Ku Cheng-ting (24 October 1903-), member of Wang Ching-wei's Reorganizationist faction who, beginning in 1937, was director of the bureau in Chiang Kai-shek's Sian headquarters that had jurisdiction over military and political affairs in the northwestern provinces and responsibility for combatting Chinese Communist influence. He became vice director (1946) and director (1948) of the Kuomintang's organization department and a member of the Legislative Yuan (1947). In Taiwan, he devoted his time to the Legislative Yuan.

The fourth son of the scholar Ku Yung-ch'ien and the younger brother of Ku Cheng-lun (q.v.), Ku Cheng-ting was born in Anshun, Kweichow. He and his elder brother Ku Cheng-kang attended various schools together until 1927. After receiving their primary education in the Chinese classics at a village school, they attended a modern higher primary school and the Kweiyang Provincial Lower Normal School. Ku Cheng-ting participated in student-led demonstrations during the May Fourth Alovement of 1919 and became chairman of the Kweichow Federation of Student Associations. In 1922 the two brothers left Kweichow and went to Germany, where they studied political economy at Berlin University. They joined the German branch of the Kuomintang in 1924, and Ku Cheng-ting was elected to its executive committee. After news of the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925 reached Berlin, Ku made a number of speeches in various German cities to protest the presence of foreign powers in China. After graduation from Berlin University in 1925, the two brothers went to Moscow, where they studied at Sun Yat-sen University and spent much of their time in debate with Chinese Communist students. In 1926 Ku Cheng-ting met and married P'i I-shu (1908-), a native of Nanch'uan Szechwan, who was a member of the Kuomintang and chairman of the women's department of the Federation of Peking Students. In August 1927 Ku and his wife left the Soviet Union and went to Nanking, where he became director of the political department of the Twenty-sixth Army. Ku Cheng-ting became secretary of the Kuomintang's central propaganda department and a member of the Central People's Training Committee in February 1928. After the successful conclusion of the Northern Expedition in June, he w^as made a member of the standing committee of the Peiping Party Affairs Guidance Committee. Both he and Ku Cheng-kang opposed the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, and in the winter of 1928 they joined the Reorganizationist faction of Wang Ching-wei (q.v.). After participating in the unsuccessful enlarged conference movement of 1930 {see Feng Yü-hsiang; Yen Hsi-shan), they went into hiding. Little is known of their activities during 1931.

When Wang Ching-wei assumed the premiership in January 1932, Ku Cheng-ting became a councillor in the Executive Yuan. He soon was transferred to the ministry of railways, serving first as a councillor and then as director of its general affairs ofhce. In September, he was elected to the executive committee of the Nanking branch of the Kuomintang. He evidently overcame many of his objections to Chiang Kai-shek as a leader, for he was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in November 1935, as were his brothers Ku Cheng-lun and Ku Cheng-kang. After the Sino-Japanese war began, Ku Cheng-ting was sent to Sian in the winter of 1937 as director of the bureau in Chiang Kaishek's headquarters that had jurisdiction over the military and political affairs of Shensi, Kansu, Tsinghai, and Ninghsia. Because Chinese Communist influence was increasing in Shensi and Kansu, Ku was ordered to suppress Communist organizations in the areas under his jurisdiction. In 1938 he established a branch of the Central Military Academy, a battalion for the training of youths who had escaped from Japanese-occupied territory and who wished to become military or political cadres, and the Northwest Youth Labor Camp for the indoctrinating of young Communists who had been captured by National Government forces. Kuomintang ideology was stressed in the schools of the region, and people who lived near the Communist Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region were ordered to construct fortifications and to organize militia units as means of curbing the expansion of Communist military power. P'i I-shu, who was chairman of the women's committee of the Shensi headquarters, estabhshed homes for refugee children and workshops for the dependents of NationaHst servicemen. With tüe 1939 redesignation of the Sian headquarters as the T'ienshui headquarters and the extension of its jurisdiction to include the First, Fifth, and Eighth War areas, Ku became responsible for combatting the Communist challenge in Honan, Shansi, northern Anhwei, northern Hupeh, and Sinkiang, as well as in the northwestern regions. In February 1939 Ku was entrusted with the delicate mission of securing the return to Chungking of Wang Ching-wei, w^ho had fled the wartime capital and had gone to Hanoi in December 1 938. Wang refused Ku's off"ers and requested diplomatic passports for himself and his entourage so that they could go to Europe. Ku returned to Hanoi with the passports and money for traveling expenses early in March. On 21 March, the day after Ku left Hanoi, his efforts to appease Wang Ching-wei were ruined by the assassination of Wang's adviser Tseng Chung-ming (q.v.). Because Wang believed that the shooting was a Nationalist plot with himself as the intended victim, he decided to collaborate with the Japanese. When the T'ienshui headquarters was reorganized as the Sian office of the Military Affairs Commission in 1940, Ku Cheng-ting was named its vice director. Four years later, he became chairman of the Kuomintang's Shensi provincial headquarters. Thus, Ku was a key figure in the National Government's political campaign against Japanese and Chinese Communist influence throughout the Sino- Japanese war.

In 1946 Ku Cheng-ting became vice director of the organization department of the Kuomintang. He was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1947 as a representative of Kweichow and was made director of the organization department in the autumn of 1948. His department, along with other party and government organs, was forced by the advancing Communists to move from Nanking to Taiwan, by way of Canton and Chungking, in 1949.

In Taiwan, Ku Cheng-ting resigned from the organization department in 1950 to devote all of his time to the Legislative Yuan, of which his wife also was a member. Ku's brother Ku Cheng-kang, %ho had served the National Government as minister of social affairs from 1940 to 1949, also held important posts in Taiwan. K