Xie Fuzhi

Military Career and Minister of Public Security

Xie Fuzhi was born on 26 September 1909 in Huang'an (present-day Hong'an), Hubei, joined the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1929, and took part in the Long March. After 1949 he served as Party secretary of Yunnan province and political commissar of its military region, overseeing the suppression of armed resistance and the "Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries" campaign in the southwest. He was awarded the rank of general in 1955, became Minister of Public Security in 1959, and concurrently a State Council vice-premier in 1965, making him one of the central figures controlling the national police apparatus on the eve of the Cultural Revolution.

Role in the Cultural Revolution and the Liu Shaoqi Case

After the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Xie was co-opted in August of that year as a secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat and an alternate Politburo member, rapidly entering the central decision-making circle. In 1967 he successively became director of the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee, political commissar of the Beijing Military Region, and first political commissar of the Beijing Garrison, concentrating local party, government, and military power in his hands. That same year he also headed the special case group investigating Liu Shaoqi, serving as its operational chief; under the direction of Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, the group used torture and coerced confessions to fabricate the evidence branding Liu a "renegade, traitor, and scab." At the Ninth Party Congress in 1969, he was elected a full Politburo member, reaching the Party's top leadership.

Death and Posthumous Expulsion from the Party

Xie Fuzhi died of stomach cancer in Beijing on 26 March 1972. He received an elaborate state funeral, his ashes were placed at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, and his eulogy praised him as a "loyal, battle-tested Communist fighter." His role in fabricating false charges and persecuting party, government, and military leaders during the Cultural Revolution came to light only after his death. In 1980, based on a report from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the CCP Central Committee expelled him from the Party posthumously, voided the praise in his eulogy, and had his ashes removed from Babaoshan — making him one of the very few senior officials whose ashes were stripped of their resting place after the Cultural Revolution.