Shen Yi ( 1901—), German-trained hydraulic engineer who served as secretary general of the National Resources Commission (1937-40), general manager of the Kansu Agricultural Development Corporation (1941-44), mayor of Nanking (1946-47), and chief of the Bureau of Flood Control and Water Resources Development of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (1949-60). After serving in Taiwan as minister of communications (1960-67), he became ambassador to Brazil (1968).

Kashing (Chiahsing), Chekiang, was the native place of Shen Yi. After receiving his early education in Chekiang, he studied at Tung-chi University in Shanghai, where he was graduated from the department of civil engineering in 1920. He then went to Germany for graduate work at the Technische Hochschule at Dresden, where he studied hydraulic engineering under Professor Hubert Engels and received a doctorate of engineering in 1925 after writing a dissertation, Der Flussbau in China, which dealt with the problem of flood control in China. Shen visited the United States in 1925 and inspected many rivers and river control projects.

After his return to China, Shen Yi was appointed director of the public works department of the Shanghai municipal government in 1927. The post was important because the new National Government, which was establishing its authority in that part of China, had ambitious plans for development of a major new metropolis with a civic center in Kiangwan. Known as the Greater Shanghai plan, the project aimed at eventual transfer of the hub of activity in China's leading city from the foreign-controlled concessions to a new urban complex under Chinese jurisdiction. This ambitious undertaking finally had to be abandoned because of the continuing political and military turmoil in China after 1928. Despite the obstacles which confronted urban planning, Shen Yi established an unusual record among the public functionaries working under the authority of the National Government, for he remained director of public works in Shanghai uninterruptedly for more than ten years. Among his undertakings was the improvement of public works facilities in the Chinese-administered areas, sometimes referred to as the Chinese City, of Shanghai. Although his Shanghai work did not call upon his special training in hydraulic engineering, he continued to keep abreast of world developments in the field of river control. His admiration of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States led him to formulate a similar plan for the Yangtze River in China, the so-called YVA project.

After the outbreak of war between China and Japan in the summer of 1937 and the withdrawal of Chinese authority from Shanghai and the lower Yangtze area, Shen Yi moved to Chungking, the wartime capital of the National Government. There he became a senior official of the National Resources Commission, serving as secretary general of the commission and head of its industry section.

It was not until the summer of 1941 that Shen Yi found an opportunity to work as an engineer. In that year, the Bank of China transferred certain enterprises that it had operated in the Tientsin area to northwest China. Chang Hsin-yi, an agricultural expert on the bank's staff, was appointed director of the reconstruction department of the Kansu provincial government, an appointment designed to facilitate Bank of China investment in the agricultural development of that province through the newly established Kansu Agricultural Development Corporation. The corporation's tasks were primarily connected with promotion of water conservation, and Shen Yi was offered the position of general manager. He accepted the appointment and moved to Lanchow.

Water conservation projects had been undertaken earlier in Kansu province, but it was only with the formation of the Kansu Agricultural Development Corporation and the appointment of Shen Yi to direct its work that the programs gained impetus and direction. The corporation took over and improved one large-scale dam, and it completed construction of a second. Under Shen's direction, new dams were planned and constructed, and a network of irrigation projects was developed. These major projects were designed to provide irrigation for more than 260,000 mou of land; and, with completion of a projected system of branch canals and small reservoirs, the Kansu project was intended to irrigate more than a million mou in China's arid northwest. When the war ended in 1945, Shen Yi was called away from his post in Kansu. By that time he had laid the groundwork for a sound provincial irrigation system, and many additional reservoirs later were completed and put into service. The National Government appointed Shen vice minister of communications to help with the complex problems of demobilization and economic reconstruction in the immediate postwar period. On the return of the National Government from Chungking to Nanking in 1946, Shen Yi was appointed mayor of Nanking. He held that post until 1948, during which period he also served as chairman of the public works committee of the Supreme National Economic Council.

In 1949 Shen Yi was appointed chief of the Bureau of Flood Control and Water Resources Development of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), with headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. He held that post for 1 1 years. His outstanding accomplishment was the series of studies undertaken by his bureau on the potential of the lower Mekong river basin. These studies, initiated in 1951, led to the adoption of a United Nations program for development of that vast Asian river and to the establishment of a unique cooperative system embracing the Mekong's four riparian nations. The program was praised by economic development experts, and Shen's work was particularly commended by United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarsjold.

In 1960 Shen Yi returned to the service of the National Government in Taiwan. He held the post of minister of communications for seven years, during which period he frequently traveled abroad as an official delegate to international meetings. Shen relinquished his post as minister of communications in November 1967 and became a presidential adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. In February 1968 he was designated ambassador to Brazil.

Shen Yi had three sisters, all of whom married prominent men. The eldest was the wife of Huang Fu (q.v.), friend and adviser of Chiang Kai-shek. Another sister married Ch'ien Ch'ang-chao, sometime vice chairman of the National Resources Commission and chief aide to Wong Wen-hao (q.v.) ; and the third married T'ao Meng-ho (L. K. T'ao), a sociologist who later served as a vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Peking until his death in 1959.