Bo Yibo
Yan, under the slogan "resistance against the enemy and defense of the soil", attempted to recruit young, patriotic intellectuals to his government in order to organize a local resistance to the threat of Japanese invasion. By 1936 Taiyuan had become a gathering point for anti-Japanese intellectuals who had fled from Beijing, Tianjin and northeast China who readily cooperated with Yan, but he also recruited natives of Shanxi who were living across China regardless of their former political associations. Some Shanxi officials attracted to Yan's cause in the late 1930s later became important figures in the Chinese government, including Bo Yibo.