Chiang T'ing-fu (7 December 1895-9 October 1965), known as T. F. Tsiang, scholar and diplomat. After teaching diplomatic history at Nankai (1923-29) and Tsinghua (1929-35) universities, he became ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1936. After February 1938 he served as director of the political department of the Executive Yuan. He was named permanent representative to the United Nations in 1947 and was appointed ambassador to the United States in 1961.

Shaoyang, Hunan province, was the birthplace of T. F. Tsiang. His father, Chiang Hsuhsueh, was an independent farmer who owned a small general store and lived in comfortable, though not affluent, circumstances. Although the family had the conventional Chinese respect for education, it was not known for scholarly attainments.

At the age of five, T. F. Tsiang, together with his brother and their cousins, was placed under a private tutor to prepare for regular schooling. A year later he was sent to a neighborhood school to study the Confucian classics. He was also required to read portions of a major historical work, the Tzu-chih Cung-chien [comprehensive mirror for aid in government], and of the celebrated commentaries by the seventeenthcentury Hunanese scholar and patriot Wang Fu-chih (ECCP, II, 817-19) entitled Tu fung-chien lun [on reading the comprehensive mirror].

In 1905, T. F. Tsiang left home for Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, to attend the Ming-te School. The founder of the school was Hu Yuan-t'an (q.v.), one of the most distinguished Hunanese educators of his time. In 1906, Tsiang transferred to a school run by American Presbyterian missionaries in Hsiangt'an, Hunan, so that he could study English. He remained there until the outbreak of the 1911 revolution, when instruction was suspended. Mrs. William R. Lingle, the principal of the school, planned to return to the United States, and T. F. Tsiang decided to go with her. They had reached Shanghai when they learned that conditions in Hunan had so improved that it Chiang T'ing-fu was posssible for the school to open again. Accordingly, Mrs Lingle returned to Hunan. T. F. Tsiang was determined to go to the United States, however, and he sailed alone. He arrived at San Francisco in February 1912. A Chinese pastor from Chinatown put him in touch with a YMCA secretary, who arranged for him to go to Parkville, Missouri, to enter Park College, a self-help institution where needy students could defray part of their expenses by working part time for the school. T. F. Tsiang managed to complete his first year at Park College, but found himself unable to meet expenses during the second year. In desperation, he wrote to the Hunan provincial government to request scholarship assistance. The request was granted, and he was graduated from Park College in 1914.

In the autumn of 1914 T. F. Tsiang entered Oberlin College. He was graduated from Oberlin in 1918. He then went to France, where he served as a YMCA secretary for the Chinese labor battalion attached to the French army. He returned to the United States in 1919 and entered Columbia University as a graduate student in modern history. Unlike most Chinese seeking advanced degrees in history in the United States, Tsiang eschewed Chinese subjects and wrote his dissertation in the field of British political history. It was entitled "Labor and Empire: a Study of the Reaction of British Labor, Mainly as Represented in Parliament, to British Imperialism since 1880." He received the Ph.D. degree from Columbia in February 1923. During his years as a graduate student in New York, T. F. Tsiang also headed the Chinese students' club at Columbia and edited the Chinese Students Monthly, an English-language periodical circulated throughout the United States. In 1921, he was among the representatives of the Chinese Students Alliance who went to Washington to monitor the Chinese delegation to the Washington Conference in order to prevent the surrender of China's vital interests to Japan.

