Lo Jui-ch'ing (1907-), political commissar in the Chinese Communist military forces who later held such posts in the Central People's Government as that of minister of public security (1949-58). In the 1950's he was the regime's principal organizer of public security programs and secret police operations. In 1959 he became vice premier of the State Council, vice minister of national defense, and chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army. He was removed from these posts in the mid1960's and was accused of being a follower of P'eng Te-huai and Huang K'o-ch'eng. Xanch'ung, Szechwan, was the birthplace of Lo Jui-ch"ing. Little is known about his family background or early education except that his father may have been a landowner. After being graduated from the Wuhan branch of the Whampoa Military Academy about 1927, he participated in the 1 August 1927 Communist uprising at Xanchang {see Ho Lung; Yeh T'ing). However, he did not become a member of the Chinese Communist party until 1928. He was sent to Moscow in 1929, allegedly to study law at Sun Yat-sen University, but actually to receive intelligence and police training. According to some reports, he worked for a time in a Russian intelligence organization before returning to China in 1930. He then joined the Fourth Red Army of Chu Teh (q.v.) and Mao Tse-tung as political commissar of the 11th Division. When Chu's force was reorganized as the First Army Group of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, Lo became the director of its political defense bureau. Wounds received by Lo during the second Nationalist campaign against the Communists in 1931 resulted in partial facial paralysis, giving him a rather sinister appearance.

At the second All-China Congress of Soviets, which met in January 1934, Lo Jui-ch'ing was elected to the executive committee of the central soviet government in Kiangsi. He accompanied Mao Tse-tung on the Long March to Shensi, and on arrival at Yenan in 1936 he became a vice chairman of the Red Army Academy, headed by Lin Piao (q.v.). When the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, the academy became the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, with Lo Jui-ch'ing as its acting head. From 1940 to 1945 Lo also served as director of the political department of the Eight Route Army's field headquarters and as a member of the Chinese Communist party's north China bureau. At the party's Seventh National Congress, held at Yenan in 1945, he was elected to alternate membership in the Central Committee. After the War in the Pacific ended, Lo Jui-ch'ing became deputy political commissar of the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei military district. In 1946 he also became chief of staff to Yeh Chien-ying, who headed the Chinese Communist staff at the Peiping Executive Headquarters, where the Communists and the Nationalists were trying to come to an agreement and were working to implement the cease-fire agreement of January 1946. When the negotiations ended in failure, Lo returned to the Shansi-Chahar- Hopei military district to serve as political commissar of the Second Army Group of the North China People's Liberation Army. In 1948 he became political commissar of the Nineteenth Group Army and director of the political department of the north China military district, and in 1949 he became one of three vice chairmen of the Taiyuan municipal military control commission.

When the Central People's Government was established in Peking in October 1949, Lo Jui-ch'ing received membership in the Government Administration Council, the People's Revolutionary Military Council, the procurator general's office, and the executive board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association; he held these posts until 1954. Lo's most important office in the new regime, however, was that of minister of public security (1949-58). He apparently was the principal organizer of public security programs and secret police operations, although policy concerning these matters was the province of Li K'o-nung (q.v.). Lo was especially in evidence during the mass public purges of 1951, 1952, and 1956, when he organized suppression campaigns against "counter-revolutionaries" and made reports on their progress. In 1953 he became head of the Public Security Forces, a newly created branch of the People's Liberation Army. He also served as president of the Central People's Institute of Public Security (1955-58) and as director of the staff office of the State Council that dealt with public security. During this period, he also served the People's Republic of China as a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a member of the committee for drafting the election law, a member of the National Defense Council, a member of the administrative committee of the Central School of Administrative and Legal Cadres, and a delegate to the first three National People's congresses. In 1956 he was elevated to full membership on the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party.

In 1959 Lo Jui-ch'ing became vice premier of the State Council, vice minister of national defense, and chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army. He was appointed secretary general of the party Central Committee's military affairs committee in 1961 and secretary of the Central Secretariat in 1962. He received the vice chairmanships of the National Defense Council and the National People's Congress in 1965. That year, he published an article in Hung-ch'i [red flag] entitled "Commemorate the Victory over German Fascism ! Carry the Struggle against United States Imperialism to the End!" It was regarded by Western observers as a serious and systematic discussion of military doctrine. Toward the end of 1965, however, Lo Jui-ch'ing began to be absent from public occasions. When he had not been seen for several months, Western observers speculated that he had been removed from his posts because of his advocacy of professionalism in the armed forces, a policy at odds with the views of Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao. These opinions were confirmed in the summer of 1967, when Lo was denounced publicly as a follower of P'eng Te-huai and Huang K'o-ch'eng (qq.v.), who had been purged in 1959.

Little is known about Lo Jui-ch'ing's personal life, partly because the nature of his work demanded that he maintain a degree of anonymity. In 1937 he married Liu Chuehts'an, and he remarried after her death in the 1940's.