Shao Li-tzu (1882-29 December 1967), teacher and journalist who became a veteran leader of the Kuomintang. He served as governor of Shensi in 1933-36 and as ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1940-41. After 1949 Shao held a variety of posts in the People's Republic of China.

The son of a government official, Shao Li-tzu was born in Shaohsing, Chekiang. As a child, he traveled with his father from post to post and studied the Chinese classics under private tutors. His father died about 1897, and he went to live with his maternal grandparents. After passing the examinations for the chü-jen degree in 1903, he studied briefly at Aurora University in Shanghai and then transferred to Futan University, where he taught in the lower grades while pursuing his own studies. Upon graduation in 1907, he went to Japan to study journalism. About 1908 he joined the T'ung-meng-hui. Information about the precise date of his return to China is lacking, but it is known that he taught school in Shensi in 1910.

With the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1912 Shao Li-tzu went to Shanghai where he worked as a reporter on the Min-li pao and the Min-hsin pao. He also became associated with the new literary movements of the time. In 1915 he and Yeh Ch'u-ts'ang (q.v.) collaborated to launch the Min-kuo jih-pao, and Shao served as its chief editor for ten years. During this period, Shao also lectured at the Yu Chi Normal School and at Futan University. He joined the Kuomintang, took part in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and studied Marxism in the company of Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.). As a prominent intellectual with an interest in Marxism, he met the Comintern agent Gregory Voitinsky in the spring of 1920 and participated in the formation of a Communist group at Shanghai that summer. However, he broke with this group before the Chinese Communist party took form. In 1923 he joined with Yeh Ch'u-ts'ang and the poet Liu Ya-tzu (q.v.) in organizing the Hsin Nan-she [new southern society], which hoped to create a new literature for China. In the summer of 1925 Shao Li-tzu went to Canton, the seat of the National Government, where he was appointed chief secretary of the Whampoa Military Academy. He attended a Kuomintang conference at Kalgan in August 1925 as a representative of the Central Executive Committee, and he became a member of the party's Central Supervisory Committee in January 1926. After going to Moscow in November 1926 to attend the seventh enlarged plenum of the Comintern as a Kuomintang "fraternal delegate," he remained there for a time to study at Sun Yat-sen University. He returned to China soon after the conservative Kuomintang faction at Nanking, led by Chiang Kai-shek, broke with the left-Kuomintang at Wuhan. In February 1928, after Chiang's return to power over a united Kuomintang, Shao became a member of the Central Political Council and secretary general of Chiang Kai-shek's military headquarters. He also worked with Ch'en Pu-lei and Chou Fo-hai (qq.v.) in drafting Chiang Kai-shek's state papers.

In February 1931 Shao Li-tzu married Fu Hsueh-wen, a native of Ihsing, Kiangsu. (Shao's first wife, nee Wang, who had borne him a son and a daughter, had died in Shanghai in 1919.) Fu had been one of Shao's students at Shanghai University, and they had studied together at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. Also in 1931 Shao relinquished his post as secretary general to Chiang Kai-shek to become principal of the China Academy and director of the Futan Experimental Middle School. He was named governor of Kansu in December. The previous governor, Ma Hung-pin (q.v.), had been detained by rebellious forces at Lanchow in August, and the situation in Kansu remained troubled. Shao resisted the appointment, but he finally acquiesced and assumed office in April 1932. He was replaced by Chu Shao-liang (q.v.) in April 1933, whereupon he became governor of Shensi.

During the Sian Incident of December 1936 {see Chiang Kai-shek; Chang Hsueh-liang) Shao Li-tzu was among those detained by the rebels. With the formation of a new national strategy, the united front against the Japanese, at the close of the Sian Incident, Shao assumed new political roles. In 1937 he relinquished the Shensi governorship to become director of the Kuomintang central publicity department, a post he held until 1938. After the Sino- Japanese war began in July 1937, he became vice president of the China branch of the International League Against Aggression. He also served as chairman of the Chinese People's Foreign Relations Association, vice president of the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association, secretary general of the Military Affairs Commission's war area and political affairs committee, and a member of the administrative committee of the Central Political Institute. Shao's wife, Fu Hsueh-wen, was active at Chungking during the war as head of the Women's Aid Institute of the National Relief Commission. From 1940 to 1942 Shao served as China's ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1943 he became secretary general of the People's Political Council and secretary general of the Commission for the Promotion of Constitutional Government. He held these posts for the remainder of the war.

As secretary general of the People's Political Council, Shao Li-tzu played an important role in the 1945-46 negotiations with the Chinese Communists. He was one of the three Kuomintang members, the other two being Chang Ch'ün and Wang Shih-chieh (qq.v.), who participated in working-level discussions with the Chinese Communists Chou En-lai and Wang Jo-fei (qq.v.) during Mao Tse-tung's trip to Chungking in August-September 1945. He also served as a Kuomintang delegate to the Political Consultative Conference in January 1946. Even as he had promoted Sino- Soviet cooperation during the early years of the Sino-Japanese war, he now worked to achieve an understanding between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party.

When the civil war resumed in the summer of 1946, Shao Li-tzu was serving as chairman of the National Assembly preparatory committee and a member of the committee charged with drafting a constitution. When the National Assembly convened late in 1946, Shao participated in its work as a Kuomintang delegate. In 1947 he was elected to the State Council and the Chinese Association for Social and Economic Research, and in 1948 he was made a member of the National Government's national policy advisory committee. On 22 January 1949, the day. after Chiang Kai-shek announced his retirement from the presidency, Shao was appointed chairman of a five-man peace mission. The Chinese Communists refused to negotiate with this group, and Shao then became a member of an unofficial delegation headed by W. W. Yen (Yen Hui-ch'ing, q.v.) that went to north China in February for an exchange of views with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai at Shihchiachuang. He also served on the official National Government delegation that went to Peiping in April (for details, see Chang Chih-chung). With the failure of this mission, Shao, whose wife had joined him at Peiping, decided to remain there. He became a member of the preparatory committee of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a member of the conference's presidium, and a member of the Standing Committee of the conference's National Committee.

With the establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949, Shao Li-tzu received membership in the Government Administration Council, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, the standing committee of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee's central committee, the standing committee of the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace, the national committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and the board of directors of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs. In 1952 he became a member of the Government Administration Council's labor employment committee, and in 1953 he was made a member of the board of directors of the Chinese Youth Publishing House.

Shao Li-tzu participated in the work of the National People's Congress of 1954 as a delegate from Chekiang and a member of the Standing Committee. Also in 1954 he was reelected to the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and he was made a vice chairman of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. He also became known for his strong advocacy of birth control.

In 1955 Shao served on the Chinese delegation to the World Peace Congress. That year, he became a member of the World Peace Council and the People's Parliamentary Group for Joining the Interparliamentary Union. In March 1956 he attended the meeting of the World Peace Council in Stockholm. Upon his return to China he was made vice president of the Institute of Socialism of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He also served on the committee for the reformation of the Chinese written language, the central work committee for the popularization of standard spoken Chinese, and the committee for examination and formulation of the Han language phoneticization program. In 1957 he became chairman of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee's committee for the liberation of Taiwan and social contacts work committee. At the National People's Congress of 1959, which he attended as a delegate from Chekiang, Shao was reelected to the standing committee and was elected chairman of the liaison committee and a member of the bills committee. In the 1960's the aging Shao Li-tzu severely curtailed his activities. He died on 29 December 1967, at the age of 86.