Xie Jishi

Xie Jieshi (also transliterated as Hsieh Kai-shek; ; Hepburn: Sha Kaiseki; 1878 – 1954) was a cabinet minister in the Japanese-dominated Manchukuo, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Biography Xie Jishi was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan under Qing rule, in 1878, to a family of immigrants from Fujian, and attended the Japanese-run Shinchiku Kokugo Denshujo, where he studied the Japanese language. He served as interpreter for Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi on his visit to Taiwan, by then under Japanese rule. Itō was so impressed with the young Xie that he recommended him for a scholarship to Meiji University in Tokyo, from which he graduated from the law school. During his time in Tokyo from 1904 to 1906, Xie also taught Taiwanese Hokkien at the Taiwan Association School.

From 1907 to 1908, Xie taught at the Jilin School of Foreign Languages in China. The school closed in 1909, and in that year, he became an advisor to Duanfang. After Duanfang was removed as governor of Zhili, Xie joined the staff of , the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang. He assisted in the efforts to convince General Ma Zhanshan to support the new government. Through his efforts, many Taiwanese emigrated from Taiwan to Manchukuo in the 1930s. He was assigned as ambassador plenipotentiary to Japan on 19 June 1935, and helped organize the 1935 Taiwan Expo. He returned to Manchukuo in 1937 to assume the position of Minister of Industry. He shortly left government service for the private sector. After the fall of Manchukuo in 1945, Xie was arrested by the ROC government as a Japanese collaborator and traitor, and taken into custody until his release in 1948. He later died in Beijing in 1954. Until the late 1990s, some Taiwanese media claimed that Xie had died imprisoned in 1946, without a trial.

In 2013, two of Xie's descendants who lived in China met with one of his Taiwan-based descendants in Kaohsiung, after the release of a documentary, Taiwanese in Manchukuo (台灣人在滿洲國).