Xie Fei (; 3 February 1913 – 14 February 2013) was a Chinese revolutionary and politician. She participated in the

Long March The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Red Army, Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Revolut ...

and was the third wife of

Liu Shaoqi Liu Shaoqi ( ; 24 November 189812 November 1969) was a Chinese revolutionary, politician, and theorist. He was Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee from 1954 to 1959, First Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1956 to 1966 and C ...

Early life

She was born Xie Qiongxiang () in Wenchang,

Hainan Province Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

. She was a revolutionary from the age of 13, and became a member of the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...

in 1927. After exile to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and undercover work in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, she returned to China in 1932, where she worked in

Fujian Province Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...

before coming to

Ruijin Ruijin () is a county-level city of Ganzhou in the mountains bordering Fujian Province in the south-eastern part of Jiangxi Province. Formerly a county, Ruijin became a county-level city on May 18, 1994. It was an early center of Chinese commun ...

in 1934. In her time in Fujian, on several occasions she boiled and ate sensitive documents to keep them from

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

agents, which caused lifelong stomach problems.

Chinese civil war

Xie was one of thirty women participants of the

, 1934–1935. In October 1935, she got married to

, who later became Chairman of the People's Republic of China, as his third wife. Their marriage has been described as "brief, mysterious, and apparently childless," and ended in divorce in January 1939 or in 1941. In 1937, Xie studied at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China in Yan'an and then served as party functionary at various levels.

Later life

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Xie became director of a special course at Renmin University of China and, in 1956, deputy principal of the Central Political and Legal Cadre School. She was sent to work on a

pig farm Pig farming or pork farming or hog farming is the raising and breeding of domestic pigs as livestock, and is a branch of animal husbandry. Pigs are farmed principally for food (e.g. pork: bacon, ham, gammon) and skins. Pigs are amenable to ...

in 1959. During the Cultural Revolution, Xie was imprisoned as a former close associate of Liu Shaoqi; she was rehabilitated in 1978. She became the deputy principal of the

People's Public Security University of China People's Public Security University of China () is a university in Xicheng District, Beijing, China. It was founded in 1948 and is directly under the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China. The university specialises in t ...

and retired in February 2000. She died of illness in Beijing on 14 February 2013.

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* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Xie, Fei 1913 births 2013 deaths Liu Shaoqi family Chinese Communist Party politicians from Hainan Spouses of Chinese politicians