Pei Tsu-yi (1893-), banker who was known for his pioneering work in developing the foreign-exchange business of the Bank of China and for helping to plan the managed currency system that China adopted in 1935.
Born into a merchant family in Wuhsien, Kiangsu, Pei Tsu-yi received his early education in the Chinese classics at a local school maintained by the Lu family. At the age often sui, he was sent to study at the Ch'en-chung Middle School in Shanghai, where he remained until 1907, when he returned home to attend Soochow University. After being graduated in 1911, he went to north China for a two-year stint at the T'angshan College of Railways. In 1913 he moved south to work in the accounting department at the Shanghai office of the Hanyeh-p'ing Iron and Coal Company. Pei Tsu-yi embarked on his banking career in 1914 when he joined the accounting department at the Bank of China's head office in Peking. He was transferred to the Canton branch in 1915 as acting head of the accounting department. After serving as chief accountant and as head of the business department, he became assistant manager of the Canton branch in 1917. About this time, Sun Yat-sen's newly established military government at Canton began to make incessant and excessive demands on the resources of the Canton branch of the Bank of China. The branch manager proved unable to cope with the situation, and he soon left for Peking to tender his resignation at the head office. Pei Tsu-yi was made acting manager. He soon incurred the wrath of the local military authorities by ignoring their demands for funds. They retaliated by ordering his arrest, and he was forced to flee to Hong Kong.
By this time, the Kwangtung provincial note issues had lost much of their value, and Hong Kong bank notes had found their way into Canton in increasing numbers. Pei Tsu-yi had learned much about foreign exchange because of this situation, for the principal activities of Canton bankers had come to be the handling of remittances between Canton and Hong Kong and the exchange of currency. In 1918 the Bank of China transferred its Canton branch to Hong Kong and appointed Pei to manage it. The Canton establishment was maintained as a sub-office under the control of the Hong Kong branch, which was to direct the bank's activities throughout south China. However, the development of the new branch was hampered by the smallness of capital appropriations from the head office and the slowness of people to place their confidence in a new banking operation. Pei Tsu-yi therefore decided to specialize in arbitrage, exploiting the regional differences in the exchange rates among the major currencies of the world. Because of its complete lack of banking restrictions, Hong Kong was admirably suited to arbitrage activities. Pei's faultless handling of foreign-exchange operations enhanced both his reputation and that of the Bank of China.
In 1927 Pei Tsu-yi became the manager of the Bank of China's Shanghai branch. When the Bank of China was reorganized in 1928 as a specialized bank handling foreign-exchange transactions, Pei was elected a director of the bank (representing private stockholders) and was appointed chief of the business department at the head office, now located at Shanghai. He was elected to the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1929 as a representative of the Chinese Ratepayers Association. In 1930 he was named director of the newly created foreignexchange department at the Bank of China. Before assuming his new duties, he made a tour of England and the United States to study banking practices in those two countries. On returning to China in 1931 he ordered all branches of the Bank of China in treaty or commercial ports to undertake foreign-exchange operations. Credit facilities were extended to Chinese importers and exporters; and guarantees were furnished for National Government agencies and for merchants in the interior who wished to place orders with manufacturers abroad. In branches which handled remittances from overseas Chinese, every effort was made to improve these facilities. Before long, Pei also secured the admittance of Chinese brokers to the previously all-Western Foreign Exchange Brokers Association in Shanghai.
The reserves accumulated by the foreign department enabled the Bank of China to create new branches and agencies abroad. It came to have offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Osaka, Havana, Sydney, Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi, Chittagong, Jakarta, Saigon, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Rangoon. Pei Tsu-yi's role in breaking the foreign monopoly of the business of foreign remittances in China was of great importance. The Bank of China enjoyed an ever-increasing volume of business in the 1930's, and it handled all public and private foreign-exchange transactions during the Sino- Japanese war, for there were no foreign banks in Free China.
