Tsiang Tingfu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tsiang Tingfu (Jiang Tingfu, 蔣廷黻, 17 February 1895 - 9 October 1965). Chinese historian and diplomat. Tsiang was born in Shaoyang in Hunan province. In 1911, he was sent to study in the United States, where he attended the Park Academy, Oberlin College and Columbia University. After obtaining a Ph.D. in history at Columbia, he returned to China in 1923, where he first took up a position at Nankai University and then at Tsinghua University. At Tsinghua, he became the head of the History Department, where edited and published a number of works on Chinese history and published the English-language journal Chinese Social and Political Science Review. During his tenure at Tsinghua, he mentored a number of historians in the study of Qing history, including John K. Fairbank.
Following mounting tensions in China's relations with Japan, Tsiang left academia in 1935 and joined the Chinese Nationalist government, which he served in many different capacities throughout the Sino-Japanese War. In 1945, Tsiang became the Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, and he subsequently also served as the ambassador of China to the United States. Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland, Tsiang defended the exclusive right of the Taiwan-based Republic of China to represent China in the United Nations and in the Security Council. He died in New York City in 1965.
