Niu Yung-chien (1870-24 December 1965), republican revolutionary and military associate of Sun Yat-sen who later served as governor of Kiangsu (1927-29) and vice president of the Examination Yuan (1933-40, 1949). He became acting president of the yuan in 1949 and continued to hold that post in Taiwan until his retirement in 1952.

Little is known about Niu Yung-chien's family background or early years except that he was born in a village near Shanghai. After passing the examinations for the sheng-yuan degree in 1889, he was selected by the Kiangsu provincial commissioner of education for admission to the Nan-ching Academy in Chiangyin. In 1895, having been angered by the signing of the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan, he abandoned a promising civil-service career to enroll at the Hupeh Military Academy. After being graduated, he won a scholarship in 1900 for advanced military studies in Japan. Among his associates in Tokyo, where he was active in Chinese student groups, was Tsou Jung (ECCP, II, 769), whose provocative work, Ko-ming chün [the revolutionary army], was polished by Niu before its publication in 1903. In this book, Tsou Jung advocated the overthrow of the Manchus and the establishment of a Chinese republic. About this time, Niu met Sun Yat-sen, who was living in Yokohama. In March 1903 Chinese students who were indignant about the Russian occupation of Manchuria held meetings to discuss ways of resisting Russian aggression. A large group of students decided to form the Association for Universal Military Training and to volunteer for military service. They dispatched Niu Yung-chien and T'ang Erh-ho (q.v.) to Tientsin to discuss the matter with Yuan Shih-k'ai (q.v.), who, however, refused to receive them. In the winter of 1903 Niu Yung-chien returned to China and established a military academy, the Tzu-kang School, in Shanghai. In addition to its primary function, the school also served as a cover for Niu's revolutionary activities. In 1906 the military commissioner for the Taiping and Ssuen districts of Kwangsi, Chuang Yung-k'uan, a schoolmate of Niu at the Nanching Academy, invited Niu to become chief clerk at the Kwangsi border defense headquarters and commandant of the training corps at Lungchou. Niu accepted the offer and went to Lungchou with a dozen of his own men. He devoted several hours each day to drilling the training corps, and he continued to work secretly for the overthrow of the Manchus. He later was entrusted with the task of establishing a military preparatory school in Kwangsi. Niu Yung-chien's activities became known to the Manchu court in 1910, and orders for his arrest were issued. Niu fled to Hong Kong and boarded a ship bound for Germany. He returned to Shanghai in the summer of 1911, and that November he served under Ch'en Ch'i-mei (q.v.) during the capture of Shanghai by the republican revolutionaries. The 7th Battalion of the imperial army, stationed between Shanghai and Nanking and commanded by Hsu Shao-chen, staged an anti-Manchu uprising. It was suppressed by troops loyal to the Ch'ing government, but the rebels held on in areas around Chengchiang and sent Niu Yung-chien an appeal for help. Niu persuaded the Shanghai merchant Yu Hsia-ch'ing to lend him a large amount of money, and the revolutionary forces put these funds to good use. Before long, the magistrate of Chengchiang had cast his lot with the revolutionaries, and Hsu Shao-chen had become commander in chief of the Kiangsu-Chekiang allied forces. Niu Yung-chien went to Sungchiang to rally support for an assault on Nanking; Sungchiang soon declared independence, and Niu was elected to head the district.

When the provisional republican government was established at Nanking in January 1912, Niu Yung-chien was appointed assistant chief of staff in the general headquarters of the republican army. Sun Yat-sen soon decided to resign from the presidency in favor of Yuan Shih-k'ai (q.v.), and Niu was one of the special envoys dispatched to Peking to welcome Yuan and accompany him to Nanking for his inauguration. During the riots engineered by Yuan's supporters so that he would not leave the northern capital, Niu's hotel was looted by Yuan's soldiers. After Yuan assumed the presidency at Peking on 10 March, Niu resigned from office.

Niu Yung-chien was elected an honorary adviser of the Kuomintang when that party was founded in 1912. During the so-called second revolution of 1913 {see Li Lieh-chun) Ch'en Ch'i-mei ordered Niu to seize the Kiangnan Arsenal with a small squad consisting largely of students from Sungchiang. The attack was a failure, however, and Niu and his comrades fled to Japan. About this time, Niu became a convert to Christianity. In Japan, he reportedly joined the European Affairs Research Society, a group within the Kuomintang composed of men who did not support Sun Yat-sen's plans for reorganizing the Kuomintang. He left Japan in the winter of 1914 and traveled to the United States and England, where he continued to work against Yuan Shih-k'ai. He returned to Shanghai after Yuan died in June 1916. Sun Yat-sen launched the so-called constitution protection movement and assumed the post of generalissimo of the southern revolutionary government at Canton in August 1917. On Sun's orders, Niu Yung-chien arrived in Canton that November, assumed command of about 15 battalions, and reorganized them as a division. Niu later served as assistant chief of staff in Sun's headquarters and as director of the Canton arsenal. An attempt on his life was made in November 1918, and he was hospitalized for several weeks. After recovering from his wounds, he resigned his posts and went back to Shanghai. In the summer of 1922, at Sun's behest, Niu traveled north in an attempt to persuade Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) to support the Kuomintang. Niu went north again in the winter of 1924, when Sun, then in Peking, appointed him and Wu Chih-hui to his political committee. Niu remained in Peking after Sun's death in April 1925, but returned to Canton in 1926.

After the Northern Expedition was launched, Niu was sent to Shanghai as the Kuomintang's special agent in charge of Kiangsu. He directed underground activities from a hideout in the French concession, and his efforts contributed a great deal to the peaceful takeover of Shanghai by the Kuomintang. When Chiang Kai-shek established a national government on 18 April 1927 in opposition to the one at Wuhan, Niu was appointed secretary general of the government. He resigned soon afterwards to become a member of the provincial government committee of Kiangsu and director of the bureau of civil affairs. Later in 1927 he became governor of Kiangsu, a post he held until March 1930. He reorganized the militia and public security forces of Kiangsu and brought order to even the most remote villages of the province; he initiated a program of land survey and registration; he reorganized the police system and set up a police academy; and he established a teachers college and worked to promote adult education.

Niu Yung-chien was appointed minister of the interior in the National Government in 1930, and about six months later he became minister ofcivil service in the Examination Yuan. In 1933 he was made vice president of the Examination Yuan, and in 1938 he resumed office as minister of civil service, retaining the yuan vice presidency. For reasons that are unclear, he resigned from these offices in December 1941. A month later, he was appointed chairman of the National Government's committee on the impeachment of civil servants, a post he held until 1948. Niu resumed the vice presidency of the Examination Yuan in March 1949, and he became its acting president in April 1949. He continued to serve as acting president of the yuan after the National Government moved to Taiwan. In April 1952 he retired from public life. The following year, he went to the United States for medical treatment, returning to Taiwan in 1957. He went back to the United States for surgery in 1958 and decided to stay there. Thereafter he lived in Lake Success, New York, with his daughter Mrs. Lewis Li. He died of pneumonia on 24 December 1965, at the age of 96. In addition to Mrs. Li, he was survived by his wife, nee Huang Mei-sien; a son, Thorndike C. T. New; two daughters, Mrs. Sien-Wah Shen and Mrs. Samuel O. Moy; ten grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.