Shih Liang-ts'ai (1879-13 November 1934), owner and publisher of the Shun-pao. An entrepreneur with many business interests in Shanghai, he was also a civic leader. He was assassinated in 1934.

Although his native place was Nanking, Shih Liang-ts'ai was born in Ssu-ching-chen, near Shanghai, where his father, Shih Ch'unfan, had moved during the Taiping Rebellion. The young Shih received a traditional education in the Chinese classics to prepare him for a career in the Ch'ing civil service. In reaction to the Boxer Uprising, however, he decided to take up more practical subjects. He spent 1901-3 at the Sericultural School in Hangchow. Immediately after being graduated, he began teaching at several schools in Shanghai. In 1904 he helped to found the Women's Sericultural School at Kao-ch'ang-miao. The school soon moved to Soochow, where some of its graduates worked to develop sericultural enterprises in the fertile T'aihu area. Shih also was instrumental in promoting the General Association of Educational Affairs in Kiangsu, and he became chief editor of the Shih-pao [eastern times] in Shanghai. His agricultural interests led him to found the China Agricultural Association in Nanking and to serve as its general secretary. It was probably in this connection that he was chosen to head a group of experts which appraised the agricultural exhibits at the Nanyang ch'uan-yeh hui [Nanyang exhibition] at Nanking in 1910. Soon after the Wuchang revolt began in October 1911, Shih Liang-ts'ai, who had become prominent in civic affairs, was made a member of the provincial council by Ch'eng Te-ch'uan, the military governor of Kiangsu. Shih became the director of the bureau charged with liquidating customs revenues in Shanghai to meet the pressing financial needs of the revolutionary regime in Kiangsu. In 1912, soon after the republic was established, he was made director of the Sungchiang salt bureau. Also in 1912 Shih Liang-ts'ai became coowner and general manager of the Shun-pao ; in 1915 he became its sole owner. The Shun-pao had been founded in 1872 by a British businessman named Ernest Major. At first, it met with an indifferent reception, but its circulation began to pick up when it published vivid and detailed accounts of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. In 1884, when a dispute arose between China and France over Indo-China, the Shun-pao provided its readership with on-thespot coverage. In subsequent years, the fame and popularity of the Shun-pao increased after each major national or international crisis. Major left China and entrusted the Shun-pao to a group of Englishmen. In 1909 they sold the paper to Hsi Yü-fu for China S75,000. Three years later, Shih and his friends acquired it for China Si 20,000. By this time, the Shun-pao's daily circulation had reached 7,000 copies. Under Shih's management, the paper's circulation reached 20,000 in 1917, 30,000 in 1918 and 50,000 in 1921. By 1928 it was claiming a paid circulation of 140,000, the largest in China.

Because of the political instability of China in the 1920's and the embryonic state of Chinese journalism, such major Chinese newspapers as the Shun-pao and its chief rival in Shanghai, the Sin-wen-pao [the news] avoided political involvement and devoted much space to news of a non-political nature. Under Shih Liang-ts'ai's guidance, the Shun-pao gradually shifted its reportorial emphases and increased its coverage of political affairs. Shih worked constantly to keep abreast of the times and to improve the Shun-pao. In 1929 he established a planning department to devise ways to streamline operations, and he persuaded Huang Yen-p'ei and Ko Kung-chen (qq.v.) to serve as co-directors. Also in 1929 he and a group of his friends acquired control of the Sin-wen-pao .

Shih soon became interested in subsidiary enterprises and established the Shun-pao Yearbook, the Shun-pao Monthly, a movable library, and supplementary schools. When the paper celebrated its sixtieth anniversary in 1932, Shih commissioned the geologists V. K. Ting (Ting Wen-chiang) and Wong Wen-hao (qq.v.) and the cartographer Tseng Shih-ying to prepare the Shun-pao map of China, which turned out to be the best general and provincial map ever published by a private enterprise in China. After the Mukden Incident in September 1931, the Shun-pao became highly critical of the National Government's Japan policy. Early in 1932 Shih Liang-ts'ai, who had become a prominent civic leader in Shanghai, began to organize the citizens of Shanghai in an effort to maintain peace and order during a period of great panic and much confusion as the Japanese forced their undeclared war on Shanghai. Shih later became the first chairman of the provisional municipal council of Shanghai. His influence in the economic and industrial life of Shanghai was great, for, in addition to his newspaper enterprises, he had helped to found or expand the China and South Seas Bank, the Min-sheng Cotton Mill, the Wu-chou Dispensary Company, and the Chung-hua Book Company. He also served as a member of the Rural Rehabilitation Committee, a vice director of the Wen-ch'i Paper Mill, and a director of the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company.

Late in 1934 Shih Liang-ts'ai, who suffered from stomach ulcers, went to Hangchow to rest. On his way back to Shanghai on 13 November, he was shot by assassins at Wangchia-pu near Haining, Chekiang. Although the assassins were never identified, it was generally assumed that they had been inspired by Kuomintang authorities who resented the Shun-pao's strong criticism of the National Government's Japan policy. Shih was survived by his wife and a son, Shih Yung-keng.