Ch'eng She-wo (28 August 1898-), prominent newspaper publisher, founded and developed such papers as the Shih-chieh jih-pao [world daily news], the Min-sheng pao [people's livelihood newspaper], and the Li-pao [stand-up journal]. In 1947 he became a member of the Legislative Yuan. He founded World Journalism Junior College in Taipei in 1956.

Although his ancestral home was in Hsianghsiang, Hunan province, Ch'eng She-wo was born at Nanking. His grandfather, Ch'eng Ts'e-ta, had served on the staff of the Hunan Army during the Taiping Rebellion and had moved with the army to Nanking. Ch'eng Pi, the father of Ch'eng She-wo, received an appointment as warden of the jail at Shuch'eng hsien in Anhwei and took his family there in 1906. Ch'eng She-wo was then eight and had begun his classical education under the personal supervision of his father.

In 1908, after a mass jail break, the hsien magistrate attempted to place the blame on Ch'eng Pi as warden, and false charges were made against him. Relieved of his appointment, the elder Ch'eng, pending a full investigation, took the family to the Anhwei provincial capital of Anking. He submitted evidence of his innocence to the higher authorities. A correspondent for a Shanghai newspaper helped him by making an independent investigation and by preparing an accurate report which proved Ch'eng Pi's innocence.

The incident greatly impressed Ch'eng Shewo, then 1 1. He cultivated the friendship of the correspondent, who encouraged him in his desire to become a journalist and who taught him how to write news dispatches. In 1911, when the Wuchang revolt broke out, Ch'eng She-wojoined the cadet corps that was organized in Anhwei. In April 1912, however, he was prevented by his father from joining the march to Nanking.

Although only 14, Ch'eng She-wo successfully took the matriculation examination of Chianghuai University. The family, however, was so poor that he could not afford to enroll in the institution. In 1913 he got a job as reporter for the Anking newspaper Min-yen pao [the people's voice] . By this time he had joined the ranks of the republican revolutionaries and had taken part in the so-called second revolution against Yuan Shih-k'ai. In 1914 he and some friends planned a new paper to be called Ch'ang-chiang pao [Yangtze journal], but the authorities denied them registration. In 1915, the Anhwei military governor, Ni Ssu-ch'ung, an ardent supporter of Yuan Shih-k'ai, increased pressure on the revolutionaries, and Ch'eng had to flee for his life. He went to Mukden and worked for the newspaper Chien Pao. The chief editor of the paper was Wang Hsin-min.

In 1916, as the movement against Yuan Shihk'ai neared its climax, Ch'eng She-wo left Mukden to return to Anking in response to appeals from his comrades. However, he was arrested by Ni Ssu-ch'ung, and his life was saved only because Ni's secretary, P'ei Ching-fu, intervened. Ch'eng then fled to Shanghai and lived in the headquarters maintained there by revolutionaries from Anhwei. There he came to know Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.). Through contributions to the Alin-kuo jih-pao [republican daily news], then the leading organ of the Kuomintang, Ch'eng also made the acquaintance of Yeh Ch'u-ts'ang, the party veteran who was then chief editor of the paper. Yeh Ch'u-ts'ang offered Ch'eng a regular job on the paper. By this time, Wang Hsin-min, the Mukden editor, had come south, and had become head of a group of writers, including Liu Fu and Hsiang Kai-jan, who were associated with the Commercial Press. Wang Hsin-min invited Ch'eng to join the group.

In 1917, the veteran revolutionary Liu Ya-tzu (q.v.), who was then head of the Southern Society, the well-known literary organization of the revolutionaries, exerted pressure on Ch'eng to support his case in a controversy with other members of the society. Ch'eng refused, and he left his job at the Min-kuo jih-pao. He inserted an advertisement in the Shun-pao [Shanghai news daily] informing the public of the case, and thus won great sympathy. Li Ta-chao was also impressed by the young man. Li Ta-chao and Ch'en Tu-hsiu induced Ch'eng She-wo to take up studies at Peking University; he worked to pay his way. In 1918, on the recommendation of Li Ta-chao, Ch'eng was employed as an editor by the Yi-shin pao [benefit-the-world journal] in Tientsin. In August, Ch'eng enrolled at Peking University in the department of Chinese literature. He was a participant in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, but his primary interest was journalism, and he took no active role in the development of the movement. Ch'eng was graduated from Peking University in 1921. By that time he had developed an ideology which differed from that of Ch'en Tuhsiu and Li Ta-chao. In 1924 Ch'eng She-wo left the Yi-shih pao. With some money that he had saved, he founded his first newspaper, the Shih-chieh wan-pao [world evening news]. Early in 1925 Ch'eng added a morning paper, the Shih-chieh jih-pao [world daily news], and later a pictorial, the Shih-chieh hua-pao [world pictorial]. The morning paper, Shih-chieh jih-pao, won prominence for Ch'eng She-wo. Its chief editor was his fellowprovincial Huang Shao-ku (q.v.). The very success of Ch'eng's newspapers made him persona non grata to the warlords then in control in Peking. His papers were frequently prosecuted, and he was arrested on many occasions. But he always managed to escape conviction. In 1926, when Chang Tso-lin replaced Tuan Ch'i-jui as the effective power in Peking, the Shantung warlord, Chang Tsungch'ang (q.v.), struck terror among Peking journalists by executing two well-known newspapermen, Lin Pai-shui and Shao P'iao-p'ing (q.v.). Although Chang Tsung-ch'ang soon had Ch'eng She-wo arrested, Ch'eng's execution was prevented through the intervention of Sun Pao-ch'i (q.v.), a former premier of the Peking government who had no personal acquaintance with Ch'eng, but who was impressed by his sincerity.

