Hsieh Ch'ih (18 January 1876-16 April 1939), anti-Manchu revolutionary and official in Sun Yat-sen's Canton government, was a member of the first Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang. He became associated with the Western Hills faction of the Kuomintang and participated in the so-called enlarged conference movement of 1930. Born into a merchant family in Fushun, Szechwan, Hsieh Ch'ih was adopted three days after birth by a childless paternal uncle. His parents and his adopted parents lived together in the same house until Hsieh was 12 years old. He was a sickly and accidentprone child, and his education frequently was interrupted by illness. In the spring of 1898 he entered the Chiang-yang Academy, where he encountered the literature of the reform movement. In the winter of that year his father died, and the funeral expenses caused his adopted father to go into debt. Hsieh had to forego his schooling to help in his adopted father's shop. Nevertheless, he took the hsien examination in the summer of 1899 and earned the sheng-yuan degree.

In the summer of 1900, Hsieh passed the entrance examinations of the Ching-wei Academy at Ipin, Szechwan. He studied under Chou Shan-p'ei, and, after graduation in 1902, he followed Chou to Chengtu. In the spring of 1903 Chou, who was then an official in the Szechwan provincial government, appointed Hsieh a physical education instructor in a police academy. Hsieh soon became a superintendant of school construction for the Szechwan office of education. In the summer of 1903 Chou Shan-p'ei was transferred to Kwangtung; Hsieh accompanied him, but returned to Szechwan after only a short stay. In 1904 he became a teacher at the Shu-jen School. Hsieh returned to his native place in the spring of 1905 to organize the Fushun Second Primary School. Because of disagreements with influential people in the town, Hsieh was forced to leave Fushun after only a few months. In 1906 he taught at the primary school and the school of sericulture in Junghsien. Hsieh Ch'ih [96] In February 1907 the Fushun Second Primary School again invited him to serve on its faculty. About that time, Hsieh joined the T'ung-menghui. He headed the Fushun branch of that organization.

In June 1907 Chou Shan-p'ei was appointed superintendant of trade by the Szechwan government. Hsieh Ch'ih accepted Chou's invitation to become his assistant as a secretary in the bureau of trade, and he arrived at Chengtu in September. He plotted a revolutionary takeover of the city on 2 October, but the plan failed. On 28 October, Hsieh asked for leave to return to Fushun to celebrate his mother's birthday. That night the government arrested several of his comrades. Hsieh was warned of this action by friends. He returned to Chengtu on 20 November in an effort to rescue the imprisoned men. However, he had to flee for his life the next day. He hid at the home of a friend in Luhsien for several months. During this time he used the name Chu Huisheng. He left SzechWan in February 1908 for Shanghai.

In the spring of 1909 Hsieh went to Chungking, where he joined a T'ung-meng-hui group composed of graduates of the higher school at Chengtu and the provincial normal school. Because it was dangerous for him to stay in Chungking, his comrades insisted that he leave for the coast. Accordingly, he returned to Shanghai, ^•ere he served as provost at the new Chung-kuo Kung-hsueh. In the summer of 1909 he was sent by the T'ung-meng-hui group to Honan and Shensi. He stayed at Fenghsiang, Shensi, where he and other revolutionaries worked as shepherds and engaged in anti-Manchu activities.

In December 1910 Hsieh's adopted mother died in Fushun. After attending her funeral, Hsieh decided to remain in Szechwan to care for his adopted father. He accepted a teaching post at the Pahsien Girls School near Chungking. In May 1911 public demonstrations against the Ch'ing government's plan for nationalization of the railroads broke out in Szechwan. Hsieh Ch'ih and his comrades plotted to take over Chungking. Upon hearing that Tuanfang (ECCP, II, 780-82), the newly appointed governor general of Szechwan, was leading Hupeh troops into Szechwan, the revolutionaries decided to ambush boats carrying weapons at Ch'angshou, a river port. The scheme failed. and Hsieh returned to Chungking. That city declared its independence on 22 November; government troops joined the revolutionaries and took over the city without bloodshed. Hsieh Ch'ih was elected director of the general affairs bureau of the new military government at Chungking. After the fall of Chengtu to the revolutionaries on 27 November, the military governments of the two cities were amalgamated in February 1912 to form the military government of Szechwan. Hsieh was appointed vice director of the general affairs bureau of the new government. Later that year, he also was appointed to the post of counselor.

In the parliamentary election of February 1913 Hsieh Ch'ih was elected to the Senate. In March, when he heard that Sung Chiao-jen (q.v.) had been murdered, Hsieh Ch'ih joined a group plotting to assassinate Yuan Shih-k'ai. The group also included Chao T'ieh-ch'iao, Cheng Yti-hsiu, Chou Yu-chueh, and Huang Fu-sheng. The plot was discovered by Yuan's agents, and Hsieh was arrested on 17 May 1913. Because of the lack of evidence and the support of fellow-senators, he escaped indictment. Because he feared for his life, he moved to the Legation Quarter in Peking and then fled by way of Tientsin to Japan.

In Japan, Hsieh Ch'ih assisted Sun Yat-sen in organizing the Chung-hua ko-ming-tang and assumed the post of vice director of its general affairs department. Since the director of that department, Ch'en Ch'i-mei (q.v.), often was absent from Japan, Hsieh was responsible for carrying out the duties of his department. He did not return to China until the Parliament reconvened after the death of Yuan Shih-k'ai in June 1916.

