BEIJING, April 26 (UPI) -- Fei Xiaotong, a pioneering Chinese sociologist who survived Communist persecutions in the 1950s and 1960s, died over the weekend at age 95.
He was born into the scholar-gentry class in 1910 before the fall of the Qing dynasty.
Fei graduated from the U.S. missionary sponsored Yenching University in Beijing in 1933 and earned a Ph.D. at London University in 1936, studying under Bronislaw Malinowski, a founding father of social anthropology.
In the 1940s Fei translated and taught Western works of anthropology and sociology, including Malinowski's "Theory of Culture," efforts that earned him opprobrium from both Nationalist and Communist parties then battling for China.
Fei stayed on the mainland as a professor at Tsinghua University after the Communist victory and was persecuted during the 1957 anti-rightist campaign and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.
He was a key witness in the show trial of Mao Zedong's widow, Jiang Qing, and the Gang of Four in the 1980s.