Ch'eng She-wo thought it prudent to leave Peking and to move to Shanghai. By that time the Northern Expedition was well under way. In April 1927 the National Government was inaugurated at Nanking. Ch'eng immediately went to the new capital, where he founded the Min-sheng pao [people's livelihood newspaper]. As soon as the Kuomintang had completed the second stage of the Northern Expedition and had brought Peking under its control, Ch'eng hastened back to the old capital to resume personal charge of his Shih-chieh group of newspapers. In 1929 he also served as chief secretary of the Peiping University area during the brief period when the National Government introduced the university zoning system for the country.

In 1930 Ch'eng left China to visit Japan, Europe, and the United States. In England he attended lectures at the London School of Economics. In 1931 he went from England to the United States in the company of Ch'eng Ts'ang-po, who later became the publisher of the Central Daily News. The two men visited the Missouri School of Journalism on the invitation of Dean Williams. Ch'eng returned to Shanghai in July of 1 93 1 . His papers in Peiping and Nanking continued to thrive, and Ch'eng was determined to make use of what he had learned from his foreign trip to make further improvements. In May 1934 the Min-sheng pao clashed with the Executive Yuan, of which Wang Ching-wei (q.v.) was then president. The paper was suspended for three days. Ch'eng She-wo pursued the quarrel further; as a result, he was arrested and the paper was banned. On his release, Ch'eng, greatly disappointed by Nanking's interference with the freedom of the press, moved to the International Settlement at Shanghai. There he made intensive preparations to launch the Li-pao [stand-up journal]. This newspaper appeared for the first time on 1 September 1935. In many ways it proved to be Ch'eng's most successful publication, developing into one of the outstanding newspapers of republican China. The success of the Li-pao was indicated by the fact that advertisers nocked to it and paid for advertising space at the same rates as those charged by the largest newspaper in Shanghai, the Sin-wen pao [the news]. By 1937, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, the Li-pao claimed a daily circulation of 200,000, the largest of any Chinese paper at that time. During these years Ch'eng She-wo divided his time between Shanghai and Peiping, where his Shih-chieh jih-pao remained a leading paper. When Sino-Japanese hostilities broke out in the north in July 1937, he happened to be in Peiping and thus was immediately involved in the war. The Japanese took over his paper and included his name on the membership list of the Japanesesponsored peace maintenance committee formed in Peiping. Ch'eng hid himself and managed to escape to Nanking in September. He then went to Hankow, where he made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Hankow edition of the Shih-chieh jih-pao.

Ch'eng then moved the Li-pao from Shanghai to Hong Kong, where it began publication on 1 April 1938. In November 1941 he predicted in his paper that war would soon break out between Japan and the United States. By that time he had been invited by the National Government to be a member of the People's Political Council. On 15 November 1941 he flew to Chungking to attend a meeting of the Political Council. He had planned to return to Hong Kong in December, but, fortunately for him, the War in the Pacific began before he made the trip. The Japanese occupied Hong Kong and immediately confiscated the Li-pao. With the help of the Kwangsi provincial authorities, Ch'eng She-wo planned a school of journalism at Kweilin, with separate departments for editorial workers and printers. The school opened in 1943, and the first year ended with great promise. The Kwangsi authorities allotted land for the expansion of its buildings, and they were ready for occupancy in the summer of 1944. However, the Japanese invaded the area and destroyed the new buildings. Proceeding from Kweilin to Chungking, Ch'eng began preparation to publish the Shihchieh jih-pao in' the wartime capital. It began publication on 1 April 1945. A few months later, Japan surrendered. About that time, together with Chang Chu-p'ing, a former general manager of the famous "four newspapers group" in Shanghai, Ch'eng planned the organization of a publishing house for the publication of a chain of tabloids in the principal cities of China. The plan proved to be impractical, however. Ch'eng returned to Shanghai in October 1945 to resume the publication of the Li-pao. In November he went to Peiping to restore the Shih-chieh jih-pao . Finding that conditions were not conducive to running the Li-pao along prewar lines, he sold the paper to Kuomintang interests represented by P'an Kung-chan (q.v.). Ch'eng then devoted his full attention to his Peiping daily newspaper, the Shih-chieh jih-pao. In 1947 he was elected to the Legislative Yuan. He became increasingly critical of the Chinese Communists, and when they captured Peiping at the beginning of 1 949, Ch'eng was singled out for special attack and was termed a man who "consistently holds a hostile attitude toward the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people." At'the time of the Chinese Communist occupation of Peiping, Ch'eng was on his wayfrom Shanghai to the old capital, and he stopped over at Tientsin. He at once returned to Shanghai. Later in the year he moved his family to Hong Kong. In 1952 Ch'eng moved to Taiwan, where he attended the sessions of the Legislative Yuan regularly. In 1956 he founded World Journalism Junior College in Taipei and became its president. In 1960 he made a tour of the United States at the invitation of the State Department and visited Europe on his way back to Taiwan. In September 1963, the Taipei Press Council was set up under the auspices of the Taipei Newspaper Publishers Association for the promotion of journalism. Ch'eng She-wo was one of the six members of the council, which also included Hsiao T'ung-tzu and Huang Shao-ku. Ch'eng T'ien-fang m ^ Wc Alt. Cheng Tien-fong