Liu Wen-tao (3 April 1893-1 1 June 1967), served the National Government in such posts as minister to Germany and Austria ( 1 93 1-33) and minister (ambassador after 1934) to Italy (1933-37). Kwangchi hsien, Hupeh, was the birthplace of Liu Wen-tao. Little is known about his family background or early education. At the age of ten sui he tried to join the army, but was rejected because of his age and height. He persisted in his attempts to pursue a military career, and three years later he used documents belonging to a friend to gain admittance to the entrance examinations for the Hupeh Army Primary School. He passed the examinations, but his identity was discovered and he was brought before Hsiung Hsiang-sheng, the superintendent of the school, who allowed him to enroll under his own name. Liu did well in his studies, and he was promoted to the Wuchang Third Army Primary School. In 1909 he was admitted to the student-recruit corps of the Paoting Military Academy, and the following year he enrolled in the infantry course of the academy's first class.

With the outbreak of revolution in 1911, military schools suspended operations. Liu Wen-tao went south to Shanghai, where he served as a company commander in the forces of Ch'en Ch'i-mei (q.v.). After the republic was established, Liu returned to school in July 1912. Many of the students who had participated in the revolution became dissatisfied with the old-school Peiyang oflficers who had been running the academy. They elected representatives to present their demands for reform to the authorities. Liu headed this group, with T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.) representing the infantry division and Ch'en Ming-shu (q.v.) representing the artillery division. In December, Chiang Fang-chen (q.v.) became president of the academy. Because Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.), the minister of war, supported the older officers, many of whom were his proteges, he ignored Chiang's applications for academy funds. In June 1913, after Chiang had attempted to kill himself, Liu left the academy with Chiang, rejecting the advice of colleagues to bear with the situation for the three months remaining before his graduation. Liu's schoolmates raised a collection to send him to Japan to study. He studied law at Tokyo Imperial University and political science at Waseda. Because he believed that Chinese lacked understanding of political organization, he wrote a monograph, "Cheng-tang cheng-chih lun" [an essay on party politics]. After graduation in the autumn of 1916, he returned to China, where he showed his monograph to Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.). Liang was impressed with Liu's abilities. When he and Chiang Fang-chen went to Europe in December 1918, they took Liu with them. Liu soon enrolled at the Universitv of Paris.

In November 1920 Liu and his wife, Liao Shih-chao, translated into Chinese Uarmee nouvelle by the French socialist Jean Jaures, and their translation was published by the Commercial Press at Shanghai. Liu also published two articles, "National Defense and International Peace" and "China's Armament and World Peace," in the magazine Kai-tsao [reconstruction], edited by Chiang Fang-chen. After a brief trip to China in the summer of 1922 to raise funds to continue his education, Liu returned to France. He and his wife both received their doctorates in 1925.

Liu Wen-tao returned to China in the summer of 1925 to become a professor at Chung-hua University in Wuchang. Soon afterwards, his Paoting classmate Ch'en Ming-shu invited him to Canton to meet Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang and Ch'en jointly sponsored Liu's membership in the Kuomintang. Liu suggested that it would be best for him to go to Hunan and w'ork among his former students who had joined the military establishment there. He went to Changsha that winter and, at the invitation of military governor Chao Heng-t"i, delivered a lecture to the officers of the Hunan Army. Liu elaborated on the theory advanced in Uarmee nouvelle that an army should rely on a basic principle for victory, saying that the armies of China should rely on the Three People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen. The lecture was well received, and T'ang Sheng-chih later had it published.

After T'ang Sheng-chih supplanted Chao Heng-t'i and gave his support to the revolutionaries, Liu Wen-tao became party representative in T'ang's newly created Eighth Army. When the Northern Expedition was launched in July 1926, he also became chief of the political department in Chiang Kai-shek's field headquarters. After the occupation of the Wuhan cities that autumn, he was named mayor of Hankow, a member of the Hankow party executive committee, and an official of the Hupeh provincial government. He was dismissed from these posts in March 1927, after the Kuomintang had split into the left-wing faction, led by Wang Ching-wei, and the rightwing faction, led by Chiang Kai-shek. Liu and Ch'en Ming-shu were made deputy directors of the general political department in Chiang Kai-shek's headquarters at Nanking in May. Because Wu Chih-hui did not assume office as director, Liu soon came to serve as acting director. Although he retired from office with Chiang Kai-shek in August 1927, he remained active as a political agent for Chiang. In the winter of 1928 Liu Wen-tao supported T'ang Sheng-chih's reemergence as a military leader. After T'ang recovered control of the Hunanese forces in north China, ousting Pai Ch'ung-hsi (q.v.) from power in that area, Liu again became mayor of Hankow, then a special municipality. In 1931 he received the concurrent post of commissioner of civil affairs for Hupeh.

On 16 September 1931 Liu Wen-tao was appointed minister to Germany and Austria. The Japanese attack on Mukden of 18 September gave new significance to his diplomatic mission. In 1932 he also served as a delegate to the World Disarmament Conference at Geneva. Liu was appointed minister to Italy on 13 September 1933. A year later, Nanking and Rome agreed to raise their missions to the status of embassies, and on 17 October 1934 Liu became the first Chinese ambassador to Italy. His principal task was to obtain Italian aid for China, and he had considerable success in this endeavor. The Italian government sent financial, naval, and aviation advisers to China, supplied the equipment for the construction and operation of China's first airplane factory, and offered training and housing facilities for Chinese military students in Italy. In 1935 Liu Wen-tao was elected in absentia to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. He retained membership in that body until 1950. Also in 1935, diplomatic relations between China and Italy began to deteriorate after China voted with the majority of League of Nations members in October to impose sanctions on Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. When Italy joined Germany and Japan in the Anti-Comintern Pact in November 1937 and extended formal diplomatic recognition to Manchoukuo, Liu Wen-tao, who previously had urged the continuance of diplomatic relations with Italy and Germany, resigned from office and returned to China. After the National Government moved to its wartime capital of Chungking in 1938, Liu Wen-tao established residence at Chungking, where he served on the Supreme National Defense Council and on the standing committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive ^nr^.

Committee. He published Hang-yeh tsu-ho lun [on business combines] in 1941, Hang-yeh tsu-ho ya chin-tai ssu-ch'ao [business combines and recent thought trends] in 1943, and I-ta-li shih ti [history and geography of Italy] in 1944. In May 1945, as the War in the Pacific came to an end, Liu became acting president of Chung-hua University, in anticipation of its return to Wuchang from its refugee campus in west China. At war's end, he was appointed commissioner of comfort missions for central China, in which capacity he visited Kiangsi, Hunan, and Hupeh. In 1947 Liu headed the Fukien-Taiwan commission which was established to investigate the brutal acts committed by the Taiwan governor Ch'en Yi '^q.v.) and his subordinates. Upon the inauguration of the National Assembly in 1948, Liu was elected to the Legislative Yuan.

After 1950, Liu Wen-tao lived in retirement in Taiwan. He occasionally wrote articles for Chinese newspapers, and in 1954 he made a brief trip to the United States. After returning to Taipei, he wrote two books, Chung-i kuan-hsi ti hui-i [reminiscences of Sino-Italian relations] and Jen-sheng che-hsueh [philosophy of life]. He died at Taipei on 1 1 June 1967 at the age of 74. He was survived by his widow, nee Lu Chi-shao; three sons, John Kung-fu Liu, David Kung-chan Liu, and Robert Kung-chan Liu; and two daughters, Mrs. Chia-kun Chu and Margaret Kung-ting Liu.