Wang Yün-wu (9 July 1888-), editor in chief (1921-29) and general manager (1930-45) of the Commercial Press, republican China's largest publishing house. From May 1946 to April 1947 he was minister of economic affairs, and in 1948 he served as minister of finance during the ill-fated gold yuan currency conversion. In Taiwan, he was vice president of the Examination Yuan in 1954-56 and vice president of the Executive Yuan in 1960-63. Although his native place was Hsiangshan (Chungshan), Kwangtung, Wang Yün-wu was born in Shanghai. He was the fourth of five children born to the merchant Wang Li-tang. His eldest brother, ten years his senior, passed the examinations for the sheng-yuan degree in 1896, at the comparatively early age of 19 sui. It was this brother who taught Wang Yün-wu to read. The premature death of this brother in 1898 and Wang Yün-wu's own delicate state of health as a child caused his father to delay sending him to school. It was not until 1899, when he was 1 1 sui, that Wang Yün-wu was admitted to a Shanghai private school. His education was interrupted a year later, when his father sent the family to the ancestral home at Hsiangshan because of the Boxer Uprising. Wang returned to Shanghai and to school in 1901, but in 1902 his father apprenticed him to a merchant. Thereafter, Wang had to content himself with studies at a night school, where he learned English. Because of his phenomenal progress in English, in 1905 he was allowed to go to a private school, the Tung-wen-kuan, operated by the English missionary Charles Budd. Wang soon became a teaching assistant to Budd, who gave the young man free access to his fine collection of books.

In 1907 Wang Yün-wu became a teacher of English at the New China Academy and he retained this post after the academy was reunited with its parent institution, the Chungkuo kung-hsueh. Among his pupils were Hu Shih, Chu Ghing-nung (qq.v.), and Yang Hsing-fo. At the end of 1911, Wang was appointed by the Cantonese community in Shanghai to deliver the address of welcome at a reception for Sun Yat-sen. Sun responded by appointing Wang a secretary in the provisional government established at Nanking in 1912. Wang soon submitted a memorandum on education to Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei (q-v.), who appointed Wang to the ministry of education. After the provisional government moved to Peking, Wang became a section chief and then a division director. He left the ministry of education in May 1913 to become a working journalist and a teacher at Kuo-min and Peking universities. In 1914 he accepted a part-time post as head of the compilation and translation division in the national petroleum bureau, headed by Hsiung Hsi-ling (q.v.). Throughout the 1912-15 period, Wang also pursued his own studies. He enrolled in the International Correspondence School, taking courses in civil engineering and applied chemistry. At the same time, he completed the law course offered by the La Salle Correspondence School. Wang Yün-wu returned to Shanghai in 1916. After serving for a time as special commissioner of Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Kiangsi for prohibiting opium, he turned once more to compilation and translation. In 1921 he joined the Commercial Press, China's leading publishing firm, as editor in chief and head of the compilation and translation department. Among the projects he undertook was the Chiao-yu ta-tzutien [educational dictionary], the first specialized dictionary of professional quality to be published in China. In 1924 he developed the "four corner numeral system" for the identification and classification of Chinese characters. This system came to be used by a number of lexicographers in China. During this period, Wang also became the librarian of the Tung-fang t'u-shu-kuan, or Oriental Library. It was an expansion of the Han-fen-lou collection, which had been built up for the Commercial Press by Chang Yuan-chi (q.v.). After Wang was elected chairman of the Shanghai Library Association, he opened the Oriental Library to the public, with the approval of the Commercial Press, and recatalogued the collection according to the Dewey Decimal system. To encourage the establishment of new libraries throughout China, he undertook the production of such series as the Pai-k'o-hsiao-ts'ung-shu [miniature encyclopedia] and the Wan-yu-wen-k'u [universal library]. The latter series, which included both Chinese classics and translations of foreign works, was composed of 1,010 titles bound in 2,000 volumes.

In the summer of 1 929 Wang Yün-wu resigned from the Commercial Press and accepted an appointment from the Academia Sinica as a researcher. Six months later, upon the death in November 1929 of Pao Hsien-ch'ang, the general manager of the publishing house, Wang was asked to succeed Pao. He accepted the offer on the condition that he first go abroad to study scientific management. In March 1930 he left China on a tour of Japan, the United States, England, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy. He visited factories, called on experts, and studied every book he could find on scientific management. On his return to China in early September 1930, Wang Yün-wu assumed the general managership of the Commercial Press and began to use the techniques of scientific management. His innovations attracted the attention of businessmen throughout Shanghai. Before he could justify his efforts, however, the offices of the Commercial Press, the Oriental Library, and the dormitories for workers were destroyed in the Sino-Japanese hostilities of January 1932.

