[1] Fu was born on 26 March 1896 in Shandong, immediately after the First Sino-Japanese War,[2] a time when the traditional systems were being challenged and revolutions were about to happen.

On the morning of 4 May 1919, Fu led a group of approximately 3,000 students to protest the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, which ceded the Shandong province to Japan.

[2] In October 1926, Fu accepted an offer from Sun Yat-sen University and joined the faculty of humanities and social science.

On the national scene, he established the Institute of History and Philology [zh] (IHP) of Academia Sinica, and remained as director until his death.

After the organization of the path-breaking Yinxu excavations, he published his East Yi West Xia theory about the origin of the Shang dynasty culture in China.

Despite his own call for historical objectivity, Fu opposed the Japanese aggression with the quasi-historical claim that Manchuria and Mongolia were not entitled for independence from China.

An article published in a local newspaper said that, under Fu's leadership, National Taiwan University had turned into a base for communists.

The announcement of Fu's death by interim assembly chairman Lee Wan-chu [zh] the next day caused a protest led by NTU students.

[5] The Fu Ssu-nien Library of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan was named in his honor.