In 1923 T. F. Tsiang returned to China after an absence of more than ten years to join the faculty of Nankai University at Tientsin. While a graduate student at Columbia, he had developed a keen interest in the history ofChina's foreign relations. In reading Chinese diplomatic history, he had been struck by the fact that it usually had been reconstructed by foreigners and, thus, the Chinese side of the story had never been told adequately. In the 1920's the subject gained new importance because of the availability for the first time of documents from the Ch'ing archives. The Palace Museum at Peking, repository of the archives of the Grand Council of State of the Ch'ing government and of the Tsung-li yamen, a special board that had been established in 1861 under the Grand Council to handle foreign affairs, began publishing documents relating to China's foreign relations in the nineteenth century. Studying these documents, Tsiang gained new insights into the conduct of China's foreign relations during the late imperial period and the forces that had hindered and delayed China's adjustment to the modern world. After six years at Nankai, T. F. Tsiang in 1929 accepted an invitation to go to Tsinghua University at Peiping as chairman of the history department. The move afforded him greater opportunities for scholarly research, since the documents in the Palace Museum were close at hand. Moreover, Tsinghua, a wealthier institution than Nankai, could afford to allot more funds for the acquisition of books, historical documents from private collections, and papers of eminent families. During the next few years, he was able to build up at Tsinghua a collection of great value in the field of modern Chinese history. Tsiang was also successful in creating one of the best-balanced history faculties in China; it included such leading scholars as Ch'en Yin-k'o and Lei Hai-tsung (qq.y.). Tsiang reduced the teaching load of his staff so that the professors could devote more time to research. Through his efforts, Tsinghua also adopted a system of sabbatical leaves for its teaching staff, the first such system in China. T. F. Tsiang was a teacher who possessed the ability to convey to students his intellectual excitement and enthusiasm for the importance and relevance of his subject. Tsiang also assisted some foreign students in China. John K. Fairbank (later a professor of Chinese history at Harvard), who had come to Peiping in 1932 to study Chinese, began to work on Chinese documents under Tsiang's guidance. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1 93 1 , T. F. Tsiang and a group which included Hu Shih, V. K. Ting (Ting Wenchiang), Wong Wen-hao, and Fu Ssu-nien (qq.v.) began publishing a political weekly, the Tu-li p'ing-lun [independent critic]. The first issue appeared on 22 May 1932, and the magazine was an instant success. Many Chinese university students, patriotic intellectuals, and Communists clamored for war against Japan, but Tsiang counseled patience and cool-headedness. He believed that the Far Eastern crisis was the prelude to a global conflict which was already in the making. Since he did not consider it wise for China to attempt to fight Japan at the wrong time and without allies, he advocated a policy of temporizing. "Our humiliations at the hand of Japan," he wrote in an editorial on 13 March 1933, "cannot be wiped out by fighting one skirmish here and another skirmish there. Such sporadic fighting, unsupported by adequate preparations in the military, economic and diplomatic fields, is worse than useless; it only serves to allow the enemy to swallow us up by a piecemeal process. Let us never forget that the Sino-Japanese question is a world problem of the first magnitude. Should the Japanese militarists persist in committing aggressions against China, they will sooner or later dig their own graves." T. F. Tsiang's articles attracted much attention. In the summer of 1934, Chiang Kai-shek, through the banker and politician Wu Tingch'ang (q.v.), asked Tsiang to come to Kuling, a mountain resort in Kiangsi, for consultation. The problems they discussed included national unification and Japanese aggression. T. F. Tsiang voiced strong opposition to unifying China by military force and to undertaking an all-out war with Japan. Later in 1934 he met with Chiang again, this time in Nanchang. It was his year of sabbatical, and he intended to leave for Europe on a study and observation tour. Chiang Kai-shek requested that he go to Moscow first as his personal representative to assess the possibilities of securing Soviet support against Japan. Tsiang consented to serve on a private basis. In Moscow, he had interviews with a number of responsible officials. He made it clear that the National Government of China hoped to obtain Soviet support against Japan, but noted that the domestic policies of the National Government would remain opposed to Communism. Stomaniakoff, the Soviet deputy commissar for foreign affairs, assured him that anti-Communism was no obstacle to friendly relations and cited Russian relations with France and with Turkey as examples. He also declared that, so far as the Soviet Union was concerned, Chiang Kai-shek was China's only leader. After a stay of three months, Tsiang left Moscow for Western Europe. He published his impressions of the countries he visited in a series of articles in the Tu-li pHng-lun. When he returned to China in 1935, he summarized his observations in an article in the Kuo-wen chou-pao [national news weekly] of 30 September 1935. He described the conflict of ideologies in Europe and stated his belief that a showdown was imminent. He also ventured the opinion that the Western democracies were stronger, both materially and spiritually, than either Fascism or Communism.

