Wang Zhengting

Wang Zhengting (Chinese: 王正廷; pinyin: Wáng Zhèngtíng; Wade–Giles: Wang² Cheng⁴-t'ing², known in English as C. T. Wang; 7 September 1882 – 21 May 1961) was a diplomat in the Republic of China (ROC). Wang was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, and his father was a Methodist minister just outside Shanghai, where Wang attended mission schools before entering the preparatory school for the Peiyang University. After teaching in the Provincial High School in Changsha, Hunan. Wang studied in Tokyo, where he was secretary of the Chinese YMCA, then in 1907, went to the United States to study law at the University of Michigan. He soon transferred to Yale University, graduating in 1910 and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He returned to Shanghai in June, 1911, and took another position with the YMCA before being recruited to join the new Republican government in Beijing, then in Sun Yat-sen's opposition government in Canton.^[1]

He served as a Chinese delegate under Wellington Koo during the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 after World War I ^[2] and served as foreign minister, minister of finance, and acting premier for various short periods of time from 1924–1928, before serving as foreign minister until 1931. He also founded a Shanghai brokerage house; was chairman or board member of mining, cotton milling, and railroad companies; and was Chairman of the Far Eastern Olympics. As foreign minister, Wang negotiated a settlement with Japan over the Jinan Incident of 1928; with Soviet Russia over the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria; treaties restoring Chinese territory in British Weihaiwei and French Tonkin; and tariff autonomy or commercial agreements with more than a dozen countries, including Japan.^[3]

In spite of these successes in nationalist diplomacy, however, after the Mukden Incident of 1931, in which Japan seized control of China's Northwest provinces, student protestors blamed Wang for China's ineffective response. Wang was attacked and hospitalized, and withdrew from public office for a time. Wang was Ambassador to the United States 1936–38. As Chinese Ambassador, he hosted a party at the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC attended by his Yale 1910 classmate Henry Roe Cloud (the first Native American to attend Yale) and described in detail in Cloud's papers at Yale (See also Yale Manuscripts and Archives April 2015 blog, "Party Diplomacy."). He served in various minor government and party capacities during the war, but in 1949 stayed in Hong Kong rather than go to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's government.^[4]

References

China's Ambassadors to the U.S. Qing ministers to the U.S. 1875–1912 Chen Lanbin 1875–81 Zheng Zaoru 1881–85 Zhang Yinheng 1885–89 Cui Guoyin 1889–93 Yang Ru 1893–96 Wu Tingfang 1896–1902 Liang Cheng 1902–07 Wu Tingfang 1907–09 Zhang Yintang 1909–11 Alfred Sao-ke Sze 1911–12 ROC's envoys to the U.S. 1912–35 Zhang Yintang 1912–13 Xia Xiefu 1913–15 V. K. Wellington Koo 1915–20 Alfred Sao-ke Sze 1920–29 Wu Chaoshu 1929–31 Yan Huiqing 1931–33 Alfred Sao-ke Sze 1933–35 ROC's ambassadors to the U.S. 1935–79 Alfred Sao-ke Sze 1935–36 Wang Zhengting 1936–38 Hu Shih 1938–42 Wei Tao-ming 1942–46 V. K. Wellington Koo 1946–56 Hollington Tong 1956–58 George Yeh 1958–61 Tsiang Tingfu 1961–65 Zhou Shukai 1965–71 James Shen 1971–79 Taiwanese representatives to the U.S. 1979–present Xia Gongquan 1979–81 Cai Weiping 1981–82 Frederick Chien 1982–88 Ding Maoshi 1988–94 Lu Zhaozhong 1994–96 Jason Hu 1996–97 Chen Xifan 1997–2000 Cheng Jianren 2000–04 David Lee 2004–07 Joseph Wu 2007–08 Jason Yuan 2008–12 King Pu-tsung 2012–14 Shen Lyu-shun 2014– Chiefs of the PRC Liaison Office in the U.S. 1973–79 Huang Zhen 1973–77 Chai Zemin 1978–79 PRC's ambassadors to the U.S. 1979–present Chai Zemin 1979–82 Zhang Wenjin 1983–85 Han Xu 1985–89 Zhu Qizhen 1989–93 Li Daoyu 1993–98 Li Zhaoxing 1998–2001 Yang Jiechi 2001–05 Zhou Wenzhong 2005–10 Zhang Yesui 2010–13 Cui Tiankai 2013–present