The period immediately following this disaster was necessarily a trying one for Wang Yün-wu. The Commercial Press had established printing plants in Hong Kong and Peiping, and the fullest use possible was made of these facilities in order to produce the large quantities of textbooks needed in schools that autumn. The restoration of production in Shanghai was, of course, gradual, and it was attended by serious labor disputes. Despite these difficulties and the death of his father in April 1932, Wang persisted in his efforts. By autumn, Commercial Press operations in Shanghai were at 30 percent of capacity. Wang thoroughly reorganized the Shanghai plant, achieving greater labor efficiency and lower production costs. Late in 1932 he embarked on the compilation of the Ta-hsueh ts'ung-shu [university library], a series intended for China's institutions of higher learning, which hitherto had relied mainly on foreign textbooks By July 1937 more than 260 titles in this series had been published. During this period, Wang also continued to produce facsimile editions of rare classical works (see Chang Yuan-chi). Another important project was the Ts'ung-shuchi-ch'eng series, a collection of over 3,000 volumes of writings selected for reduplication from rare ts'ung-shu [collectanea]. When the Sino-Japanese war began in July 1937, Wang Yün-wu moved some of the Commercial Press equipment from Shanghai to the Hong Kong plant. In 1938 he entered political life as a member of the People's Political Council. Wang moved to Chungking in February 1942, soon after the War in the Pacific broke out, and established a Commercial Press office in the wartime capital. He became increasingly interested in economics, and in October 1942 he was appointed chief of the Yunnan-Kweichow regional office of the economic mobilization promotion committee. After spending a month at Kunming, he returned to Chungking in February 1943 and wrote an article on price control. That November he was appointed to the People's Political Council's good-will mission to England. In London, Wang made public speeches, visited bookstores and met with leading British intellectuals. On his way back to China in January 1944, he visited Portugal, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. After reporting to the resident committee of the People's Political Council, he published his Diary of the Chinese Mission in Great Britain and Impressions of Wartime Britain.

In January 1946 Wang Yün-wu was one of the nine unaffiliated delegates to the Political Consultative Conference held at Chungking as part of the American effort to prevent civil war by mediating between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists. Wang left Chungking in April 1946 to reestablish the Commercial Press at Shanghai. A month later, Chiang Kai-shek appointed Wang minister of economic affairs in the National Government. Wang accepted the appointment and in October he turned over the general managership of the Commercial Press to Chu Ching-nung (q.v.). As minister of economic affairs, Wang often found himself at loggerheads with T. V. Soong (q.v.), and he tendered his resignation three times in 1946. He finally relinquished that post in April 1947, when he became a member of the State Council. In May 1948, when Wong Wen-hao (q.v.) became the first president of the Executive Yuan to be chosen under the new 1947 constitution, Wang was appointed minister of finance in Wong's cabinet. That July, Wang undertook a currency reform with the introduction of the chin yuan chuan [gold dollar note], fixed at the value of US $0.25. This reform, which was expected to curb the ever-increasing inflation that was plaguing China, proved disastrous. The gold yuan fell within three months, taking with it the savings of the many thrifty Chinese who had been required to convert all holdings in gold, silver, and foreign currency into the new currency. Wang Yün-wu resigned from office as a result of this fiasco.

Wang went to Hong Kong at the end of 1948 and founded the Hua-kuo Publishing House, which later was moved to Taiwan. After the Chinese Communists won control of the mainland in 1949 and the National Government moved to Taiwan, he went to Taipei to serve as an adviser in the presidential office. In 1954 he was appointed vice president of the Examination Yuan, serving under Mo Te-hui (q.v.). In 1957 he was a member of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. At the bequest of Chiang Kai-shek he undertook a study of the Hoover Commission recommendations on the organization of the executive branch of the United States Government. He returned to Taiwan and reported on his findings on 10 February 1958. That day, he was assigned to organize a committee for administrative reform. The committee submitted its recommendations to the National Government in September. In May 1960 Wang became vice president of the Executive Yuan, serving under Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.). Both men resigned on 15 December 1963 because of the increasing power of Chiang Ching-kuo (q.v.). Wang, who had been teaching part time in the graduate school of Chengchih University since 1955, then became a full-time professor at that university. Little is known about Wang Yün-wu's personal life except that he was married and that he had seven sons and daughters.