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Because of an old wound, Terrorist Lo cannot smile, but only grimace, and he speaks through clenched teeth out of the corner of his mouth. A chain smoker, heavy drinker and woman chaser, Lo has made a unique contribution to Marxist dialectics: he invented "the deviation of boundless magnanimity" (i.e., being too soft on counter-revolutionaries), a deviation which had to be "discovered and resolutely corrected." Though now a full general and recently decorated, Lo still lacks high party rating (he is one of 27 alternates of the Central Committee), and Mao still keeps much of the secret political and party control apparatus in his own hands. But as Minister of Public Security in the National People's Congress (i.e., legislature), Lo has modeled his machine on the Soviet MVD and become the nearest Chinese equivalent to a Beria.
The Resistance of Millions. Lo's career in the People's Republic began in 1949 when Mao ordered him to take China's fragmented police forces in hand and transform them into a unified Communist whole. At that moment (the time of the U.S. State Department's White Paper, writing off China), much of the country was in chaos, the Communists' hold was anything but sure, and probably 60% of the existing police were ex-Nationalist holdovers. Simultaneously, Lo had to direct a series of armed struggles with guerrillas and bandit gangs which amounted to a nationwide extension of the civil war long after the outer world had been assured that there was no further conflict.
But Lo soon saw that the real resistance to Communist regimentation lay not in the rifles of a few thousand guerrillas, but in millions of hearts. In 1950 he told a Peking Public Security Administration Conference that the suppression of "counterrevolutionaries" was the first necessity of the new state, that it would be a continuing necessity, and its scope and difficulties would increase rather than decrease as the revolution continued. On this thesis Lo built his rise to power.
At the outset Lo had used Chinese Red army troops for his pacification act. The Conference authorized him to create a new, politically conscious People's Armed Police like the Soviet MVD militia. Lo recruited and trained, technically and ideologically, thousands of trusted party workers and intellectuals, at the same time purging the existing forces of doubtful elements. He soon fashioned an organization of some eight interlocking bureaus specializing in intelligence, counterespionage, personnel, economic defense (i.e., preventing strikes, collecting taxes), frontier defense, anti-guerrilla work, supervising forced labor camps and normal police duties. Total strength: approximately 700,000.