Ho Hsiang-ning (1880-), the wife of Liao Chung-k'ai (q.v.), was the first woman to join the T'ung-meng-hui (1905). A member of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee (1926-31), she left the party and helped to found the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee. She served the Central People's Government as chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (1949-59). Although her native place was Nanhai (Namhoi) hsien, Kwangtung, Ho Hsiang-ning spent her early years in the British colony of Hong Kong, where her family was in the tea business. Little is known about her childhood. In 1897 she married Liao Chung-k'ai (q.v.) in Canton. Ho Hsiang-Ning's family gave them money so that they could go to Japan to study.

In 1902 Ho and Liao arrived in Tokyo. Liao Chung-k'ai studied at Waseda University, and Ho studied painting at the Tokyo Girls Art School. They met other Chinese students, many of whom were sympathetic to the anti-Manchu movement led by Sun Yat-sen. Ho Hsiang-ning and her husband met Sun in the summer of 1903, and they soon became active supporters of his plans for a revolution. In 1905 they joined the T'ung-meng-hui, of which Ho was the first female member. To avert the suspicion of the Japanese police, their residence in Tokyo was used as the T'ung-meng-hui headquarters. Ho did the housework even though it was unusual at this time for Chinese women from well-to-do families to concern themselves with domestic chores.

In 1911, a year after Ho's graduation from the Tokyo Girls Art School, she and Liao returned to Canton. She worked to recruit women for the revolutionary cause. After the failure of the so-called second revolution in 1913, she and Liao followed Sun Yat-sen to Japan. For the next decade, Ho spent much of her time in Tokyo with her two children. Liao Meng-hsing (Cynthia Liao), who had been born in Japan in 1903, attended school in Tokyo; Liao Ch'eng-chih (q.v.), born in Tokyo in 1908, received his early education there, and then returned to Canton in 1919 for middle school.

Liao Chung-k'ai returned to Canton in March 1923, taking Ho and Liao Meng-hsing with him. Ho took an active role in political affairs at Canton. She was one of three Chinese women who took part in the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in January 1924 at Canton. The others were Soong Ch'ing-ling, the wife of Sun Yat-sen, and Ch'en Pi-chün, the wife of Wang Ching-wei. Ho was appointed director of the women's department of the Kuomintang. In 1924, she was a member of the party that accompanied Sun Yat-sen to north China, and she was among those who witnessed his will in 1925.

After the death of Sun Yat-sen in March 1925, Liao Chung-k'ai became one of the most powerful political figures at Canton. He and his wife strongly supported Sun's policies of alignment with the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Union to achieve national unification in China. Conservative elements within the Kuomintang opposed the alliance, and on 20 August 1925 Liao was assassinated at Canton. Ho Hsiang-ning, who was with him at the time, was not injured.

In January 1926 Ho and Soong Ch'ing-ling became the- first women to be elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. In the winter of 1926, she moved to Wuhan, where Teng Ying-ch'ao, the wife of Chou En-lai, served for a time as her assistant.

In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek broke with the Communists and began a vigorous campaign to eliminate Communists in the areas of China under his effective control. That action led to the destruction of the women's department, and many girls and women working under Ho Hsiang-ning were imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Ho resigned from her posts in the Kuomintang and moved to Hong Kong. For some 20 years, she actively opposed the Kuomintang under the personal domination of Chiang Kaishek. Although she was reelected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in 1931, she did not take part in Kuomintang affairs. She and Soong Ch'ing-ling attempted to promote civil liberties in China and to defend political prisoners of the Kuomintang. For the most part, Ho lived quietly in Hong Kong with her daughter or traveled. During the Sino- Japanese war, she contributed to war relief work among refugees and troops in western China.

In 1948 Ho Hsiang-ning participated in the establishment of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee, one of the minor parties opposing the Nationalists and indirectly supporting the Chinese Communists during the final stages of the civil war. Li Chi-shen (q.v.) headed the organization, and Ho was elected to its standing committee.

Ho Hsiang-ning left Hong Kong for north China in April 1949. When the Central People's Government was established at Peking in October, she was elected to the Central People's Government Council and was made chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission and a member of the People's Procurator-General's Office. She served as chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission until 1959, although much of the administrative work was done by her son, Liao Ch'eng-chih, who was one of the vice chairmen. In August 1960, at the age of 80, Ho was elected chairman of the central committee of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee. She also held the office of honorary chairman of the China Women's Federation.

Ho Hsiang-ning was one of the first women of her generation to take an active role in the attempt to liberate women from the constraints imposed on them by traditional Chinese conservatism and superstition. Photographs taken at Peking in the 1960's showed Ho wearing her hair in the short, straight cut that she had worn at Canton 40 years earlier when such a style had been considered a reliable indicator of social radicalism and dangerous thoughts. Ho Hsiang-ning was also known in China as a poet-painter in the classical tradition. A collection of her paintings was published as Ho Hsiang-ning hua-chi. In 1957 she published a book of reminiscences about Sun Yat-sen and Liao Chung-k'ai called Hui-i Sun Chung-shan ho Liao Chung-k'ai. At the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the 1911 revolution in Peking, Ho was a featured speaker, and she wrote a lengthy article that appeared in the Peking People's Daily on 7 October 1961 and which gave a moving, if not always precise, account of the death of Sun Yat-sen.