Lin Boqu (March 20, 1886 – May 29, 1960), whose given name was Zuhan, courtesy name Suiyuan, and pseudonym Boqu, was born in Anfu County (now Linli County), Hunan Province, China. He was one of the important leaders of the Communist Party of China and was known as one of the Five Elders of the Communist Party of China, along with Dong Biwu, Xu Teli, Xie Juezai and Wu Yuzhang.

Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (ranked third, ranked by the number of votes)
Term of office:
The Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
September 28, 1956 – May 29, 1960
Chairman: Mao Zedong
Personal information
Born: March 20, 1886
Liangshuijing Village, Xiumei Town, Anfu, Hunan, Qing Dynasty

Death:
May 29, 1960 (74 years old)
Beijing, China

Nationality: People’s Republic of China (1949-)
Political Party: Communist Party of China Communist Party of China
Other political parties: Chinese Revolutionary League Chinese Revolutionary League

Early Life:
Influenced by the Reform Movement of 1898 since childhood, he was open-minded. In 1902, he was admitted to the Hunan Public West Road Normal School. In 1903, he was admitted as a public student and went to study in Japan. In 1904, he entered the Tokyo Hongwen College. In August 1905, he was introduced by Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren to join the Chinese Revolutionary League and follow Sun Yat-sen. He dropped out of school and returned to China at the end of the year. In 1906, he was ordered to go to Changsha to run Zhenchu ​​School. In 1907, he went to the Northeast as an attendant of Zhu Jiabao, the new governor of Jilin Province, to plan to contact local bandits to fight against the Qing Dynasty. After the failure, he stayed in the Northeast to manage the school affairs until he returned to Shanghai in the autumn of 1911, and then went to western Hunan to win the support of local garrison officers and soldiers.

The Second Revolution to the Protection of the Constitution War
After Yuan Shikai assassinated Song Jiaoren in 1913, Lin participated in the Second Revolution in Hunan and served as a staff officer of the Yuezhou Fortress Command. After the failure, he fled to Japan and joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party, which was appreciated by Sun Yat-sen. In 1915, Li Dazhao and others organized the anti-Yuan group Zhonghua Society in Japan, and Lin Boqu, Yi Xiang, Rong Boting and others also organized the anti-Yuan group Yimao Society. In order to promote the merger of the two groups, Lin Boqu visited Li Dazhao, Yi Xiang and others many times. On January 30, 1916, they finally merged into the Shenzhou Society, and nominated Li Dazhao as the chairman of the council and Lin Boqu as the secretary. After that, the two returned to China together.

In 1916, the National Protection War broke out. Lin’s cousin Lin Xiumei served as the chief of staff of the Hunan National Protection Army, and Lin served as the counselor of the Hunan General Headquarters. After Yuan Shikai abdicated, Lin remained as the Minister of Hunan Government Affairs. On September 13, 1917, Lin Boqu participated in the action of mobilizing the garrisons in Hengyang and Lingling in southern Hunan to participate in the Protection War. On October 17, Lin was appointed as the military envoy to the front line to boost morale. On November 20, the Protection Army captured Changsha, and Lin served as the Minister of Finance of Hunan. In March 1918, Changsha was captured by the Beiyang government again, and Lin Boqu and others were forced to withdraw to Guangzhou. Lin Boqu recalled: “Around March and April 1918, I received several letters from Comrade Li Dazhao, who introduced me in detail the situation of the October Revolution and some pamphlets and documents, and expounded his views on the current situation in China, which was greatly inspired.” It was with these fragmentary Marxist knowledge that Lin Boqu gradually grasped the truth of Marxism. At the end of 1919, the North and the South negotiated peace, Tan Yankai became the governor of Hunan, and Hunan Army generals such as Lin Xiumei were forced to leave Hunan, and the Protection of Law War ended in Hunan. At this time, Lin participated in assisting Sun Yat-sen to reorganize the Chinese Revolutionary Party into the Kuomintang.