Hsieh left Peking in June 1917 after the dissolution of the Parliament by Li Yuan-hung (q.v."). Thereafter he ser'ed Sun Yat-sen in the Canton government as vice minister of justice (1918-19), vice minister of interior (1919-21), and secretary general of the presidential office (1921-22). Hsieh was elected director of the department of party affairs in October 1919 when the Chung-hua ko-ming-tang was renamed the Kuomintang. Because the party was ineffective as a political organ, Sun Yat-sen began to prepare for a radical transformation of the Kuomintang. In 1922 Sun called a series of meetings of Kuomintang members to announce his intention to reorganize the party and to discuss with his followers the revision of the party constitution. On 1 January 1923 the process of reorganization formally began. On 21 January, Hsieh. Ch'ih was named one of the 20 counselors to participate in the formation of new party policies. A year later, in January 1924, he was elected one of the five members of the Central Supervisory Committee by the First National Congress of the reorganized Kuomintang. Despite his personal loyalty to Sun Yat-sen's cause, Hsieh Ch'ih opposed the Kuomintang's new policy of alliance with the Russians and the Chinese Communists. His antagonism was expressed as early as June 1924, when he joined two other members of the Central Supervisory Committee, Chang Chi and Teng Tse-ju (qq.v.), in submitting a memorandum to Sun which stated that the political activities of Li Ta-chao (q.v.) and the Communists were certain to undermine the political integrity of the Kuomintang. In November 1924 Hsieh, who was then in Shanghai, joined Sun Yatsen's entourage and went to Peking for the much publicized conference with Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) and the men holding power in north China. .After Sun's death in Peking in March 1925, the issue of Communist subversion within the party organization caused a serious split within the Kuomintang. Hsieh remained in Shanghai after Sun's funeral. In August 1925 he went to Canton to confer with the anti- Communist faction of the Kuomintang, headed by Hu Han-min, Teng Tse-ju, C. C. Wu (Wu Ch'ao-shu), and Tsou Lu (qq.v.). They discussed ways of countering the growth of Communist influence within the Kuomintang and the domination of the revolutionary government at Canton by Wang Ching-wei and left-wing groups. On 21 August 1925 Liao Chung-k'ai (q.v.), a prominent left- Kuomintang leader, was assassinated at Canton. The murder gave Wang Ching-wei and the Communists an excellent opportunity to attack the rightist faction. Hsieh Ch'ih, Teng Tse-ju, and Tsou Lu were forced to leave Canton. In November 1925 Hsieh participated in the so-called Western Hills Conference held near Peking. Anti-Communist members of the Central Executive Committee and the Central Supervisory Committee declared their firm opposition to Communism and to the Wang Ching-wei government at Canton. The leftist faction, in turn, convened the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang at Canton in January 1926 and formally expelled Hsieh Ch'ih and Tsou Lu from the Kuomintang. The Western Hills faction held a national congress at Shanghai on 1 April 1926 and elected Hsieh Ch'ih and others to a 25-man central executive committee.

After the 1927 purge of the Communists, the major Kuomintang factions held a series of meetings in Shanghai from 11 to 13 November. A special committee composed of thirty-two regular and nine alternate members drawn from the three factions was organized to provide unified direction of party affairs. Hsieh Ch'ih was named to the special committee by the Western Hills group. The National Government was reorganized under the aegis of the special committee. Since Nanking was then under the military control of Li Tsung-jen (q.v.) and other Kwangsi generals who were friendly to the Western Hills faction, Hsieh was given the important post of director of the organization department of the Kuomintang.

This effort at unification, however, was more apparent than real. The Wuhan faction under Wang Ching-wei was dissatisfied, and one of its military supporters, T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.), soon rebelled against Nanking. T'ang's revolt was quelled by Li Tsung-jen. After a celebration of Li's victory resulted in two deaths and several injuries, members of the Western Hills group were criticized by organizations in Nanking. Hsieh withdrew from the government and retired to Shanghai. In 1930 the northern generals Feng Yü-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan (qq.v.) decided to challenge the supremacy of the National Government, then dominated by Chiang Kai-shek. Feng and Yen were supported by Wang Ching-wei, the erstwhile foe of the Western Hills clique. Suppressing former animosities, the W'estern Hills leaders, including T'an Chen (q.v.), Hsieh Ch'ih, and Tsou Lu, organized a group in Peiping which cooperated in forming an alliance against Chiang Kai-shek. The political organ of the alliance was the so-called enlarged conference, formally established on 9 July 1930 in Peiping to serve as the decisionmaking organ of the Kuomintang, in opposition to the party apparatus functioning at Nanking. Hsieh Ch'ih was elected to the standing committee of the enlarged conference. The Yen-Feng coalition soon suffered defeats and began to collapse. In September, the enlarged conference moved to Taiyuan; it was dissolved the following month. Hsieh Ch'ih left Taiyuan in November and sought safety in the Japanese concession in Tientsin. In May 1931 Hsieh Ch'ih suffered a stroke which kept him bed-ridden for three months and which left his right side paralyzed. By that time, the persistent antagonism between Nanking and Canton had led to the organization of a new dissident government at Canton. Hsieh was listed by the Canton leaders as a member of their government council even though he was in Tientsin. The split between Nanking and Canton was healed temporarily by the crisis created by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. When the Japanese occupied Mukden in September 1931, Hsieh immediately left Tientsin for Peiping. After the peace meeting between the Nanking and Canton leaders had been successfully concluded in November, he went to Shanghai. Soon after his arrival in Shanghai, Hsieh suffered another paralytic stroke. He was bed-ridden for several years.

In August 1937, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Hsieh left Shanghai to return to his native Szechwan. He remained at Chengtu until his death on 16 April 1939. The National Government honored him with a state funeral on 29 July 1939/