Nelson Fu Explained

Fu Lianzhang
Nelson Fu
Birth Date:September 14, 1894
Birth Place:Changting, Fujian, China
Death Place:Beijing, PRC
Religion:Christianity
Serviceyears:1933–1968
Rank: Lieutenant General
Branch: People's Liberation Army
Battles:Northern Expedition, Long March, Chinese Civil War
Awards: Order of Bayi
(2nd Class Medal)
Order of Liberation (China)
(1st Class Medal)

Nelson Fu or Fu Lianzhang (; 1894–1968) was a Chinese medical doctor. He was one of the few Western-trained medical doctors to have made the Long March and later, in Beijing, a Vice-Minister of Public Health, to be responsible for the health of the Communist Party elite.[1] In 1955, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the People's Liberation Army.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Fu lived and worked in the then-prefectural seat of Changting (now Tingzhou town) in western Fujian Province. He was a senior medical doctor at its British Christian missionary Hospital of the Gospel. During the Cultural Revolution, Fu was severely persecuted by Vice Chairman Lin Biao as well as by his subordinates, particularly Qiu Huizuo and, despite Mao Zedong's attempts to protect him, he was subsequently beaten and imprisoned with the accusation that Fu was "withholding medicine when Deputy Commander Lin was ill [in order] to harm him". He died in prison on March 29, 1968, at the age of 74.[2] After Lin's death, Mao posthumously rehabilitated him in 1973.

Notes and References

  1. [Li Zhisui]
  2. Book: Yan Jiaqi. Yan Jiaqi. Gao Gao . Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution . January 1996 . University of Hawaii Press . 978-0-8248-1695-7 . 229–231.