KMT-CPC Cooperation and the Northern Expedition
Four “Five Old Men of Yan’an”: Lin Boqu, Dong Biwu, Wu Yuzhang, Xu Teli (between Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi)

In January 1921, Lin Boqu joined the Shanghai Communist Group through the introduction of Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, becoming one of the earliest more than 50 members of the Communist Party of China. Later, Lin was ordered to go south to Guangzhou and served as a councilor of Sun Yat-sen’s military government. Lin Xiumei, his cousin, served as the acting military chief of the military government. The two lived together in Niuxiang near the Liurong Ancient Temple in Guangzhou. With the help of Lin Xiumei, Lin Boqu studied Marxism and read a large number of articles about the Soviet revolution and socialist thought. At that time, there were a large number of articles on Marxism and the Soviet Union in Guangzhou, as well as many introductions to anarchism and guild socialism. After comparing and analyzing the various socialist thoughts popular at the time, Lin Boqu and Lin Xiumei agreed that “anarchism advocates no government, everyone does their best and takes what they need, which is an empty talk that does not fit the reality of China; although the working people of China are groaning under the oppression and exploitation of imperialist aggression and warlord bureaucrats, they are still lacking in organization, but they have an incomparable revolutionary force. The guild socialists ignore this revolutionary force and advocate the development of industry first and slow talk of social revolution, which is nothing more than serving the capitalists.” In the end, they concluded that “the belief that Marxist communism is most suitable for China’s current social situation.” In order to help Lin Boqu learn Marxism better, Lin Xiumei even planned to fund Lin Boqu to go to the Soviet Union to “inspect the actual Soviet facilities on the spot for future reference.” On October 15, 1921, Lin Xiumei died of illness in Guangzhou.

On June 16, 1922, Chen Jiongming bombarded the Presidential Palace, and Lin went into exile in Shanghai again. In the second half of the year, he and Li Dazhao attended the talks between Sun Yat-sen and Soviet representative Joffe. On January 2, 1923, the Kuomintang Reform Conference was held, and the party program and general charter were passed. According to the general charter, the Kuomintang set up a headquarters to manage the affairs of the entire party. The headquarters was divided into five departments. Lin was appointed as the deputy minister of the General Affairs Department of the Kuomintang. He actively promoted the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and vigorously absorbed communists Zhang Tailei, Xia Xi, Liu Shaoqi, Peng Pai and others to join the Kuomintang. In January 1924, Lin was elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang and Minister of Agriculture at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang. More than a month later, he went to Hankou, which was controlled by the Zhili warlord Wu Peifu, to be responsible for the work of the newly established Kuomintang Hankou Executive Department in the Japanese Concession. Standing members were Tan Zhen, Zhang Zhiben, and Lin Boqu; Secretary of the Secretariat Yu Ruoyu; Organization Minister Lin Boqu (concurrently), Secretary Li Shifan and others. In June 1924, he returned to Guangzhou after his failure. At the end of the year, Lin followed Sun Yat-sen to the north. In 1925, Sun Yat-sen died of illness in Beijing, and Lin accompanied him to the Biyun Temple in Xishan, Beijing. In May 1925, Lin returned to Guangzhou to attend the Third Plenary Session of the First Central Committee of the Kuomintang. On July 1, Lin was appointed as a member of the Supervisory Committee of the National Government. In August, after Liao Zhongkai was assassinated, Lin served as the acting member of the Central Executive Committee and concurrently managed the Secretariat, entering the core leadership of the Kuomintang. From October to November, when the National Revolutionary Army launched the Second Eastern Expedition, the right-wing Kuomintang launched a political trend against the Chinese Communist Party and the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Lin Boqu, then the Central Executive Committee member and acting Central Standing Committee member of the Kuomintang, and other Kuomintang Central Committee members and alternate Central Committee members in Guangdong jointly sent a telegram to reprimand and called on all party members at home and abroad to resolutely fight against the right-wing Kuomintang. At the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang, with the efforts of Lin Boqu and others, the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang made a resolution to impeach the Xishan Conference Group, expel Xie Zhi and Zou Lu from the party forever, issue written warnings to Ju Zheng, Shi Qingyang, Ye Chucang and others, and instruct Dai Jitao. Lin was re-elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Executive Committee (a total of 9 people), and was also appointed as the secretary of the Central Secretariat, and served as the chairman of the Financial Audit Committee and concurrently as the Central Minister of Peasants. He proposed to the Kuomintang Central Committee to set up a Peasant Movement Committee, and personally drafted the organizational outline and the list of members to be hired. In addition to himself serving as the chairman of the Peasant Movement Committee as the Minister of Peasants, there were 8 other members of the Peasant Movement Committee, including Mao Zedong, Chen Gongbo, Gan Naiguang, Song Ziwen, Tan Zhitang, Xiao Chu’nu, Ruan Xiaoxian, and Luo Qiyuan. At the first meeting of the Peasant Movement Committee, Lin Boqu decided to expand the number of students in the Central Peasant Movement Training Institute, changing the previous method of recruiting students from Guangdong to mainly recruiting students from provinces other than Guangdong, and hiring Mao Zedong as the director of the Guangzhou Peasant Movement Training Institute. In order to publicize the importance of the peasant issue and summarize and disseminate the experience of the peasant movement, Lin Boqu also promoted the editing and publication of many publications and books, such as the monthly magazine “Chinese Peasants”, “Peasant Series”, “Peasant Movement Series”, as well as “Notes on the Peasant Movement”, “Mr. Sun Yat-sen’s Instructions to Peasants”, “The Chinese Kuomintang and the Peasant Issue”, “Peasant International”, etc. These publications and books have both the theory and policy of the peasant movement and specific practices and experiences, closely linked to reality, and easy to understand.

