Li Shih-tseng 李石曾 Orig. Li Yü-ying 李煜瀛 Li Shih-tseng (1881-), leader of the work-study movement in France who became known as one of the "four elder statesmen of the Kuomintang." Although his native place was Kaoyang, Chihli (Hopei), Li Shih-tseng was born in Peking. He and his elder brother, Li Kun-ying, were the sons of Li Hung-tsao (ECCP, I, 47172), who held such high offices in the Ch'ing government as those of Grand Councillor and tutor to Tsai-ch'ien (ECCP, H, 729-31), the T'ung-chih emperor. Li Shih-tseng was exposed to reformist ideas at an early age: his tutor, Ch'i Ling-ch'en, the father of Ch'i Ju-shan (q.v.), was a reformist as well as a distinguished scholar; and a frequent visitor to the Li home was Wang Chao (1859-1933), a supporter of the reform movement of K'ang Yu-wei (q.v.). After Li Hung-tsao died in 1897, the Ch'ing government awarded both of his sons the rank of lung-chang, which qualified them to hold posts on the level of a departmental head in a government board. In 1901 Li Shih-tseng met Chang Jen-chieh (q.v.), with whom he established a life-long friendship. The two young men had many common interests, the most compelling of which was a desire to go abroad. Accordingly, when Sun Pao-ch'i (q.v.) was appointed minister to France in 1902, they joined his staff as attaches. On his way to France, Li stopped for a time in June at Shanghai, where he met Wu Chih-hui and Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei (qq.v.), who also were to become his life-long friends. In later years, Li, Chang, Wu, and Ts'ai became known as the "four elder statesmen of the Kuomintang." After arriving in Paris, Li Shih-tseng enrolled at the Pasteur Institute to study biology. He met Sun Yat-sen in 1905 and joined the French branch of the T'ung-meng-hui later that year. Wu Chih-hui arrived in Paris at the end of 1905 and joined with Li Shih-tseng and Chang Jen-chieh in founding the Shih-chieh-she [world society], a cultural and revolutionary publishing house with an affiliated printing establishment. Chang financed the establishment of the Hsin shih-chi [new century], which began publication in June 1907 and issued 121 numbers before suspending publication on 21 May 1910 because of heavy losses. Li and W'u, both of whom seem to have fallen under the spell of anarchism, wrote most of the articles for the magazine.

In 1907 Li Shih-tseng and Hsia Chien-chung founded the Far Eastern Biological Society. Li did considerable research on the soybean at the Pasteur Institute, and in 1908 he became a vegetarian. He also decided to establish an enterprise for the manufacture of soybean products, and in 1909, after a trip to China to obtain supplies and workers, he established the Usine Caseo Sojaine at Colombes. The more than 30 Chinese workers at the factory used their wages to pursue their studies in France. They were escorted to France by Ch'i Ju-shan, whose elder brother, Ch'i Chu-shan, managed the factory. Li Shih-tseng later published the results of his research on the soybean as Le Soya : sa culture, ses usages alimentaires, therapique agricole et industrielles.

When the news of the Wuchang revolt of October 1911 reached France, Li Shih-tseng and his associates, one of whom was Chang Chi (q.v.), hurried back to China. On arrival in Peking, Li was elected vice president, serving under Wang Ching-wei (q.v.), of the Peking- Tientsin branch of the T'ung-meng-hui. In January 1912 he and some fellow anarchists established the Chin-te hui [society to advance morality]. Its basic tenet was that social reform must accompany political change, and its members pledged that they would refrain from eating meat, drinking alcoholic beverages, visiting prostitutes, taking concubines, gambling, and accepting government office. In April 1912 Li Shih-tseng joined with Wu Chih-hui, Chang Jen-chieh, Wang Ching-wei, Chang Chi, and Ch'i Ju-shan in founding the Liu-fa chien-hsueh hui [society for frugal study in France], also known as la Societe Rationelle des Etudiants Chinois en France. This group devised a plan, known as the thrift-study program, to enable Chinese students to study in France at an annual cost of China $600. A preparatory school, with Ch'i Ju-shan in charge, was set up in Peking to teach French to aspiring students for a six-month period. The first class included Li Shu-hua and Cheng Yü-hsiu (qq.v.). By the time the first group of 30 students reached France in January 1913, Li Shih-tseng had arranged for them to be admitted to the College de Montargis, south of Paris. In all, the thrift-study program enabled more than 100 students to study in France.

After the so-called second revolution collapsed in September 1913, most Kuomintang leaders were forced to flee China. Wu Chih-hui went to England; Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei took his family to Germany; and Wang Ching-wei, Tseng Chung-ming (q.v.), and Li Shih-tseng took their families to France. Wang lived with Li in Montargis and lectured to the thrift-study students. In the spring of 1915 Li, Wu, Ts'ai, and Wang met at Toulouse to discuss plans to establish some publications. Later that year, la Societe Franco-Chinois d'Education was organized in Paris, with Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei as the Chinese president. This group took advantage of the labor shortage in Europe by organizing the work-study movement, creating the Ch'in-kung chien-hsueh hui, or Societe Rationelle des Etudiants-Travailleurs Chinois en France. This program differed from the earlier thrift-study plan in that students worked in French factories and other businesses to finance their studies. More than 2,000 Chinese students, many of them from Hunan or Szechwan, participated in the program.

When Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei became chancellor of Peking University in 1916, he invited Li Shih-tseng to join its faculty as professor of biology. Li's soybean products business was forced by wartime conditions to suspend operations, and he returned to China in 1917. He devoted considerable attention to securing the return to China of the French portion of the Boxer Indemnity Fund for use in cultural and educational activities. After protracted negotiations, a Sino-French agreement was signed in 1925. Li also sponsored the establishment in 1920 of the Sino-French University near Peking and the Institut Franco-Chinois de Lyon in France. Li served as chairman of the board of directors of the Sino-French University, with Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei as president. The Institut Franco-Chinois was housed in a fortress at Lyon which had been donated to it by the French government. The Chinese students then in France expected that they would be the first to be admitted to the Institut Franco-Chinois. However, Li and his associates, who had received financial support for this venture from the Canton government, chose a new group of about 100 students from Kwangtung and Kwangsi for the first class. Wu Chih-hui accompanied the students to Lyon and became president of the Institut Franco-Chinois. In September 1921 a group of about 100 work-study students, organized and led by Communist students, went to Lyon and forced their way into the Institut to protest their exclusion from the first class. About 103 of them, including Ch'en Yi, Ts'ai Ho-sen, and Li Li-san (qq.v.) were arrested and deported from France. The Institut prepared students for the University of Lyon and functioned as the overseas branch of the Sino-French University. It remained in existence until 1949, but came to serve as little more than a dormitory for Chinese students who were studying at various French universities.

At the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held at Canton in January 1924, Li Shih-tseng and Wu Chih-hui were elected to the party's Central Supervisory Committee. By mid-1926 Chang Jen-chieh and Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei also had become full members of this important party organ.

After Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) occupied Peking in October 1924 and took control of the Peking government, he decided to expel P'u-yi (q.v.), the last Manchu emperor, from the Forbidden City. Li Shih-tseng was appointed the civilian representative to the eviction, which took place on 5 November. Li then was appointed chairman of the committee in charge of the inventory and custody of the palace treasures. In 1925 the Peking Palace Museum was founded, with Li as chairman of the board and Yi P'ei-chi (q.v.) as curator. Also in 1925, Li was created a Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur in recognition of his efforts on behalf of Sino-French cultural cooperation. In the meantime, Sun Yat-sen, who had come to Peking for discussions with Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) and his associates, had appointed Li to the Central Political Council. Sun died in Peking on 12 March 1925, -and his remains were kept in temporary custody at the Pi-yun-ssu [temple] on the Sino-French University campus. After the 8 March 1926 incident at the Taku harbor and the 18 March 1926 demonstration at Peking which resulted in the death of more than 40 people (for details, see Feng Yü-hsiang), Tuan Ch'i-jui ordered the arrest of Hsü Ch'ien, Li Ta-chao, Ku Meng-yü (qq.v.), Yi P'ei-chi, and Li Shih-tseng on charges of instigating the demonstration and disseminating Communist propaganda. Li took refuge in the French hospital and then escaped to Canton. During the Kuomintang split of 1927, Li Shih-tseng, W'u Chih-hui, Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, and Chang Jen-chieh staunchly supported the conservative faction of Chiang Kai-shek. They were among the members of the Central Supervisory Committee who met at Shanghai in April and adopted a resolution demanding the expulsion of all Communists from the Kuomintang and who supported the government established by Chiang Kai-shek at Nanking on 18 April in opposition to the Wuhan regime (see Wang Ching-wei) .

Together with Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei and Wu Chih-hui, Li sponsored the creation of the Ta-hsueh-yuan [board of universities], with Ts'ai as its president, to replace the ministry of education. The new system, patterned on the French system, provided for the establishment of "university districts," and in 1928 three such districts were created. Li headed the Peiping district, with Li Shu-hua as his deputy. The system was found to be unsuited to China, however, and it was abolished by Chiang Monlin (Chiang Meng-lin, q.v.) after he assumed office as minister of education in 1929. Li Shih-tseng also was a sponsor of the Academia Sinica, established in 1928, and the National Peiping Research Academy, established in 1929. In October of that year, the new National Government at Nanking promulgated regulations for the Palace Museum and confirmed Li as chairman of the museum's board of directors. He held this office until November 1932.

Li Shih-tseng went to Geneva in 1932 to organize the Chinese delegation to the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation sponsored by the League of Nations. While at Geneva, he established the Sino-International Library. After returning to China, Li commuted regularly between Shanghai, where he lived, and Nanking, where he participated in government and party affairs.

When the Sino-Japanese var began in July 1937, Li was in Europe, traveling between Paris and Geneva. He returned to China, but left the war-torn country in 1941 and went to New York. He cooperated with an American named Dolinet, who was the publisher of the magazine Free World, in establishing a Chinese edition of that journal. In 1943 he founded the Wood Shi-fee Institute to honor his long-time friend and associate Wu Chih-hui. Although he maintained residence in New York until mid- 1945, Li made several trips to Chungking and Kunming during the war.

After returning to China in 1945, Li joined with Yang Chia-lo in compiling an encyclopedia, the first volume of which was published in 1946. In September 1948 he went to Peiping to celebrate the nineteenth anniversary of the National Peiping Research Academy. When the Chinese Communists began to threaten the old capital, he fled China and went to Geneva, where he remained until Switzerland recognized the People's Republic of China in 1950. Li then moved to Uruguay, taking the Sino- International Library collection with him, and established residence in Montevideo. After 1954, he maintained a second home in Taiwan and served as a national policy adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and a member of the Central Appraisal Committee, which superseded the Central Supervisory Committee.

Li Shih-tseng married three times. His first wife, nee Yao T'ung-yi, died in Paris in 1941. On 14 February 1946 he married Lin Su-shan at Shanghai; she died in Montevideo in 1954. In 1957, at the age of 76, he married T'ien Pao-t'ien, who was some 40 years his junior, in Taipei. Li and his first wife had a son, Li Tsung-wei, and a daughter, Li Ya-mei.