He was born in Gong County, Sichuan, in February 1900, to a landlord family. He was the fourth of nine children. His father He Lizhong (Chinese:何礼中) was a merchant. In 1917 he attended the Xuzhou Unity High School (now Yibin No. 1 High School). In 1923 he was accepted to the Shanghai University, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the next year.[2]
In May 1925 he participated in the May Thirtieth Movement. In June 1926, he was proposed as secretary-general of the All-China Students' Federation (ACSF), a student organization under the leadership of the CCP. In the winter of 1926, he was appointed secretary-general of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces of the Communist Youth League. In March 1927 he was transferred to Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, as director of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League. At the beginning of 1928, he was appointed secretary of Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League. In June 1928 he was imprisoned in Longhua Prison. At the beginning of 1929, he was appointed secretary of Shunzhi Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League. In September 1929, he was arrested by the Tianjin Gendarmerie Command. He was released in 1930. In 1931, he was sent to northeast China, where he was Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Manzhou Province. In the spring of 1935, he became director of the CCP Organization Department. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, he worked in the Southern Bureau of the CCP Central Committee. During the Chinese Civil War, he was involved in the Chongqing negotiations.[2]