On March 20, 1926, after the Second Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of the Kuomintang passed the “Party Affairs Arrangement Plan”, Lin resigned from the positions of Minister of the Central Peasant Department, Central Finance Committee, and Supervisory Committee of the National Government, and served as the Party Representative and Director of the Political Department of the Sixth Army of Cheng Qian’s National Revolutionary Army. On July 20, he participated in the Northern Expedition. On September 20, Chiang Kai-shek invited Lin to work at the Northern Expedition Army Headquarters, and Lin followed the army to Nanchang and Jiujiang. In February 1927, Lin returned to Hankou, and later served as a member of the Kuomintang Political Committee and Secretary-General of the Military Commission of the Wuhan National Government. On March 26, Lin went to Nanjing, intending to arrest Chiang Kai-shek according to the secret order of the Central Military Commission of the Wuhan National Government, but was rejected by Cheng Qian, the commander of the Nanjing garrison.

The period of the Kuomintang-Communist Civil War and the War of Resistance
Soon, Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei successively announced the separation of the Communist Party in Nanjing and Wuhan, and Lin Boqu withdrew from the Kuomintang and went to Lushan. On August 1, Lin participated in the Nanchang Uprising. On October 3, Lin Boqu and other non-combatants left the army and went to Hong Kong, and then went to Moscow via Shanghai, Kobe, and Vladivostok to study at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. During this period, he participated in the design of the Latinized new characters with Qu Qiubai, Wu Yuzhang and Soviet scholars. In 1933, Lin returned to China and went to the Central Soviet Area, serving as the Minister of the Ministry of National Economy of the Chinese Soviet Republic and the Minister of the People’s Commissariat of Finance. On October 10, 1934, Lin participated in the Long March and served as the director of the General Confiscation Committee, responsible for raising military pay for the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, and later served as the Minister of the General Supply Department of the Red Army.

In 1935, the Long March of the First Red Army ended successfully, and Lin Boqu became the Minister of Finance of the local government. On February 24, 1937, Lin Boqu was ordered to be responsible for the work of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government. On July 27, Lin went to Xi’an as a member of the CPC delegation to negotiate with the National Government. After the second cooperation between the KMT and the CPC, on September 6, Lin officially became the chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. On April 12, 1938, Lin was appointed as a member of the National Political Consultative Conference by Chiang Kai-shek. In October of the same year, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In October 1940, Lin returned to Yan’an and focused on the work of the border region government. In February 1942, Lin served as the director of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Learning Guidance Committee, responsible for carrying out the rectification movement in the government system. He opposed the rescue movement initiated by Kang Sheng and won Mao Zedong’s instruction of “not killing one person and not arresting most of them”, which prevented the rescue movement from developing on a large scale.

Song Qingling and Lin Boqu in Northeast China
On February 17, 1944, Lin was ordered to go to Chongqing to resume negotiations with the National Government. In November, the negotiations ended in vain, and Lin returned to Yan’an. In 1945, at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Lin was elected as a member of the Central Committee, and later entered the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. On December 26, 1948, Lin Boqu was transferred to Xibaipo to work in the CPC Central Committee and resigned from the post of Chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government. On March 26, 1949, as a member of the CPC negotiation team, Lin negotiated with the National Government delegation led by Zhang Zhizhong in Beijing to end the civil war, but failed. In August, Lin replaced Li Weihan in charge of the preparatory work of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. On September 30, Lin was elected as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Central People’s Government Committee. The next day, he was elected as the Secretary-General of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China.

Period of the People’s Republic of China
In 1954, he was elected as Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the First National People’s Congress. In September 1954, he attended the first meeting to discuss the draft constitution and made a speech during the meeting . In 1956, he was re-elected as a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo at the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee. On May 29, 1960, he died of illness in Beijing at the age of 74.
In April 2013, Lin Boqu’s ashes were moved from Beijing to his hometown, Xiumei Town, Linli, Changde.

Lin Boqu’s daughters and Sun Weishi in Moscow: Lin Lin (left), Lin Li (right), 1945 Family Photo