Wang Shih-chieh (10 March 1 891—), chancellor of Wuhan University (1929-32) and minister of education (1933-36) who served during the Sino-Japanese war as secretary general of the People's Political Council and minister of information. In 1945-48 he was minister of foreign affairs. He served as secretary general of the presidential office in Taiwan in the early 1950's. In 1962 he became president of the Academia Sinica.

Little is known about Wang Shih-chieh's family background or early life except that he was born in Ch'ungyang, Hupeh, and that he received his primary and secondary education in his native province. In 1911, the year of the republican revolution, he entered Peiyang University in Tientsin. Upon graduation, he went to England and enrolled at the University of London. After receiving a B.S. in economics and political science in 1917, he enrolled at the University of Paris, from which he received the degree of Docteur en Droit in 1920. Wang Shih-chieh returned to China in 1921 to become professor of comparative constitutional law at Peking University. About 1923 he was made dean of the law school. He wrote scholarly articles for the Pei-cheng ta-hsueh shehui k'o-hsueh chi-k'an [journal of social sciences of Peking University] and produced a twovolume work, Pi-chiao hsien-fa [comparative constitutional law], which later was adopted as a standard textbook in many colleges in China. During this period, he gradually became interested in contemporary politics, and in 1924 he and several friends founded the Hsien-tai p'ing-lun [modern critic]. He contributed several articles to the magazine criticizing the ineptitude and corruption then prevailing in the capital. The Peking government responded by banning the magazine in 1926. Wang and some of his collaborators, presumably fearful of arrest and imprisonment, fled Peking. By February 1927, Wang had returned to his native Hupeh.

Early in 1927 the National Government at Wuhan appointed Wang Shih-chieh to its foreign treaty commission. With the reunification of the Kuomintang and the establishment at Nanking of a new National Government in September 1927, he moved to Nanking and became director of the legislative bureau. In the governmental reorganization of 1928, he was appointed to the newly established Legislative Yuan. Also in 1928 Wang was elected to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, a post he retained until 1938 even though he spent little time at The Hague. About 1929 he was made director of the legislative section of the National Central Institute of Social Sciences at Nanking. Beginning in Feburary 1929 Wang Shih-chieh devoted much of his time to a new office, that of chancellor of Wuhan University. In 1930 he founded the Wuhan ta-hsueh she-hui k'o-hsueh chi-k'an [Wuhan University social science quarterly] . He lost his membership in the Legislative Yuan in 1931 but took on new responsibilities as Hupeh provincial commissioner of education in April 1932. He left Wuhan in 1933 to become minister of education in the National Government. In this capacity, he initiated a series of important reforms to strengthen the school system and to spur the nation's intellectual growth. He worked to increase the number of science courses offered at all levels and to expand the hitherto underdeveloped normal and vocational schools. In 1934-35 regulations governing postgraduate research and the granting of degrees were promulgated, and the National Government began to give financial assistance to private universities. Wang vigorously promoted closer cooperation between the Academia Sinica and various institutions of higher education. At the same time, he launched a nation-wide compulsory education program. In 1935-36, in the interest of efficiency, he restructured the entire ministry of education. After the outbreak of the Sino- Japanese war and the removal of the National Government to Wuhan, Wang was replaced by Ch'en Li-fu (q.v.), an expert in doctrinal training, as minister of education. In April 1938 Wang Shih-chieh became secretary general of the People's Political Council. After the National Government moved to Chungking at the end of 1938, he received such additional posts as those of counsel to the Military Affairs Commission, minister of information, secretary general of the standing committee of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps, president of the Central Cultural Association, and head of the Anglo-Chinese Cultural Association. In 1941 he received the additional office of secretary general of the Supreme National Defense Council's central planning board. In 1942, however, he was relieved of one of his many posts—that of minister of information. He was elevated to the presidium of the People's Political Council in May 1943. That November, he headed a good-will mission which visited England on the invitation of the British government. After being received by King George VI, Wang presented a personal letter from Chiang Kai-shek to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a message from the People's Political Council to the British Parliament, and greetings from the Chinese National Press Association to the British press. After spending forty-four days in England, the mission split into two groups. Wang led one group back to China by way of the United States in February 1944. After his return, he was reappointed minister of information. On 30 July 1945 he succeeded T. V. Soong (q.v.) as minister of foreign affairs, and on 14 August of that year he signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. According to this treaty, which was based on the Yalta pact, China yielded various rights in Manchuria and in the Chinese cities of Dairen and Port Arthur, and the autonomy of Outer Mongolia was recognized. When the terms of the treaty became known in China in 1946, a public outcry ensued. In September 1945 Wang attended the Big Five Foreign Ministers Conference in London, where he argued that China should have a preferred position with respect to Japanese reparations because of the length of time China had been engaged in the war and the losses it had sustained. Between his trips to Moscow and London, Wang Shih-chieh participated in negotiations with the Chinese Communists. At the end of August 1 945 Mao Tse-tung went to Chungking for negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek. Chang Ch'ün, Shao Li-tzu (qq.v.) and Wang Shihchieh held working-level conferences with Chou En-lai, Wang Jo-fei (q.v.), and other Communist representatives. After he returned from London, Wang Shih-chieh participated in the Political Consultative Conference held at Chungking in January 1946 as part of the American effort to mediate the Kuomintang-Communist conflict.

After the failure of the American mediation effort in China and the resumption of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists, Wang Shih-chieh pursued a strongly America-oriented foreign policy. In January 1948, when the United States government was addressing itself to the problem of how to buttress the deteriorating Nationalist position in China, he sent a mission to Washington to press for financial aid. With the passage of the China Aid Act of 1948, he became a member of the Council for United States Aid to China, which was set up under the Executive Yuan to control the utilization of American economic aid. The military situation in China, however, was not waiting on American aid; the Nationalist troops suffered repeated defeats. The efforts of Chang Ch'ün, Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling), Chiang T'ing-fu (qq.v.), and Wang Shih-chieh in the area of foreign policy could not offset the military defeats and the galloping inflation plaguing the Nationalists. Wang was replaced as foreign minister by Wu T'ieh-ch'eng (q.v.) at the end of 1948, but he continued to be closely associated with Chiang Kai-shek's plans and projects. Before retiring from the presidency early in 1949 in favor of Li Tsung-jen (q.v.), Chiang had begun to create a new political organization on Taiwan, and Wang became chief of the central planning committee of the Kuomintang party leader's office there. He accompanied Chiang to the important meeting with Li Tsung-jen at Hangchow in April 1949 and on trips to the Philippines and South Korea that summer.

When Chiang Kai-shek resumed the presidency of the National Government in Taiwan in March 1950, Wang Shih-chieh became secretary general of the presidential office and a member of the Kuomintang Central Advisory Committee. He held these posts until 1954, when he retired to private life. He emerged from retirement in July 1958 to become minister without portfolio in the cabinet of Ch'en Gh'eng (q.v.). In April 1962 he succeeded Hu Shih (q.v.) as president of the Academia Sinica.

Little is known about Wang Shih-chieh's personal life except that he was married to Hsiao Te-hua.