Бо Ибо: Қытай саяхатшысының өмірбаяны

Chinese politician (1908–2007)

Bo Yibo (; 17 February 1908 – 15 January 2007) was a Chinese politician. He was one of the most senior political figures in China during the 1980s and 1990s. After joining the Chinese Communist Party when he was 17, he worked as a Communist Party organizer in his native city of Taiyuan, Shanxi. He was promoted to organize Communist guerrilla movements in northern China from a headquarters in Tianjin in 1928, but he was arrested and imprisoned by Kuomintang police in 1931. In 1936, with the tacit support of the Communist Party, Bo signed an anti communist confession to secure his release. After his release Bo returned to Shanxi, rejoined the communists, and fought both the Kuomintang and the Japanese Empire in northern China until the Communists completed their unification of mainland China in 1949. During Bo's career he held successive posts as Communist China's inaugural Minister of Finance, a member of the Communist Party's Politburo, Vice Premier, chairman of State Economic Commission, and vice chairman of the party's Central Advisory Commission. Bo was purged in 1966 by the Mao backed Gang of Four, but he was brought back to power by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, after Mao's death. Bo was one of a select group of powerful veterans centred on Deng who were informally known as the "Eight Immortals" for their political longevity and for the vast influence they commanded during the 1980s and 1990s. After returning to power Bo supported economic liberalization, but was a moderate conservative politically. He initially supported both Hu Yaobang and the 1989 Tiananmen protesters, but he was eventually persuaded by hardliners to support both Hu's dismissal in 1987 and the use of violence against protesters in 1989. Bo's political involvement declined in the 1990s, but he used his influence to support both Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, and to promote the career of his son, Bo Xilai. He was the last remaining, and longest lived, of the Eight Elders at the time of his death on 15 January 2007, just a little over a month short of his 99th birthday.

Bo Yibo was born in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, which had become one of the poorest provinces in China by the early 20th century. His father was a craftsman who produced paper, but the family was so poor that they were forced to drown one of Bo's newborn brothers because they were not wealthy enough to feed him. As a student, Bo was politically active, and once organized a protest against local land taxes. While studying in Beijing he joined the Chinese Communist Party, four years after it was founded, in 1925. Between 1925 and 1928 Bo held a number of minor, local positions as a Communist Party organizer in his home city of Taiyuan. After Chiang Kai shek's Kuomintang (KMT) began to violently suppress communists across China in 1927, Bo went into hiding and continued to organize Communist activities in rural areas. In 1928 Bo was sent by the Party to work underground as a Party organizer in Tianjin. He was arrested by the KMT three times; and, after the last time, in 1931, he spent several years in jail. While imprisoned in a correctional facility for military personnel in Beijing, Bo held a formal Party title and was responsible for spreading communism and organizing communist activities in the prison. In late 1936 the Kuomintang warlord governing Bo's home province of Shanxi, Yan Xishan, began to fear that the Japanese Empire was planning to invade China and formed a "united front" with the Communists to resist the Japanese in Shanxi. Yan then began attracting Shanxi natives across China to return and work for his government in various patriotic organizations. Yan arranged for Guo Yingyi, one of Bo's former classmates and a former Communist then working for Yan, to travel to Beijing and secure Bo's cooperation. Guo succeeded in persuading Bo to sign an anti Communist confession to secure his release (with the tacit support of the Communist Party) While working under Yan, Bo organized a "dare to die" corps of young volunteers Bo collected the survivors of his unit and conducted anti Japanese guerrilla operations in southern Shanxi. When cooperation between Yan and the Communists ended in 1939, Bo led the survivors of his unit that were loyal to him and joined the Communist Eighth Route Army. Bo served in a number of other similar positions, including vice premier (from 1957) under Zhou Enlai. During the early 1950s he was Mao's swimming partner. Bo Yibo was a member of the CCP Politburo from the 8th National Party Congress in 1956 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and again during the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, from 1979 until the 12th National Party Congress in 1982, when most of the elders retired from formal government positions.

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Bo was quickly identified as a "capitalist roader" and purged as one of the "61 Renegades"—Party members who had spent time in Kuomintang prisons. Jiang Qing produced the anti communist statement that Bo had signed in 1937 with the Kuomintang in order to secure his release from prison, accusing him of "betraying the party" and making him an easy target for persecution. On 9 February 1967, Kang Sheng and his associates organized a rally in the Beijing Workers Stadium to criticize and "struggle against" Bo. Bo was paraded through the stadium with an iron plaque around his neck describing his "crimes", but he was more defiant than most victims persecuted by Red Guards, and demanded (unsuccessfully) to speak in his own defence. While being paraded he shouted: "I am not a traitor! I am a member of the Communist Party!" Bo's insistence that he was a loyal Communist Party member and that Mao had approved all of his actions created a chaotic atmosphere, and the rally was cancelled after three minutes. After the rally Bo was transferred to a Beijing prison, where he was charged and convicted of many crimes, including being "a backbone general of the Liu Deng Black Headquarters", "a core element of the Liu Shaoqi renegade clique", "a big traitor", "a counter revolutionary revisionist element", and "a Three Anti element". His captors claimed that many of these crimes should be punished by death. Because of Bo's stubborn refusal to break down and "confess" to these charges, he was subjected to various means of torture throughout 1966 and 1967, during which he was routinely beaten and systematically deprived of food, water and sleep. While imprisoned, Bo attempted to keep notes on the circumstances of his beatings by writing on scraps of newspaper, but his jailers confiscated these and used them as evidence of Bo's recalcitrance. Eventually, his hands trembled so much that he could not hold chopsticks, and he had to scrape his rice off the floor of his cell. When he complained to his jailers that this was "not the communist way", his jailers only beat him more severely. Bo Xiyong, Bo Xilai, and Bo Xicheng were imprisoned at the ages of sixteen, seventeen and seventeen (respectively), and Bo Xining was sent to the countryside at the age of fourteen. Bo remained in prison for over a decade.

Three years after Mao died, in 1979, Deng Xiaoping led an effort to rehabilitate members of the Communist Party who had been persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and Bo was released from prison and reinstated as a member of the Politburo, He was cremated and his remains were interred at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery next to his wife Hu Ming. His daughter, who died twelve years later, was buried next to them.