Lo I-nung (1901-21 April 1928), leading figure in the Chinese Communist party at Shanghai in the mid-1920's. He was executed by the Nationalists in 1928.

Hsiangtan, Hunan, was the birthplace of Lo I-nung. His father was a prosperous merchant and landowner, and Lo received a good education in the Chinese classics from tutors. At the age of 17, when his parents refused his request to study in Shanghai, he ran away from home and went to Shanghai. About the time of the May Fourth Movement, he became acquainted with a group of radical students and was exposed to Marxist ideas. He was among the first to join the Socialist Youth League ^vhen it was organized in August 1920 by Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Chang T'ai-lei. That winter, the Comintern selected a small group of students, including Jen Pi-shih, Liu Shao-ch'i (qq.v.), and Lo I-nung, for study at the Communist University for Toilers of the East in Moscow. They arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1921, by which time Lo had joined the Chinese Communist party. Lo became a leader of the Chinese students in Moscow. In 1923, when the number of Chinese students in Moscow increased, a special section was organized at the university to train Chinese cadres for work in their own country. Lo became the secretary of the Chinese section and an instructor in historical materialism. His many activities proved to be too much for his frail constitution, however, and he contracted tuberculosis. In the spring of 1925 the Chinese Communist party recalled Lo I-nung to China. He was sent to Canton, a center of revolutionary political activity, to serve as party secretary at the second All-China Labor Congress, which was held in May. He also became an alternate member of the Kwangtung committee of the Chinese Communist party, in which capacity he participated in campaigns against the Kwangtung militarists, the Canton-Hong Kong general strike, and the investigation into the assassination of Liao Chung-k'ai (q.v.). In October 1925 he represented Kwangtung at an enlarged plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party which met in Peking. Lo, because of his teaching experiences in Moscow, was given charge of a training program designed to produce more Communist cadres, and he remained in Peking for about two months to supervise the creation of a shortterm but intensive training school. Lo I-nung was appointed secretary of the Chinese Communist party's Kiangsu-Chekiang regional committee, with headquarters in Shanghai, in January 1926. x'Vssisted by Chao Shih-yen, head of the regional committee's workers department, and by Chou En-lai (q.v.), head of the committee's departments of organization and military affairs, he worked to expand party organizations in the Shanghai factories and made plans for arming the workers. By 30 May 1926, the first anniversary of the May Thirtieth Incident, they had sufficient strength to stage a mass demonstration of laborers. They continued to organize strikes in Shanghai and to consolidate control of the Shanghai General Labor Union. In anticipation of the arrival of the Northern Expedition forces, they led two workers' uprisings. The first of these took place on 26 November 1926, during the war between Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.) and Hsia Ch'ao;- and the second occurred on 22 February 1927. Finally, on 21 March 1927, as units of the National Revolutionary Army closed in on the city, Lo I-nung called a general strike to facilitate the seizure of Shanghai by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek.

By the time Chiang Kai-shek moved against the Communists in the Shanghai area on 12 April 1927, Lo I-nung had been replaced at Shanghai by Ch'en Yen-nien (q.v.) and had gone to Wuhan to attend the Fifth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, at which he was elected to the Central Committee. Lo then went to Nanchang to serve as secretary of the party's Kiangsi provincial committee. In July 1927, after the left-wing faction of the Kuomintang at Wuhan also turned against the Communists, Lo was made secretary of the Hupeh provincial committee. In this capacity, he worked to reconstruct the Communist organizations in the province. On 7 August, the emergency conference convened by Ch'ü Ch'iupai (q.v.) at Kiukiang appointed Lo secretary of the Ch'ang-chiang (Yangtze) bureau of the party. He trained cadres for peasant mobilization in the rural areas of Hunan and Hupeh and, according to some sources, initiated the guerrilla activities in those tw-o provinces that prepared the way for the establishment of Communist bases.

In November 1927 an enlarged plenum of the Central Committee elected Lo to the Political Bureau and the standing committee of the Central Committee and appointed him head of the party's organization department. He thus became one of the chief planners of the ill-fated Canton Commune {see Chang T'ai-lei) of December 1927.

After making an inspection trip through Hunan and Hupeh, Lo I-nung returned to Shanghai in April 1928. He was arrested on the morning of 1 5 April, extradited to the Nationalist authorities on 18 April, and executed on 21 April. The importance attached to his capture by the Kuomintang authorities was suggested by the Shanghai newspaper accounts of it, one of which stated that "the chief is caught; the Communist scourge will soon be extinguished." » Little is known about Lo I-nung's personal life. Indeed, the name Lo I-nung may well be a pseudonym adopted after he severed relations with his family.