Lu Tso-fu (1894-8 February 1952), entrepreneur who founded such enterprises as the Ming-sung Industrial Company, a shipping firm. From 1938 to 1943 he served under Chang Kia-ngau as vice minister of communications in the National Government. He fled to Hong Kong in 1949, but returned to Chungking in response to Chinese Communist promises of financial aid to the Ming-sung Industrial Company. These promises were not kept, and Lu committed suicide in 1952. A native of Hoch'uan, Szechwan, Lu Tso-fu was the son of an impoverished farmer. Little is known about his early years except that he managed to acquire sufficient education to become a mathematics teacher. After teaching at grade schools in Hoch'uan and at a high school in Kiangan, in 1919 he became a correspondent for a local newspaper. A few years later, he joined the provincial civil service as a clerk in the education section of the southern Szechwan tao-t'ai's office. He rose to become chief of the section, in which capacity he was responsible for instituting educational reforms and for bringing such teachers as Yün Taiying (q.v.) to Szechwan. This achievement was particularly notable because Szechwan was constantly in the throes .of civil strife during this era.

In 1925 Liu Hsiang (q.v.), then director general for military affairs in Szechwan, appointed Lu Tso-fu his adviser. With Liu Hsiang's backing, Lu founded a shipping company, the Ming-sung Industrial Company, in an attempt to challenge foreign domination of steam navigation on the Szechwan stretch of the Yangtze. When the Ming-sung Industrial Company was established at Hoch'uan in 1925 its capital was only CNS8,000. By mid- 1926 it had collected an additional CNS52,000 and thus was able to procure a 70-ton steamer, christened the S. S. Ming Sung, to run between Hoch'uan and Chungking. In the interests of financial soundness, Lu served as ticket seller as well as the company's general manager. To learn management and operations techniques, he often traveled on steamers operated by Jardine, Matheson or Butterfield and Swire, both of which were British companies. He soon realized that to recover Chinese navigation rights in inland waters, it would be necessary to have ships traveling the difficult but profitable Chungking-Ichang region. In 1931 he moved the company's headquarters to Chungking. By 1935 about half of the steamers plying the Szechwan rivers had been acquired by the Ming-sung Industrial Company, and by the eve of the Sino-Japanese war in mid- 1937, the company owned 46 vessels with an aggregate weight of 22,600 tons. After the war began in July 1937, the Ming-sung Industrial Company enjoyed a monopoly, for it assumed control of all foreign-operated steamers in Szechwan waters.

Even before the war began Lu Tso-fu suggested that closer ties between Szechwan and the National Government be established. In 1936 he persuaded Liu Hsiang, then the governor of Szechwan, to go to Nanking for discussions with Chiang Kai-shek. To implement some of the cooperation measures proposed in these discussions, Lu Tso-fu became commissioner of reconstruction in the Szechwan provincial government. Among the significant undertakings initiated by Lu was the building of the Chengtu-Chungking railway.

The Ming-sung Industrial Company played a vital role in aiding the transfer of the National Government to Chungking. Arsenals, industrial plants in the vulnerable seaboard provinces, essential commodities, and refugees all had to be evacuated with the government, first to Wuhan and then to Chungking. The company also carried 200,000 tons of industrial equipment from Shanghai to Chungking and other safe areas in the interior. Throughout the war, its ships purveyed food to armies on several fronts. Without the indispensable facilities provided by the Ming-sung Industrial Company under Lu Tso-fu's meticulous direction, the problems of efficient wartime transportation might have been insurmountable.

Lu Tso-fu served the National Government as vice minister of communications, under Chang Kia-ngau (Chang Chia-ao, q.v.), in 1938-42. From 1940 to 1942 he also held office as director of the National Food Administration, an onerous post which involved the procurement of grains and cereals for both civilian and military consumption. He continued to direct the Ming-sung Industrial Company as its importance increased through participation in wartime industrial enterprises. Among its major subsidiaries and affiliates were the Ta-ming Textile Company, the Mingsung Machine Works, and the T'ien-fu Coal Mining Company. The machine works built 24 river steamers during the war, and by 1942 the Ming-sung Industrial Company had a capital of CN 57,000,000 and about 100 vessels which plied the waterways of Szechwan. Long before he achieved prominence, Lu Tso-fu had cherished the ambition of transforming his native place into a model district. As director of the civil defense bureau of the Chialing River in 1926-31, he began to develop Peip'ei, near Hoch'uan. Over the years, Peip'ei came to compare with the model city of Nant'ung, which was the handiwork of Chang Chien (q.v.). To its natural advantages of scenic beauty and healthful hot springs w'ere added such man-made assets as a power plant, schools, science museums, theaters, and attractive residential and office buildings. It became a showplace during the war, and one Chinese observer described it by saying that to the casual and unsuspecting tourist it would seem like a mirage in the desert.

As soon as the war ended, Lu Tso-fu, in keeping with the National Government's postwar policy of economic rehabilitation and development, undertook a massive program to expand the Ming-sung Industrial Company. To increase the company's tonnage, he bought some 16 landing ship tanks (LST) from the United States (these being 1,500-ton vessels), obtained a loan from the Canadian government for the building of nine river-navigation steamers, and joined with the Kincheng Banking Corporation in forming the Pacific Steamship Company to buy three ocean-going vessels. By 1948, the Ming-sung Industrial Company operated 1 1 1 vessels with an aggregate weight of 63,174 tons.

Lu Tso-fu fled to Hong Kong at the time of the Chinese Communist occupation of the mainland in 1949. He attempted to keep his company operating from his branch office in Hong Kong, for there were bank loans to be repaid as well as the Canadian loan. Because he was harrassed by these obligations, he accepted a Chinese Communist promise of financial aid and returned to Chungking. However, he discovered on arrival in Chungking that the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee had confiscated the "bureaucratic capital" of the company and had appointed official supervisors to manage its affairs. Lu was deprived of any voice in the company's operations, and the Canadian loan was left unserviced.

On 8 February 1952 Lu Tso-fu was elected to the presidium of a people's trial being held in Chungking. His secretary of many years, who was in the audience, accused Lu of several crimes, and the presidium decided that Lu should stand trial on the following day. On the evening of 8 February, Lu took an overdose of barbiturates and died.