-yuan degree in 1893. After two unsuccessful attempts to pass the examinations for the chü-jen degree, he began to study French under the guidance of a Chinese priest. Later in 1894 he became secretary to a French lawyer in Shanghai.

Lo Pa Hong married Marie Xgai Ki Tseng, who also came from a pronünent and wealthy Catholic family, in 1896. In the course of time she bore him five sons. Her death in 1905 together with that of one of their sons affected Lo deeply and spurred him to undertake the philanthropic activities that characterized his later life. He began to make regular visits to hospitals and prisons, donating money to aid those people who were afflicted With incurable or contagious diseases.

Little is known about Lo Pa Hong's early years in business. In 1911 he was appointed general manager of the Nantao Electric Company, which was having serious financial problems. He secured British and Japanese loans to modernize and reorganize the company, repaying them with the help of the Congregation of the Mission. Thereafter, he often made financial arrangements with Catholic missionary organizations. In 1914, with the backing of the Siemens interests, he inaugurated a streetcar service between Shanghai and Nantao. This service later merged with the Nantao Electric Company, which became a highly successful business. In the meantime, Lo had founded the Ta Tung Sheng Chi Navigation Company. During the First ^Vorld War the scarcity of iron and steel in China led Lo and a group of financiers to establish a foundry. At war's end, renewed competition from abroad forced the foundry to close, but aid from the Siemens interests enabled it to resume operations in 1925. Lo continued to be active in shipping and in developing public utilities in Shanghai. In 1923 he bought a section of the Whangpoo waterfront and established the Woohsing Wharf and Storage Company. The following year, he obtained control of the Chapei Electric and W^aterworks Company. He became general manager of the Shanghai Inland Waterworks Company in 1928, and he founded the Ta Tseng Company, which engaged in river navigation, in 1929.

Throughout this period, Lo Pa Hong engaged in philanthropic activities, most of which also served to further the cause of Roman Catholicism in China. In 1911 he assumed charge of an old charity hospital, the P'u-yu-t'ang, which had been run by the Shanghai municipal authorities. He soon concluded that the hospital would have to be replaced and began raising money to buy land for a new hospital. He also obtained permission to use bricks from the old city walls in constructing the new building. The Hgin-p'u-yu-t'ang was opened in 1913, the year that Lo first was elected to the Shanghai Municipal Council. He built a chapel at the new hospital, and he often preached to the patients. The Hsin-p'u-yut'ang became a training center for members of the Catholic Action of China, established by Lo in 1913 to supplement missionary work with lay activity. This group later did missionary work in the rural areas near Shanghai. Lo also tried to interest educated Chinese in Roman Catholicism by means of public debates. He established a clinic in the Yang-tse borough of Shanghai in 1915 and a similar institution in Sungkiang, Kiangsu, in 1917. Also in 1917 he joined with several other philanthropists in establishing the Peking Central Hospital. In 1923 he founded the Blessed Heart Hospital in Shanghai and enlarged the Hsin-p'u-yu-t'ang; in 1934 he founded the Shanghai Mercy Hospital for mental diseases and the Nantao Isolation Hospital for contagious diseases. In addition to establishing these medical institutions, he made large contributions to all of them.

Education in the Shanghai area also benefitted from Lo Pa Hong's activities. He founded a primary school near the Tung-chia-tu cathedral in 1914 and another near the Yangtse-poo clinic in 1916. He became interested in starting an English-language school in Shanghai which would be run by American Jesuits. He finally won support for this project after holding discussions in the United States in 1925, when visiting as a delegate from the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce to the International Foreign Trade Congress at Seattle, and in 1926, when attending the Eucharistic Congress at Chicago. He also went to Rome in 1926 and enlisted the support of Pope Pius XI. St. Luigi Gonzaga College opened in Shanghai in 1928. Lo also sponsored the establishment in 1928 of St. Gregory College, a primary and secondary school which was run by the Salesian Fathers. In 1937 he opened a Catholic girls school.

After the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, Lo Pa Hong made his hospitals available to thousands of wounded soldiers and refugees. That year, he became the first Chinese to be appointed a papal chamberlain by the Vatican. During the Japanese occupation, he put religious charity before patriotism and defied National Government noncooperation orders by continuing to supervise his hospitals as a member of a Japanese-sponsored committee. Although he went into hiding when Nationalist pressure on him increased, he refused to leave Shanghai. On 30 December 1937 he was assassinated by two unknown terrorists. Lo Pa Hong, like his forebears, combined business skill with religious devotion. The success of his eight major business enterprises, seven hospitals, and five schools, reflected his ingenuity as a financier and as a man of practical charity. A biography by a Jesuit, J. Masson, was published in Paris in 1950 as Un millionnaire chinois au service des gueux : Joseph Lo Pa Hong.