In December 1935, not long after T. F. Tsiang's return, Chiang Kai-shek assumed the presidency of the Executive Yuan of the National Government at Nanking. At that time he invited two members of the Tu-li p'ing-lun group who were not members of the Kuomintang to join the new government ; Wong Wenhao became secretary-general of the Executive Yuan at Nanking, and T. F. Tsiang became the director of the political department of the Executive Yuan. Tsiang left Tsinghua University in December 1935 to go to Nanking. In October 1936 Tsiang was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union, with the mission of improving Sino-Soviet relations. The National Government hoped that the Soviet Union might be induced to come to the aid of China in the event of war with Japan. T. F. Tsiang soon discovered, however, that although Moscow was prepared to contemplate with equanimity China's entering into an all-out conflict with Japan, the Russian Communist leaders had no intention of becoming directly involved in'the Far Eastern theater at that time. In December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek was detained at Sian by Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.). In Moscow, Pravda published a lead article extolling Chiang Kai-shek's leadership, asserting that Chiang alone had the prestige and authority to lead a united China against Japan, and calling the Sian Incident a plot by pro-Japanese politicians headed by Wang Ching-wei. Bogomolov, the Soviet ambassador to China, was then in Moscow for consultation. He called on T. F. Tsiang and asked him to cable the Pravda article to the National Government in China. Tsiang did so, but he omitted the portion of the article that concerned Wang Ching-wei, then one of the most prominent political leaders of the country. He feared that the publication in China ofso sensational and ungrounded a charge would discredit the article as a whole and create dissension in the National Government at a time of grave crisis.

Chiang Kai-shek was released at Sian on 25 December 1936. War with Japan then became inevitable. Influential men at Nanking cherished great hopes for Soviet participation in the war. T. F. Tsiang, on the basis of his estimates of the situation in Moscow, did all he could to dispel such illusions. He thus incurred the displeasure and antagonism of some officials of the National Government.

The Sino-Japanese war broke out in July 1937. A Sino-Soviet non-aggression pact was signed on 21 August 1937, and in September a formal agreement was concluded for collaboration between the National Government and the Communists in China. T. F. Tsiang was assigned responsibility for seeking Soviet assistance to China. Shortly afterward, General Yang Chieh (q.v.) was sent to Moscow from Nanking to arrange for the purchase of Soviet arms and equipment. Yang reported that Russian participation was imminent. Many influential officials at Nanking believed him. T. F. Tsiang, China's ranking diplomatic representative in the Soviet capital, was accused of being misinformed. In February 1938 he was recalled from Moscow.

