Mu Hsiang-yueh ( 18 June 1876— 1942) , known as H. Y. Moh. entrepreneur who was noted for his work in developing the cotton industry in China.

The youngest of six children, four boys and two girls, H. Y. Moh was born in Shanghai. His mother, ne'e Chu, was the third wife of Mu Cho-an, a successful cotton merchant who had founded the cotton firm Mu Kung Cheng. In 1881. at the age of six sui, H. Y. Moh began to receive a traditional education in the Chinese classics. His formal schooling ended in 1888, and he then became an apprentice in a cotton firm. As he learned the trade, he noted that many of the traditional methods and practices of the Chinese cotton merchants were inefficient.

Mu Cho-an died in 1892. leaving H. Y. Moh and his brother Mu Shu-tsai to care for their mother. H. Y. Moh determined to further himself by acquiring modern knowledge, a determination that was strengthened by China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894. In 1897 he began to study English, and by 1900 he had acquired sufficient fluency to pass the examinations for entrance into the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. That year, he married a girl whose surname was Chin.

His work in the customs service exposed the young H. Y. Moh to a large variety of people and ideas, and he soon began to study Western political and scientific ideas. He also worked to become a good public speaker. In 1904 he joined the Hu-hsueh-hui [Shanghai scholastic society] and became an active participant in its various enterprises. His dream was to go abroad and study economics. In 1905 he served as a director of the Customs Employers Club in Shanghai, and he enthusiastically promoted club support of a Chinese boycott of American goods to protest reported persecution of Chinese workers in the United States. This campaign led to his resignation from the Chinese Maritime Customs service, and he became an English teacher at the Lung-men Normal School in Shanghai in 1906.

Throughout this period he slowly made plans for his trip abroad to study. In 1907, thinking that he was ready for the venture, he resigned from the school. At the last moment, he had to postpone the trip. He then accepted a commission from the Kiangsu provincial railway company to undertake a study of railway policing methods in north China. He did such a good job that the company offered him the post of chief of railway police, which he accepted and held for a year. His trip to north China affected H. Y. Moh's plans for advanced study. The underdeveloped state of China's vast northwestern region convinced him that industry was China's pressing need and that agriculture was the basis of industrial development. He therefore decided to study agriculture instead of economics.

H. Y. Moh's lack of formal education was an obstacle to his admission to a foreign college or university. In an attempt to compensate for this deficiency, he enrolled in the International Correspondence School, concentrating on English and mathematics. In 1909, at the age of 33, he left China for the United States. His friends and relatives helped finance the trip, and one of his former colleagues in the customs service helped him to enroll at the University of Wisconsin as a special student.

On the strength of his good showing during that academic year, H. Y. Moh became a regular student in 1910. He also received a scholarship from Kiangsu province, which relieved him of financial worries and enabled him to devote all of his time to study. In 1911 he transferred to the University of Illinois, from which he was graduated with a B.S. in agriculture in 1913. He then entered Texas A & M to study the textile industry, and he received an M.S. degree in 1914.

Alter returning to China in the summer of 1914, H. Y. Moh began preparations for the establishment of a cotton mill. At this time, the cotton-spinning industry in China was dominated by British interests, but British attention was focused on the outbreak of the First World War. H. Y. Moh took advantage of the situation by establishing the Hou Sheng Cotton Mill in Shanghai in 1915. A year later, he organized the much larger Tak Da (T'e-ta) Mill as a public company. As these mills grew, the supply of cotton from nearby Tsungming and Tungchow had to be supplemented with cotton from other areas. Having learned that industries should be built near producing or distribution centers, H. Y. Moh decided to build a branch of the Tak Da Mill at Chengchow, Honan.

However, his plans were frustrated by a group of stockholders. These men knew nothing of modern industrial management methods, and they refused to allow the establishment of a mill far from their Shanghai base of operations. H. Y. Moh then decided to establish a privately owned mill in Honan. The Yu-feng Cotton Mill commenced production in 1920, and it developed quickly because of its proximity to cotton supplies and the availability of cheaper labor. In the meantime, H. Y. Moh had begun to experiment with various strains of cotton. He rented a ten-acre site near the Hou Sheng Mill, planted cotton seeds imported from Georgia, and made detailed observations of the growth of the Sea Island and other strains of cotton.

In 1920 H. Y. Moh made an important contribution to the Chinese cotton textile industry by helping to found the Cotton Yarn and Cloth Exchange (also known as the Chinese Cotton Goods Exchange) in Shanghai, of which he served as president until 1926. Also in 1920 he was appointed an honorary adviser on industry to the Peking government by Hsu Shih-ch'ang (q.v.), the president. H. Y. Moh's famine-relief activities in Honan and the surrounding region during 1920 heightened his vision of that area's potentialities. H. Y. Moh entered still another field in 1921, when he founded the Chuan-kung Bank, a bank for the promotion of industry.

The following year, he served as the delegate of the Shanghai Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the Pacific Trade Conference at Honolulu. By 1923 Chinese-owned textile mills, which had enjoyed booming business during the First World War, had suffered a decline in profits because of renewed Japanese and British competition. Because the Tak Da Mill was in serious financial troubles, H. Y. Moh attempted to increase its capitalization. Conservative stockholders opposed him, and he resigned from that company.

The Chinese textile industry continued to decline, and H. Y. Moh lost control of the Yu-feng Cotton Mill in Honan. However, he managed to retain ownership of the Hou Sheng Mill and to aid the industry through his work as president of the Cotton Yarn and Cloth Exchange. In these troubled years, he found comfort in Buddhism, to which he was converted in 1923 by the great Chinese religious leader T'ai-hsü (q.v.). His clear memories of the difficulties he had encountered in his search for a modern education led H. Y. Moh to provide a number of students with scholarships for foreign study. Among the young men he aided were Lo Chia-lun, Tuan Hsi-p'eng (qq.v.), and the economist H. D. Fong.

From October 1928 to July 1931 H. Y. Moh served under H. H. K'ung (q.v.) as administrative vice minister in the National Government. He then returned to Shanghai. When the Sino- Japanese War began in July 1937 he was among the Chinese leaders living in the foreign-controlled areas of Shanghai who organized and worked for the Civic Federation (see Tu Yuehsheng), which made a number of contributions to China's war effort. He later moved to Chungking, where he served on the Executive Yuan's commission for the promotion of agriculture production. When the National Government established a cotton, yarn, and cloth control bureau in 1940, H. Y. Moh was appointed its director. He held this post until his death in 1942.