Shih Ying (1879-4 December 1943), engineer, administrator devoted to the modernization of China, and member of the Western Hills faction of the Kuomintang. As mayor of Nanking in 1932-35 he instituted impartial law enforcement and enacted sumptuary measures. Yanghsin, Hupeh, was the birthplace of Shih Ying. His great-grandfather and grandfather had been scholars, but a decline in the family fortunes had forced his father into trade. Shih received a thorough education in the Chinese classics. After passing the examinations for the chü-jen degree in 1903, he decided to study at a modern school in Wuchang. He soon became friendly with such other students as Chü Cheng (q.v.) and T'ien T'ung (d. 1930; T. Tzu-ch'in), who later became anti- Manchu revolutionaries.

In the autumn of 1904 Shih Ying won a Hupeh provincial scholarship for study abroad, and he decided to study at a French naval academy. He and another Chinese student at the academy, Hsiang Kuo-hua, became angry when they discovered that they had been excluded from lectures on new tactics and weapons. They rashly removed a number of maps and papers from the academy and took them to a small studio near Brussels to have them copied. When the photographer discovered the origin of these materials, he informed the academy authorities of their whereabouts. When Shih and Hsiang took the materials back to France, they were followed and apprehended in Paris. Because the Chinese legation interceded for them, they were expelled from France instead of being prosecuted as spies. Shih then went to England, where he came to know Wu Chih-hui (q.v.) and found a place to live next door to Wu. Shih acquired a working knowledge of English in less than three months. After auditing classes at the University of London for a time, he became a regular student there, majoring in railroad engineering.

At the end of October 1911, after the republican revolution had begun in China, Sun Yat-sen went to England from the United States to conduct negotiations with the British government and private banking interests. His assistants in these negotiations were Shih Ying, Wu Chih-hui, and Li Shu-ch'eng. In November, Sun and Li returned to China by way of France while Shih and Wu took the way of Berlin and Rome. On arrival at Nanking in 1912, Shih was appointed director general of the opium-suppression campaign. He resigned in April 1912 to become chief of the T'ung-meng-hui branch in Hupeh. He joined the Kuomintang later that year and made a successful bid for election to the National Assembly.

After the failure of the so-called second revolution in 1913 and the outlawing of the Kuomintang by Yuan Shih-k'ai, Shih Ying fled to England. He remained there for nine years, studying mining and metallurgy at the University of Birmingham and depending on friends to supply him with food and money. When he sailed for China in 1923, Shih could not afford a full fare. Accordingly, he bought space on the deck and slept in the hold when it rained. Because he was big and rugged, with a frank and uncompromising character, his friends nicknamed him Shih T'ou [the rock].

Shih Ying had hoped to organize a machine factory in Kwangtung after his return from abroad, but the plan did not work out. He then accepted an invitation from Ts'ai Yuanp'ei (q.v.) to teach at Peking University. In 1924 Hsiao Yao-nan, the military governor of Hupeh, invited a number of Kuomintang members to assist him in developing Hupeh. Shih accepted an invitation to become president of Wuchang University, but he held that post for less than a year. After returning to Peking University in 1925, he spent much of his time working to increase Kuomintang membership in the Peking area. At the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in January 1924, he was elected to the Central Executive Committee. After Sun Yat-sen's death, he and other conservatives called a so-called fourth plenum of the Central Executive Committee at Peking, later known as the Western Hills Conference. The Western Hills group advocated the purging of Communists from the Kuomintang and the impeachment of Wang Chingwei. In the summer of 1926, at the start of the Northern Expedition, Shih Ying went to Canton to work as an engineer at the Shih-ching Arsenal. By thoroughly reorganizing the arsenal, he doubled its output and cut its expenses in half. By so doing, he made an important contribution to the northward advance of the National Revolutionary Army.

In 1928 Chang Chih-pen, the governor of Hupeh, appointed Shih Ying head of the provincial department of construction, Chang Nan-hsien head of the department of finance, and Yen Chung head of the department of civil affairs. These men ushered in a new era of provincial administration in Hupeh. Their lack of bureaucratic habits and their unostentatious appearance earned them the designation of "the three eccentrics of Hupeh." In the winter of 1929 Shih resigned his government post to become dean of the newly established college of engineering at Wuhan University (the successor to Wuchang University). Before long, however, Chang Nan-hsien, now governor of Chekiang, pressed him into service as head of the Chekiang department of construction. Shih soon concluded that priority should be given the Hangchow-Chiangshan railway and the Hangchow electric plant. Because the provincial treasury was virtually empty, he obtained loans from Shanghai bankers for these projects. He also cut costs by dismissing several foreigners who drew large salaries as water conservation experts without doing any work. Shih Ying's fine reputation as an administrator led the National Government to appoint him mayor of Nanking. In his new post, Shih was not satisfied with merely improving the appearance of the capital. He regulated taxation and other matters and applied the new rules to all classes, including political leaders who hitherto had been inclined to consider themselves above the law. To promote the habit of thrift and the sale of Chinese products, Shih always wore clothes made of Chinese fabrics and required the same practice of all officials in the city government and the public schools. Because he believed that the young should be trained in frugality, he stationed policemen at the entrances of public schools to discourage affluent officials from transporting their children to and from school in automobiles. He increased the number of private schools, raised the salaries of the teachers, and searched for the most qualified men as school principals. He also served the citizenry by making government loans available to traditional, small-scale industries. During Shih's term as mayor, Sino-Japanese relations entered a critical stage. Shih maintained a rigidly anti-Japanese posture, refusing even to meet socially with the Japanese consul general at Nanking. When a private Japanese group arrived at Nanking for a visit in March 1935, Wang Ching-wei ordered all high-ranking city officials to greet the visitors at the airport. Shih, infuriated by what he considered to be a national humiliation, resigned from office. On 24 July 1935 he was appointed chief of the bureau of civil appointments in the Examination Yuan. This post gave him an opportunity to bring order to China's chaotic civil service system.

When the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, the Hupeh provincial government was reorganized because of the strategic importance that province was likely to have. Shih Ying was asked to head the province's department of construction, and he accepted the offer without hesitation. For military reasons, his job involved destruction as well as construction, particularly with regard to highways. He also helped plan the evacuation of industries and the establishment of cooperative enterprises. In the autumn of 1938, however, the overworked Shih was forced by ill health to resign from office. The following year, he was elected speaker of the Provisional Hupeh People's Council, which met at Enshih, the wartime capital of Hupeh. At Enshih, he also organized a cotton and hemp weaving cooperative. Its products were sold cheaply to the government or to soldiers, and its profits were used to aid education. Shih's health continued to decline. In July 1943 he died at Chungking. He was survived by his wife, nee Hsu, and his son, Hsien-tsung. Feng Tzu-yu (q.v.), the unofficial historian of the Kuomintang, judged Shih as "the foremost incorruptible and honest official since the founding of the republic."