On his return, he found a China very different from the country he had left two years before. The coastal cities had been lost to the Japanese, and the National Government had evacuated to Hankow. The well-known financier H. H. K'ung, then president of the Executive Yuan, urged Tsiang to return to his former post as director of its political department. Tsiang hesitated for a time and devoted himself to writing. In 1938, after the National Government moved from Hankow to Chungking, T. F. Tsiang resumed his duties as director of the political department of the Executive Yuan in the wartime capital. In early 1940 he supervised the removal of government offices and hospitals to the outskirts of Chungking to escape Japanese bombing. The same year he was assigned responsibility for preparing and coordinating the national budget. Beginning in late 1942 Tsiang became involved in preparations for postwar relief and represented China at meetings of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the United States (Atlantic City, 1943), Canada (Montreal, 1944), and England (London, 1945). In 1945 he was appointed director general of the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He resigned from that post in 1946 because of disagreement about policy with T. V. Soong, then president of the Executive Yuan. Although Tsiang hoped to return to academic life and accepted a visiting professorship at the University of California, Chinese friends persuaded him to remain in China. The only government post that Tsiang wanted at that time, the governorship of his native Hunan province, was unavailable. He accepted the temporary assignment of representing China at meetings of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) held at Shanghai. In the summer of 1947, while in New York in connection with ECAFE business, he was instructed to represent China on the Security Council of the United Nations in the absence of the permanent representative, Quo T'ai-ch'i (Kuo T'ai-ch'i, q.v.). In September, he was one of the five Chinese delegates to the meeting of the General Assembly. Soon thereafter, when Quo T'ai-ch'i was appointed ambassador to Brazil, T. F. Tsiang was named as China's permanent representative to the United Nations. China was then at the peak of her influence in the infant international organization, and Tsiang attempted to use that influence to press for orderly solutions to the many problems of postwar Asia. His thinking was determined by his belief that nationalism was the elemental force in the contemporary world. He argued that the Western colonial powers should take a liberal and far-sighted view of the national aspirations of the dependent peoples and that undue delay in settling colonial questions would make their eventual solution more difficult, more costly, and less rational. He also held that independence should be attained and followed by orderly progress, which could be achieved only in cooperation with the former metropolitan powers. He was the author or co-author of numerous resolutions which contributed in no small measure to Indonesian independence. He was personally disappointed that, after the Republic of Indonesia had become an independent state in December 1949, one of its first acts was to accord diplomatic recognition to the new Communist regime in China.

After the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China was established in October 1949, T. F. Tsiang's position in the United Nations became increasingly difficult. His right to represent China in the international organization was challenged on 10 January 1950 at a meeting of the Security Council, when Yakov A. Malik, the Soviet representative, demanded his immediate withdrawal. T. F. Tsiang met the Soviet challenge with dignity. When the Security Council rejected the Soviet demand, Malik walked out of the meeting. His departure marked the beginning of a sevenmonth Soviet boycott of United Nations organs. Trygve Lie, then the Secretary General of the United Nations, attempted to persuade the Soviet representative to return to the organization. He also worked for the seating of the Chinese Communists and circulated among members of the Security Council a confidential memorandum setting forth legal arguments for unseating T. F. Tsiang. Tsiang fought back by characterizing Lie's memorandum as "bad law and bad politics." Beginning in 1950, the issue of Chinese representation in the United Nations became a thorny problem at sessions of the General Assembly. The issue led to bitter controversy over the right of the representatives of the Republic of China to represent China at the United Nations. As China's permanent representative, T. F. Tsiang bore the brunt of the battle to maintain his position and that of his government. With unflagging tenacity, he argued that the government headed by Chiang Kai-shek was the only legitimate government of China and that it was based on a constitution drafted and passed by duly elected representatives of the Chinese people. Although T. F. Tsiang's speeches at the United Nations gained relatively few converts, they won the respect of many, including some of his opponents in the organization.

In November 1961, T. F. Tsiang was appointed Chinese ambassador to the United States. He presented his credentials in Washington in January 1962, though he continued to serve concurrently as China's representative at the United Nations until July 1962, when Liu Chieh, China's ambassador to Canada, was appointed to succeed him. Tsiang served as his government's ambassador at Washington until April 1965, when he was succeeded by Chou Shu-kai, who had been ambassador to Spain. He then moved back to New York, where he was hospitalized. He died of cancer at New York Hospital on 9 October 1965, at the age of 69. Tsiang's published works include two volumes ofChin-tai Chung-kuo wai-chiao shih tzu-liao chi-yao [essential documents on modern Chinese diplomatic history] . This work was planned in three volumes, but only two volumes were published, in 1930 and 1934. During a brief period of respite from official duties in 1938, he produced Chung-kuo chin-tai shih ta-kang [outline of modern Chinese history], a concise and thoughtful survey of China's position in the modern world. He also published articles on Chinese diplomatic history in the Tsing Hua Journal ofChinese Studies and was an editor of the Chinese Political and Social Science Review.

T. F. Tsiang's marriage to T'ang Yu-jui ended in divorce. He married Hilda Shen on 21 July 1948 and was survived by her and by the four children of his previous marriage.