Yeh Kung-ch'ao (20 October 1904-), known as George K. C. Yeh, Western-trained scholar and university professor who entered public life during the Sino-Japanese war. In 1945 he directed the ministry of information's United Kingdom office in London. He later served as vice minister (1947-48), acting minister (1949), and minister (1950-57) of foreign affairs in the National Government and as Chinese Nationalist ambassador to the United States.

Born at Canton, George K. C. Yeh was the second son of the scholar-official Yeh Tao-sheng. He came from a family with a long tradition of scholarly activity. His great-grandfather, Yeh Yen-Ian, had been a district magistrate in Kiukiang and had become known as a scholar, poet, and art collector. Soon after George Yeh's birth, his mother, nee Tsou Ching-yü, died. Although his father later remarried, the boy was raised in the family of his uncle, Yeh Kung-cho (q.v.). At the age of four, he began to study the Chinese classics, calligraphy, art and art criticism, and English. His schooling was interrupted for one year when he went to England. Yeh received his secondary education at the Nankai Middle School in Tientsin [see Chang Po-ling), from which he was graduated in 1919. He then went to the United States, where he spent a year at the Urbana (Illinois) High School and a year at Bates College in Maine before enrolling at Amherst College. At Amherst, the linguistic and poetic abilities of the young Chinese student attracted the attention of Robert Frost, and Yeh became a favorite of the prominent American poet. After being graduated magna cum laude in 1924, Yeh went to England, where he studied at Cambridge University and received an M.A. degree in Indo-European linguistics early in 1926. He spent the next few months traveling and studying at the Sorbonne before returning to China at the end of 1926.

For the next 12 years, George Yeh devoted his time to teaching and scholarship. He first served as assistant professor of English at Peking University and then moved to Chinan University in Shanghai, where he spent two years. He returned to north China in 1929 to become professor of English literature at Tsinghua University. In the autumn of 1935 Yeh left Tsinghua and returned to Peking University to become head of the department of Western languages and literature. After the Japanese occupation he moved with his university to Kunming, where he taught at the Southwest Associated University until 1939.

The years in north China were fruitful for George Yeh. While in Peiping he married Edna Yung-hsi Yuan in June 1931. Two children were born to Yeh and his wife: Marian T'ung (1932-) and Max Wei (1937-). In his professional life he made close friendships with such prominent scholars and intellectuals as Hu Shih, Fu Ssu-nien, and Mei Yi-ch'i (qq.v.). He joined with other young literary leaders in founding the Hsin-yueh yueh-k' an [the crescent moon] and became one of its editors, contributing an article to the inaugural issue in 1928 entitled "The Fate of Realistic Novels." In later issues he dealt with problems of translation and the use of fiction in promoting cultural understanding. Yeh was considered one of the leaders of a group of young scholars who lived and expounded on "the full life" in Peiping in the early 1930's, and he became a subject of controversy among his colleagues and students. Some thought that his rapid rise in academic life had brought conceit; others regarded him as "modern China's Dr. Samuel Johnson," as one of his students put it. All agreed, however, that he was an outstanding scholar and a provocative teacher. Yeh was capable of intense bursts of energy and concentration. For example, when the Chinese author Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.) died in 1936, Yeh closeted himself for a week, read all of Lu Hsün's published writings, and produced a brilliant appraisal of them.

Although George Yeh began his career as a scholar and literary figure, he, like many predecessors in the Confucian tradition, was summoned to government service. Yeh had joined the Kuomintang in Chicago in 1921 ; and after the Sino-Japanese war began, he was called upon to serve the party. In 1939 he joined the ministry of information of the Kuomintang, and in 1940-41 he served as director of the British Malaya office of the ministry at Singapore. W^hen the Japanese began their drive into Malaya in 1942, Yeh helped organize guerrilla resistance. Following a short stay in wartime Chungking, he was posted to London in 1942 as director of the ministry of information's United Kingdom office. In London, his remarkable command of English stood him in good stead. He was particularly effective in contacts with the leaders of the wartime British government, including Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Stafford Cripps, and others. His reputation as a scholar fitted him for the role of "cultural ambassador," one of the major functions of his mission. In line with the policies of the National Government, he also lent informal assistance to members of the Indian Congress party in pressing for Indian independence. He also found time in London for research, lecturing, and writing. His lecture on "The Confucian Concept of Jen" was published as an occasional paper by the China Society of London in 1943, and his lecture on "Cultural Life in Ancient China" was awarded the medal of the Royal Society of Arts that same year. With the British historian C. P. FitzGerald, he wrote a book about Chinese culture entitled Introducing China, which was published in 1948. At war's end, George Yeh returned to China, stopping in India on the way to visit friends whom he had helped support during his years in London. In 1946 he was named counselor and concurrently director of European affairs in the ministry of foreign affairs, and in 1947 he was promoted to administrative vice minister of foreign affairs. He was named political vice minister early in 1949, and he served later that year as acting minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet headed by Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.). After the move of the National Government to Taiwan, George Yeh became minister of foreign affairs in March 1950 when Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.) organized his first cabinet. Yeh played a major role in negotiating with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Government of the Republic of China signed in December 1954. That agreement pledged the United States to give direct assistance to the Chinese Nationalists in the event of an attack on Taiwan or the Pescadores. In July 1958, after the longest tenure of any Chinese Nationalist foreign minister after 1928, Yeh was appointed to succeed HoUington Tong (Tung Hsien-kuang, q.v.) as ambassador to the United States. The following year, he received an honorary LL.D. degree from Amherst College at his son's commencement. In October 1961 he was recalled by his government in connection with the failure of Chinese Nationalist diplomacy to prevent the admission of the Mongolian People's Republic to the United Nations. T. F. Tsiang (Chiang T'ing-fu, q.v.) was named to succeed him as ambassador to the United States. Yeh then was named minister without portfolio in the cabinet. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century he found time to return to the study of art and to painting and calligraphy.