In 1934-35 Pei Tsu-yi participated in the planning which resulted in the monetary reform of November 1935 (for details, see H. H. K'ung), when the National Government abandoned the silver standard in favor of a managed paper currency. The new legal tender notes were known as fapi. In the years following, Pei was called upon for aid and advice whenever measures were needed for the maintenance of the fapi system. Thus, when the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937 caused financial panic and strong demands for the redemption of fapi with foreign exchange, Pei Tsu-yi, representing the Bank of China, collaborated with the Central Bank of China in sales of foreign exchange in order to maintain public confidence. When the Central Bank of China suspended the exchange of foreign currency for fapi at fixed rates in 1938, Pei's department collaborated with a British bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, in supplying foreign exchange at current open rates, thus preventing a drastic fall in the value of the fapi. By 1939 inflation in China had become so serious that it no longer was possible to maintain the value of the fapi through ordinary measures. At the urging of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the British Government agreed to cooperate with the National Government in establishing the Sino-British Stabilization Board. The Bank of China and the Bank of Communications joined with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China in subscribing a total of £10 million as the stabilization fund for the maintenance of the fapi. Pei Tsu-yi served as the principal Chinese representative on the five-man management committee. With the exhaustion of this fund in 1941, the Sino-British-American Stabilization Board was established with the subscribing of US S50 million by the United States Government, £5 million by the British Government, and US S20 million by the National Government. Pei Tsu-yi was one of the three Chinese representatives to the five-member board, the other two being Hsi Te-mou of the Central Bank of China and the board's chairman, K. P. Ch'en (Ch'en Kuang-fu, q.v.).
Pei became acting general manager of the Bank of China in 1941. In this post, he did much to promote agricultural and industrial production by providing financial assistance and by participating in the operation of various enterprises. In June 1944 he accompanied H. H. K'ung to the United States as a member of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. He made a second trip to the United States in 1945, when he held discussions with American officials about the possibility of floating a postwar rehabilitation loan of US $500 million for use in maintaining the value of the fapi. The outbreak of hostilities between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists put an end to these negotiations. From March 1946 to April 1947 Pei Tsu-yi served as governor of the Central Bank of China. He was handicapped severely in his attempts to stabilize the Chinese economy by the huge and irreducible Nationalist military budget and by galloping inflation. In 1948 he was made head of the Chinese Technical Mission to Washington, which went to the United States in 1949 for discussions on problems connected with proposed American aid to China. In November 1952 he became a director of C. V. Starr and Company in New York as an adviser, a post he held until 1959. He then became a director of K. P. Ch'en's Shanghai Commercial Bank of Hong Kong, and thereafter he divided his time between New York and Hong Kong. One of Pei Tsu-yi's sons, Pei Yi-ming (191 7-), better known as I. M. Pei, went to the United States in 1935 to study architecture. He later became an architect of international renown. P'ei Wen-chung T. Ming-hua I X +
贝祖诒
字：淞荪
贝祖诒（1893—），银行家，以在中国银行首创外汇业务，并于1935年协助筹划货币管理制度而知名。
贝祖诒岀生在江苏吴县的一个商人家庭，在本地陆家私塾中受旧式教育，十岁时去上海进澄衷中学，1907年回苏州进东吴大学，1911年毕业后，进唐山铁路学院学习两年；1913年南下任汉冶萍煤铁公司上海办事处会计。
1914年，贝祖诒开始了他的银行事业，任中国银行北京总行会计。1915年调往广州分行任代理会计主任，后任总会计师兼营业主任，1917年任分行副经理。孙逸仙在广州成立军政府，对分行不断要求给予大量的财政支持。分行经理因无力应付，去北京向总行辞职，遂由贝祖诒任代经理。不久他因对当地军阀要求给予财政基金置之不理而为他们所嫉很，他们下令逮捕他以示报复，贝祖诒被迫逃往香港。
当时，广东省发行的纸币严重贬值，港币乃趁机大量进入广州。广州银行界的主要业务是处理外汇和穗港间划汇来往，因此贝祖诒早就熟悉了外汇业务。1918年中国银行广州分行迁往香港，指定贝祖诒经管，广州分行成为香港分行的支行，经营华南银行业务，但新的分行因总行投资规模狭小，以及人们还不愿立即把信用寄托在一个新银行身上，因此发展受挫。贝祖诒决定利用世界主要货币在不同地区的汇率差额，专营套汇业务，提高了他本人和中国银行的声誉。
1927年，贝祖诒任中国银行上海分行经理。1928年，中国银行改组为专营外汇的银行，贝祖诒被举为代表私人股东的董事长兼总行（已迁到上海）营业主任。1929年他以华方纳税人协会代表身份出席工部局。1930年任中国银行外汇部主任，任职前曾去英美考察银行业务。1931年回国后，他通令全国与外国通商口岸及商埠分支行都经办外汇业务，给中国进出口商号以信用贷款，并且给国民政府的代理商及内地愿意经营外国货物的商人提供保证金，对于经营华侨汇款的分行，则要求其努力为华侨增加方便。不久，贝还设法做到了使上海全欧外汇经纪人协会接纳中国经纪人入会。
外汇业务积累的资金，使中国银行能在国外设立分行、代办处，在纽约、伦敦、东京、大阪、哈瓦那、悉尼、新加坡、槟榔屿、吉隆坡、孟买、加尔各答、卡拉奇、吉大港、雅加达、西贡、曼谷、金边、仰光等地，都建立了办事处。在打破外国人对中国外汇汇兑的垄断中，贝祖诒起了重要作用。三十年代中，中国银行的业务范围不断扩大，在抗日战争期间，因为在自由中国没有外国银行，中国银行经营了全部公私外汇业务。
1934—35年，贝祖诒参与筹划了1935年11月的币制改革，当时国民政府放弃了银本位制，改行货币管理制度，新的货币祢作“法币”。在其后年代，每当需要采取措施维持法币制度时，贝祖诒总是被召请提供帮助和建议。1937年7月爆发的中日战争，引起了财政困难和调整法币与外币比价的强烈要求，贝祖诒代表中国银行和中央银行合作，共同经营外币交易，以维持公众信用。1938年中央银行停止外币以固定比值兑换法币后，贝的营业处与香港汇丰银行合作，以公开牌价提供外汇，避免了法币的急剧贬值。
1939年通货膨胀如此严重，已不能用通常办法维持法币币值，经汇丰银行要求，英国政府同意与国民政府合作，设立中英外汇平衡局。中国银行、交通银行与汇丰银行、印度专利银行和澳大利亚合作，由中国方面出资一千万英镑维持法币。贝祖诒任五人委员会中国代表。1941年基金用尽，中英美平衡局随之建立，由美国政府出资五千万美元，英国政府出资五百万英镑，国民政府出资二千万美元。贝祖诒是参加五人董事会的三名中国代表之一，另二人为中央银行的席徳懋和五人董事会的董事长陈光甫。
1941年，贝祖诒任中国银行代总经理。任职期间，他为促进工农业生产尽了很多力，给生产部门提供财政帮助，并且参加兴办了不同的企业。1944年他作为一名中国代表陪同孔祥熙去美国，出席在新罕普什尔州布莱顿森林召开的联合国货币财政会议。1945年又去美国，与美国官方商议由美国给予战后复兴贷款五亿美元，以维持法币币值。国共两党敌对行动的爆发，迫使谈判停止。
1946年3月到1947年4月，贝祖诒任中央银行行长，他力图使中国经济稳定，但因国民党有增无己的军费预算和猛烈的通货膨胀，他的努力严重受挫。1948年，贝祖诒出任去华盛顿的中国技术代表团团长，于1949年赴美商讨有关美国援华问题。1952年11月，他出任纽约斯泰公司顾问，直至1959年。此后在陈光甫的香港上海商业银行任行长，从此他就常在香港纽约两地奔走。
贝祖诒诸子中的一个儿子贝聿铭(1917—）于1935年去美国学建筑，后来成为国际知名的建筑师。
