Hou Te-pang T. Chih-pen Hou Te-pang (1890-), the foremost Chinese chemical engineer of his generation, was chief engineer (1921-49) and general manager (194549) of China's leading chemical works, the Yungli Chemical Industry Company at Tientsin. After 1949 he held important technical posts in Peking, where he became vice minister of the chemical industry in 1958.

Born in Minhou, Fukien, Hou Te-pang received his early education in his native province. He then went to Shanghai, where he enrolled in the Fukien-Anhwei Railroad School. After being graduated from that institution in 1908, he worked for two years as a construction supervisor on the Tientsin-Pukow railway. In 1910 Hou passed a government examination for a Boxer Indemnity Fund scholarship and entered Tsinghua College to prepare for study in the United States. He went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1913 and received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1917. He then went to New York, where he studied tanning methods at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1917-18 and did graduate work at Columbia University. Hou received an M.S. in 1919 and a Ph.D. degree in 1921. His thesis, dealing with iron tannage, was printed in the Journal of the American Leather Chemists Association in 1921.

Hou Te-pang returned to China in 1921 and became chief engineer of the Yungli Soda Company at Tangku, Hopei. The company had been founded by Fan Hsü-tung (1892-1945), a cousin of Fan Yuan-lien and one of the most prominent industrial pioneers of that period. In 1922 Hou put the company's soda plant into operation, utilizing the Solvay process. In 1933 the Yungli Soda Company was renamed the Yungli Chemical Industry Company, and it began to produce ammonium sulfate. Hou Te-pang visited the United States to prepare designs for the establishment of a chemical fertilizer plant near Nanking and to recruit young Chinese engineers for the company. He returned to China in 1935 to supervise the construction of a plant to produce nitrogen-bearing chemical fertilizers. The plant was ready for operation by the end of 1936. In recognition of Hou Te-pang's outstanding work, the Chinese Engineering Society gave him a special award at its annual meeting in 1935. In 1937 the Japanese occupied the Yungli plants near Tientsin and Nanking. Fan Hsütung then decided to establish a new plant in western China. Because the site selected for the plant at Wu-t'ung-ch'iao, Szechwan, presented special engineering and design problems, Hou Te-pang went to Germany late in 1938 to seek technical assistance. However, Sino-German relations were deteriorating, and the German engineers were not cooperative. Hou Te-pang and his assistants then went to the United States. Hou's research in the United States during this period, with his technicians in Szechwan carrying on necessary experiments under his long-distance direction, led to improvements in the process used by Yungli in manufacturing industrial soda. The Yungli workers named it the Hou process.

Hou Te-pang's work in the field of chemical engineering brought him international recognition during the Second World War. In 1943 he was made a fellow of the institute of chemistry at the Academia Sinica. In 1944 the National Government conferred a special award on him for his assistance in designing small chemical plants for military use during the war. Hou again visited the United States, where he received an honorary D.Sc. degree from Columbia University. His book. The Manufacture of Soda, with Special Reference to the Ammonia Process, originally published in English by the American Chemical Society in 1933, appeared in a revised edition in 1942. Hou was elected to honorary membership in the American Chemical Society and in the Society of Chemical Industry in London. During the war years, he also designed a soda plant for the government of Brazil. In 1945 the Tata Chemical Works in India retained him as an engineering consultant. However, other duties permitted him to make only one trip to India under that arrangement, in 1947. In 1945, after the death of Fan Hsü-tung, Hou became general manager of the Yungli Chemical Industry Company, and he continued to serve as its chief engineer. Hou went to the United States in 1946 for discussions with the Export-Import Bank in Washington, D.C., about a loan for the construction of a new plant in Hunan province. Yungli was the only Chinese industrial enterprise to obtain approval for a loan from the United States government in the postwar period. However, the continuing political and military instability in China prevented the implementation of the agreement. In 1948 Hou became the first recipient of the Fan Hsü-tung memorial award. He donated the proceeds from the award to the library of the Chinese Chemical Industry Society in Shanghai. The same year, Hou visited the United States as a counselor of the National Government's ministry of industry. While abroad, he submitted a paper, "Postwar Developments in the Synthetic Ammonia Industry in the United States," to the annual meeting of the China Engineering Society. After spending more than 25 years in private business as China's foremost chemical engineer, Hou Te-pang began a new career in the People's Republic of China at the age of 59. He was elected vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Scientific Societies in 1950, and he continued to hold that post after the organization became the Scientific and Technical Association of China in 1958. He also served as chairman of the China Chemical Society and of the preparatory committee of the China Chemical Engineering Society. He was named to the standing committee, and technical sciences department, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955 and to membership on the Scientific Planning Commission of the State Council in 1957. In 1958 he was appointed vice minister of the chemical industry in the Central People's Government in Peking.

Hou Te-pang was active in the affairs of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and of the Democratic National Construction Association. He also was a delegate to the National People's Congress. Hou represented the People's Republic of China at scientific meetings in India and Pakistan in 1954-55 and headed the Chinese delegation of chemical fertilizer specialists that visited Japan in the winter of 1957. He was elected a member of the World Peace Council by the World Peace Congress in 1955, and he attended its meetings in Stockholm in 1956 and at Colombo in 1957. After the 1956 meeting in Sweden, Hou headed a Chinese cultural delegation that visited Italy, Switzerland, France, and Belgium during the spring of that year. He also served as a member of the board of directors of the China-Pakistan and Sino-Iraq Friendship associations.