Tang Shaoyi
Tang Shaoyi | |
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Premier of the Republic of China | |
In office 13 March 1912 – 27 June 1912 | |
President | Yuan Shikai |
Preceded by | Position established |
Succeeded by | Lou Tseng-Tsiang |
In office 5 August 1922 – 19 September 1922 | |
President | Li Yuanhong |
Preceded by | Wang Ch'ung-hui |
Succeeded by | Wang Ch'ung-hui |
Personal details | |
Born |
Xiangshan County, Guangdong, Qing Empire | 2 January 1862
Died |
30 September 1938 76) Shanghai, Republic of China | (aged
Political party | Unity Party |
Alma mater |
Queen's College, Hong Kong Columbia University |
Tang Shaoyi | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 唐紹儀 | ||||||||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 唐绍仪 | ||||||||||||
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Tang Shaoyi (January 2, 1862 – September 30, 1938), original Tong Shao Yi, courtesy name Shaochuan (少川), was a Chinese politician who briefly served as the first Premier of the Republic of China in 1912. In 1938 he was assassinated by the Kuomingtang in Shanghai.
Education
Tang had been educated in the United States: elementary school in Springfield, Massachusetts, high school in Hartford, Connecticut, and finally one year at Columbia University.[1]
Career
Tang was a native of Xiangshan County, Guangdong. Tang had been educated in the United States, attending elementary school in Springfield, Massachusetts and high school in Hartford, Connecticut.[2] He studied at Queen's College, Hong Kong, and then Columbia University in New York on the Chinese Educational Mission. Tang was a friend of Yuan Shikai; and, during the Xinhai Revolution, negotiated on the latter's behalf in Shanghai with the revolutionaries' Wu Tingfang, ending up with the recognition of Yuan as President of the Republic of China. He had been a diplomat with Yuan Shikai's staff in Korea[2] and was appointed head of the Shandong Bureau of Foreign Affairs under governor Yuan Shikai in 1900.[2]
Widely respected, he became the Republic's first Prime Minister in 1912, but quickly grew disillusioned with Yuan's lack of respect for the rule of law and resigned.[3] He later took part in Sun Yatsen's government in Guangzhou. Tang Shaoyi opposed, on constitutional grounds, Sun's taking of the "Extraordinary Presidency" in 1921; Tang resigned from his position. In 1924, he refused an offer to be foreign minister under warlord Duan Qirui's provisional government in Beijing.
Assassination
In 1937, Tang bought a house on Route Ferguson in the Shanghai French Concession and retired there.[4] The following year, the Japanese invaded and occupied Shanghai (though not yet the foreign concessions). Japanese general Kenji Doihara attempted to recruit Tang to become president of the new pro-Japanese puppet government, and Tang was willing to negotiate with the Japanese. The Kuomintang's intelligence agency Juntong learned about the negotiation, and its chief Dai Li ordered his assassination. On 30 September 1938, Tang was killed in his living room by a Juntong squad who pretended to be antique sellers.[5]
Family
Tang Shaoyi's daughter Tang Baoyue (English name May Tang) was married to the prominent diplomat V.K. Wellington Koo. She died in October 1918 during the 1918 flu pandemic, after falling ill for only a week. [6] Another daughter Lora Tang was married to the well-known Singapore philanthropist Lee Seng Gee. Another daughter from his first wife, Isobel, was married to Henry K. Chang (Chang Chien), the Chinese Ambassador and Consul General at San Francisco (1929)<[7]
References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tang Shaoyi. |
- ↑ from deleted section at Shandong University on 2015.09.09
- 1 2 3 Wang, Ke-wen (1997). Modern China: an encyclopedi a of history, culture, and nationalism. Routledge, London. p. 348.
- ↑ John Stuart Thomson (1913). China revolutionized. INDIANAPOLIS: The Bobbs-Merrill company. p. 105.
- ↑ 武康路与民国第一任总理唐绍仪血案 [Wukang Road and the assassination of Tang Shaoyi] (in Chinese). China.com.cn. 22 November 2012. Retrieved 8 October 2013.
- ↑ Wakeman, Frederic E. (2002). The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780521528719.
- ↑ Craft, Stephan G. (2004). V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. University Press of Kentucky. p. 45. ISBN 9780813127286.
- ↑ Hinners, David G. (1999). Tong Shao-Yi and His Family. University Press of America. p. 102. ISBN 0-7618-1392-6.
Government offices | ||
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Preceded by New title |
Premier of the Republic of China 1912 |
Succeeded by Lu Zhengxiang |
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