Chang Ch'i-huang 張其鍠 T. Tzu-wu 子武 H. Wu-ching chü-shih 無（無）竟居士

Chang Ch'i-huang (7 May 1877-30 June 1927), began his career as an official in Hunan and became an adviser and secretary general to Wu P'ei-fu during the 1920's.

For five generations before his birth, Chang Ch'i-huang's family had produced scholarofficials in imperial China. He was a native of Kweilin, Kwangsi. His grandfather had held official positions in south China and attained some military prominence during the Taiping rebellion. His father was a chü-jen of 1862 and later served as magistrate of several hsien, including Nanhai (Namhoi) and Shunte (Shuntak) in Kwangtung. A precocious child, Chang Ch'i-huang began formal schooling at the age of six sui and at eighteen enrolled in the Kuang-ya Academy, a distinguished educational center established at Canton in 1887 by Chang Chih-tung (ECCP, I, 27-32). When his father died about 1896, Chang Ch'i-huang remained at Canton with his mother and a younger brother. Three years later Chang married a daughter of P'an P'ei-k'ai, an official in charge of frontier defense on the Kwangtung- Annam border, and gradually gained a knowledge of military affairs by assisting his father-in-law. In 1902 Chang returned to his native Kweilin to participate in the Kwangsi provincial examinations. He passed them in 1903 and the metropolitan examinations in 1904, the year before the abolition of the system.

On entering official life, Chang Ch'i-huang was appointed to serve in Hunan province: first, for a brief period, as acting magistrate of Lingling and later as magistrate of Chihchiang in western Hunan. He remained in Chihchiang until 1910 and established himself as an able administrator. Following the death of his first wife, Chang married Nieh Ch'i-te, a granddaughter of Tseng Kuo-fan (ECCP, II, 751-56). When his mother died in 1910, Chang returned to Kwangsi to observe the appropriate mourning period.

In 1911 the governor of Hunan recalled Chang and placed him in charge of military units stationed at Yungchow. When the revolution broke out in October of that year, T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.) became military governor of Hunan. When a new provincial government was established in Hunan in 1912, T'an called on Chang to become commissioner of military affairs. Chang and T'an Yen-k'ai were old acquaintances—they had both passed the metropolitan examinations in the same year and were thus linked in the t'ung-nien relation, a close bond in imperial China. After Yuan Shih-k'ai dissolved the Parliament in Peking early in 1914, he called a conference to draft a revised constitution. Chang Ch'i-huang was selected to participate. However, when suggestions were made at the conference in 1915 to revive hereditary ranks, Chang, sensing a reactionary trend, left Peking and returned south. Soon thereafter Yuan Shih-k'ai launched his ill-fated monarchical movement.

A significant point in Chang Ch'i-huang's career was his first meeting with Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.) in 1918. In 1917 Chang Hsün (q.v.) attempted to restore the Manchu house to the throne in Peking. The coup, however, was a fiasco. Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) emerged as the chief rescuer of the republic and, with increased power, again became premier and pressed forward with plans for the unification of China by military means. Early in 1918 Tuan sent an expeditionary force under Ts'ao K'un (q.v.) and Wu P'ei-fu to occupy Hunan. Wu P'eifu's army advanced into the province with little difficulty, but bogged down unexpectedly at Yungchow. There Chang Ch'i-huang, who was again in Hunan as assistant to T'an Yenk'ai, supervised the defense line. At that point Chang communicated with Wu P'ei-fu, stressing the advantages of reestablishing local peace for the good of the Chinese nation as a whole. Impressed with Chang's sensible opinions and dissatisfied with Tuan Ch'i-jui, Wu P'ei-fu decided to stop fighting in Hunan. Shortly thereafter Wu took the lead by sending a telegram advocating general peace (21 August 1918) from Hengyang to the Peking government. Some sources suggest that Chang Ch'i-huang actually drafted this message. Whatever its authorship, the telegram contributed to the resignation of Tuan Ch'i-jui as premier in Peking.

Internecine fighting in north China persisted, however, and Chang Ch'i-huang continued to be active, now as adviser to Wu P'ei-fu, in both the Chihli-Anhwei war of 1920 and the first Chihli-Fengtien war of 1922. Chang and Wu became good friends; one key to the affinity between them may have been their mutual interest in and practice of divination and fortune-telling.

When the first Chihli-Fengtien war ended, Chang was appointed civil governor of his native province, Kwangsi. During the early years of the republic, the southern provinces of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Yunnan, and Szechwan were largely controlled by local military leaders. Officials appointed by the Peking government had very limited authority in these areas. The extent of Chang Ch'ihuang's jurisdiction was a few hsien near Yungning, then the provincial capital of Kwangsi. While Chang had no hold on provincial revenue, he managed to remain in his position for about two years—until the arrival of Li Tsung-jen (q.v.) in 1924.

Meanwhile the second Chihli-Fengtien conflict was brewing in the north, and war was declared by Chang Tso-lin (q.v.) in September 1924. Wu P'ei-fu, then at Loyang in Honan, sent for Chang Ch'i-huang to serve again as his assistant. In this military conflict, however, Wu P'ei-fu emerged the vanquished, and from then on he steadily lost strength. In the south, the revitalized Kuomintang was beginning to consolidate a military base in Kwangtung. In the north, Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) turned against Wu P'ei-fu in 1924 and against Chang Tso-lin in 1925. Wu P'ei-fu and Chang Tso-lin then attempted to form an anti-Feng alliance, and Chang Ch'i-huang, as Wu's personal representative in Peking, played an important role in these negotiations between the warlords. After his defeat in 1924, Wu P'ei-fu moved from one area to another, unable to consolidate a secure territorial base. Chang Ch'i-huang remained in his service during this period. In 1927 Wu decided to retreat to Szechwan and moved his forces to the Honan-Hupeh border by summer. On 30 June, during the westward march, Chang Ch'i-huang was killed at Fanch'eng, shot by snipers who were variously described as bandits and as troops of an enemy faction. His remains were brought south and buried near Soochow in the winter of 1927. Chang Ch'i-huang was a versatile man. He dabbled in painting and played the ch'in, amused himself with the Chinese game of wei-ch'i, and had some knowledge of such diverse subjects as Chinese medicine and the English language. He was thought to be a good calligrapher and was regarded highly as a cultivated man of letters.

As a scholar, Chang Ch'i-huang was especially interested in ancient Chinese philosophy. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.) praised Chang's work the Mo-ching t'ung-chieh [general interpretation of the philosophy of Mo-tzu], and in his preface to this study expressed amazement that Chang had been able to produce a work of this nature in the 1923-27 period when he had been occupied with military activities as Wu P'ei-fu's assistant. Both the Mo-ching t'ung-chieh and a collection of Chang's literary works, the Tu-chih-t'ang ts'ung-kao [miscellaneous writings of Tu chih-t'ang], were edited after Chang's death by Ch'ü Hsuan-ying, a relative by marriage. The former work was published in 1931; the latter, in 1932.