Yü Ta-wei (1899-), Western-educated scholar who served during the Sino-Japanese war as army ordnance director and vice minister of war. From 1946 to 1948 he was minister of communications. After serving in the Chinese embassy at Washington during the Korean war (1950-53), he was minister of national defense in Taiwan in 1954-64.

Born into a scholar-official family in Shaohsing, Chekiang, Yü Ta-wei was the son of the Hanlin scholar Yü Ming-chen. Because the elder Yü was a man of liberal ideas, most of his children studied for a time in the United States or Europe. Yü Ta-wei, after completing his secondary school and college education at missionary institutions in Shanghai, went to the United States for graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His dissertation was entitled "Theories of Abstract Implication: A Constructive Study," and he received the Ph.D. in 1922, one of the youngest Chinese ever to gain that degree at Harvard. During the years just following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, many young Chinese came to believe that the study of science was essential to strengthen the Chinese nation and to improve China's international position. For this reason Yü Ta-wei left the United States in 1922 to study mathematics and ballistics in Germany. He remained an admirer of the encyclopedic knowledge of Voltaire, Dr. Johnson, and other great men of the Enlightenment, however, and he studied music and classical Greek literature in addition to scientific and military subjects. He also became acquainted with other young Chinese scholars then in Berlin, notably Ch'en Yin-k'o and Fu Ssu-nien (qq.v.). The three became close friends, and Fu Ssu-nien later married Yü Ta-ts'ai, the younger sister of Yü Ta-wei. Yü returned to China in 1926. Through the influence of his mother, a sister of T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.), he joined the National Government at Canton as an official of the Shih-lung Arsenal. After Nationalist military power had been extended to the Yangtze late in 1926, he served for several years in government arsenals at Nanking and Shanghai. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria beginning in September 1931, the National Government began to replace Japanese personnel with German military advisers. Because of his experience in Germany and his knowledge of the language, Yü Ta-wei was sent to Berlin to serve as liaison commissioner. In 1933, when Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt became Chiang Kai-shek's principal German military adviser, Yü was assigned as deputy director of the ordnance department of the Chinese army. With German advice, he supervised development of the Chinese munitions industry to equip new German-trained units for the campaigns against the Chinese Communists in Kiangsi. In July 1937, when the Sino-Japanese war began, he was named director of the ordnance department. He retained that post until December 1944, when he became vice minister of war. He resigned from that ministry at war's end in 1945.

In May 1946 Yü Ta-wei was named minister of communications in the National Government. This post was both demanding and frustrating, for most of China's principal rail lines had been disrupted or destroyed during the war years. Under Yü's supervision, many of the railways were rebuilt and restored to operation in 1946-47, but they were again destroyed in the ensuing Nationalist-Communist civil war. During his tenure in the ministry of communications, Yü also directed reorganization of the Chinese postal system, long noted for its efBciency even amidst wartime circumstances. Late in 1948, he resigned from his government post and went to the United States. After the reestablishment of the National Government in Taiwan in 1950, Yü returned to its service. When the changed strategic situation in the Far East resulting from the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950 led to a resumption of American military and economic assistance to Taiwan, Yü Ta-wei in July 1951 was appointed vice director of the Executive Yuan's council for the utilization of United States aid. During the Korean war, he also served as special assistant to Wellington Koo (Ku Wei-chün, q.v.), Chinese ambassador at Washington, with responsibility for coordinating the United States aid program.

After the conclusion of hostilities in Korea, Yü Ta-wei was named minister of national defense in the National Government at Taipei in June 1954. During the following decade he did much to direct the reorganization and regeneration of the Chinese Nationalist military establishment which, with the aid of a substantial United States aid program, developed into one of the most efficient military forces in non-Communist Asia. In March 1964, however, Chiang Ching-kuo (q.v.) was named deputy minister of national defense. Chiang then succeeded Yvi Ta-wei as minister of national defense in January 1965, at which time Yü resigned. He then virtually retired from public life, though he continued to serve as minister without portfolio in the cabinet. Yü Ta-wei was married to Ch'en Hsin-wu, younger sister of Ch'en Yin-k'o. They had three sons, one of whom married Amy Chiang, the daughter of Chiang Ching-kuo.