He is best known as the founding Chairman of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and later for seizing power in Shanxi during the Cultural Revolution, where he made himself the top leader of the province.

Liu spent his early days as a communist agitator, leading peasant uprisings and building the party organization in rural areas.

Liu Geping was born on 8 August 1904 into a large landowning family of Muslim Hui ethnicity in Dadi East Village (大堤东村), Mengcun County, Hebei.

Instrumental in the founding of the first socialist youth cell in the area, in December 1925 he co-led an armed peasant uprising against the Beiyang government, the first of its kind in northern China.

[1][2] He was held in Caolanzi Prison (草岚子监狱) in Beijing,[2] along with 61 other Communist Party leaders including Bo Yibo, An Ziwen, and Liu Lantao (no relation).

He then went to Shandong to found an organization for ethnic Hui to aid soldiers on the front lines of the Chinese Civil War.

In 1958, Liu began heading up the party organization of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on an interim basis.

[3] At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, having gained the support of leftist radicals in Beijing, Liu successfully overthrew his superior Wei Heng and became Chairman of the Shanxi Revolutionary Committee, the de facto top leader.

[5] Meanwhile, the Central Cultural Revolution Group, led by Kang Sheng and Jiang Qing, began to investigate the case of the 61 communist leaders who were instructed to denounce communism at Caolanzi Prison in the 1930s.

He was invited to make speeches all over the country and was re-elected to the 9th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in April 1969.

"[8] In 1983,[8] he was named a member of the National Committee of the 6th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a ceremonial position.