Early life Han Fuju was born in Dongshantai Village (),
Ba County, Hebei Province. He had had little aptitude for schooling. Nonetheless, while quite young, he had worked as a clerk in his hsien ("county") until his gambling debts forced him to run away and enlist in the army of General
Feng Yuxiang. Han rose quickly, from clerk to chief clerk, to
lieutenant, to
captain, and after an uprising, to
major. During the warlord upheavals in the 1920s, he emerged as commander of General Feng's 1st Army Group.
Governor and warlord In 1928, he was appointed chairman (governor) of
Henan province by Feng, and in 1929, he was confirmed in office and concurrently named commanding
general of the 11th
Division. When Feng revolted later in the year, Han declared his allegiance to the central government of
Chiang Kai-shek. In the
Central Plains War in 1930, Han fought against the rebel troops of
Yan Xishan and his former commander Feng Yuxiang in Shandong and was rewarded with appointment as governor of the province. He took over
Zhang Zongchang's role as the
warlord in Shandong Province. In autumn 1932, he unified the province
after defeating the rival warlord
Liu Zhennian, who controlled the eastern part of the province (in particular the sea port of
Yantai) and was known as the "King of Eastern Shandong ". As governor, Han was a stern disciplinarian with the civil servants and the military. He had virtually wiped out banditry and traffic in narcotics in campaigns of suppression. By commercial operations, principally in cotton, tobacco, and real estate, he grew rich and gave generously to schools, hospitals, and civic improvements. In the mid-1930s, he was the target of Japanese attempts to get him to incorporate his province of Shandong into one of the North China puppet states that they were attempting to construct. After the onset of the
Second Sino-Japanese War, he commanded the
3rd Army Group and in 1937 was made Deputy Commander in Chief of the
5th War Area defending the lower Yellow River valley. During the
Xi'an Incident in December 1936, he openly praised the actions of
Zhang Xueliang in kidnapping
Chiang Kai-shek and forcing him into forming the
Second United Front, but was successfully urged by
Song Zheyuan, Chairman of the
Hebei-Chahar Political Council, to retract his statements and support a political solution to the crisis.
Downfall Han was suspected of having conducted secret negotiations with the Japanese to spare his province and his position of power. When the Japanese crossed the Yellow River, he abandoned his base in
Jinan, which endangered the fifth warzone located between northern China and the
Yangzi River. Han abandoned his army on January 6 and fled to
Kaifeng, where he was arrested on 11th and brought to Wuchang and was later executed by
Chiang Kai-shek for disobeying orders from superior commanders and for retreating on his own accord. Chiang did so to set an example for those not following his orders. According to one account, Han was executed in the sanctuary of the Changchun Temple (), a
Taoist temple at the outskirts of
Wuchang (now, almost in the center of modern
Wuhan) by a single pistol bullet that was fired into the back of his head by Chiang's chief of staff, General
Hu Zongnan. There are only second-hand accounts of the execution. == Career ==