Chou Hsueh-hsi (12 January 1866-26 September 1947), industrial promoter and entrepreneur. He served Yuan Shih-k'ai in the field of economic modernization in north China and then as minister of finance. He organized the Ch'i-hsin Cement Company, established the Peking Water Works, and was one of the central figures in the successful Chinese efforts to regain control of the Kailan coal mines. After retiring from public office, he was active in developing the cotton textile industry in north China. Born in Chiente (Ch'iup'u), Anhwei, Chou Hsueh-hsi was the fourth son of Chou Fu ( 1 837— 1921). Chou Fu had served on the staff of Li Hung-chang (ECCP, I, 464-71) during and after the Taiping Rebellion. His competence in managing post-Taiping rehabilitation programs, flood control, and river conservation works and in aiding such modernization projects in Chihli (Hopei) province as the establishment at Tientsin of the arsenal, the Naval and Military academies, and the telegraph office had enabled him to rise in office without having to take the civil service examinations. He became judicial commissioner of Chihli (1888), lieutenant governor of Szechwan (1899), lieutenant governor of Chihli (1901), governor of Shantung (1902), governor general of Liang-Kiang and Nan-yang ta-ch'en (1904), and governor general of Liang-Kwang (1906). In 1907 Chou was ordered to retire from public office because of his advanced age. He settled in Tientsin and devoted much of his time to studying the I-ching {Book of Changes) . He died on 2 1 September 1921, in his eighty-fourth year.

Chou Hsueh-hsi spent the greater part of his youth at his father's residence in Tientsin. He received a traditional education, and at the age of 16 sui he became a sheng-yuan. As a young man, Chou Hsueh-hsi studied for a time under the noted scholar-official Li Tz'u-ming (ECCP, I, 493), and his interests included mathematics and geography. In particular, he was attracted to the practical moral philosophy of the Sung Neo-Confucians and to the application of this philosophy in public works such as those undertaken by his father. While still in his twenties, Chou Hsueh-hsi took a position in the Board of Works in Peking, and in 1895 he became a chü-jen.

Stirred both by the humiliation of China in the war with Japan and by Japan's impressive achievements in modernization, Chou, like many Chinese of his generation, became aware of the need for reform in China. Abandoning his efforts to advance through the examination system, he began to search for practical means to strengthen the country. Since the Chou family had set up several schools in Anhwei, Chou's first efforts were in the field of education. He began to compile two books for school use. These were the Chung-hsueh cheng-tsung [orthodox Chinese learning], consisting of texts selected from Chu Hsi's writings and from the works of such Ch'ing dynasty Neo-Confucians as Wo-jen (ECCP, II, 861-63) and Ch'en Hung-mou (ECCP, I, 86-87) ; and the Hsi-hsueh yao-ling [the essence of Western learning] containing some of the writings of the reformers K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (qq.v.) and excerpts of translations from Western works on science and technology. These two books were published early in 1 898 in Shanghai. From 1 899 to 1900, while in Shantung as an expectant tao-t'ai, Chou was commissioned by Yuan Shihk'ai, then the governor of the province, to establish Shantung College. Chou himself drew up the curriculum for the new school. Like many other men who were later to play important roles in the early republican period, Chou Hsueh-hsi owed much to Yuan Shih-k'ai. In 1900, after the suppression of the Boxer Uprising, Yuan was promoted to governor general of Chihli, and Chou was transferred from Shantung to Chihli, still in the position of expectant tao-t'ai. Because the Boxer Uprising had disrupted the economic life of much of Chihli province, Yuan inaugurated a program of economic reconstruction and development. Chou became one of his most energetic assistants. In the summer of 1902, when commissioned by Yuan to set up a modern mint in Tientsin, Chou was given an opportunity to demonstrate his ability as an organizer and an administrator. Within a few months, the mint was in operation, and by the end of the year it had introduced into the Chinese currency system 1,500,000 coins in the new copper monetary unit, the ten-cash piece. Greatly impressed by Chou's achievement, Yuan sent him to Japan in 1903 to study and report on industrial conditions in that country and then entrusted to Chou the planning and organization of several new modernization projects in Chihli.

During the next four years, until his mother's death at the end of 1907 obliged him to retire from office, Chou Hsueh-hsi rose rapidly in the official bureaucracy, becoming acting tao-t'ai of Tientsin in 1905, salt commissioner of Ch'ang-lu early in 1907, and, shortly afterward, provincial judge of Chihli.

In this period Chou founded several enterprises. After his return from Japan in 1903, with the approval of Yuan Shih-k'ai he established a Peiyang bureau of industry to coordinate industrial establishments in Chihli. As head of this bureau, Chou sought to stimulate local interest in modern industrial enterprise and to foster the development of handicraft industries. In the latter part of 1903, he set up an industrial exhibition in Tientsin to display domestic and foreign products to the public. The same year he established the School of Technology, which in 1904 was reorganized as the Higher Technical School of Tientsin. In 1928 it became Hopei College of Technology. Later in 1904 Chou founded a model workshop in Tientsin where students aged 12 to 22 were given training in the use of machinery; in carpentry, weaving, and dyeing; and in the manufacture of pottery, matches, candles, and soap. He set up a plant in the winter of 1905 which within a year was producing scientific apparatus for school use; and in 1 906 he set up a machine shop in Tientsin. Under the supervision of the bureau of industry and through the training of personnel in the model workshop, a thriving spinning and weaving industry grew up in Chihli, especially in the Kaoyang district.

Another enterprise initiated by Chou Hsuehhsi during this period was the Ch'i-hsin Cement Company at T'angshan. In 1899 a cement plant had been established there by one of Li Hung-chang's proteges, T'ang T'ing-shu (see T'ang Shao-yi). However, because the clay had to be transported from Kwangtung province, the enterprise had not been profitable and had been abandoned in 1 893. In 1 900 Chou engaged a German expert to test the clay and limestone in the T'angshan region with a view to reviving the industry. Although it was found that the clay and limestone in the locality were suitable for producing high-grade cement, Chou's plans were delayed by the Boxer Uprising, and it was not until 1906 that he organized the company and began building a factory near the site of the old plant in T'angshan. One of the most successful of all Chou's enterprises, the Ch'i-hsin Cement Company, became one of the leading firms in China's cement industry, surviving both the civil wars of the 1920's and the Sino- Japanese war.

After his return to official life in 1908, Chou Hsueh-hsi was appointed expectant councillor to the bureau of agriculture, industry, and commerce in Peking. At that time the imperial court was concerned about the frequent outbreak of fires in the capital. On the recommendation of Yuan Shih-k'ai, Chou was charged with organizing a modern water works. After an initial period of planning and surveying, the Peking Water Works was formed, with Chou as its director. Within about a year, a runningwater system had been installed in the city. During the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty, Chou Hsueh-hsi was one of the leading figures in Chinese efforts to regain control ofthe Kaiping coal mines. The mines had been started in 1878 in the T'angshan area northeast of Tientsin as one of Li Hung-chang's modernization projects. The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company had been organized under the direction of T'ang T'ing-shu. Until T'ang's death in 1892, the Kaiping mining enterprise had prospered. Under his successor, Chang Yen-mou, the company had run into financial difficulties and had borrowed heavily. By 1900, therefore, foreign investors had provided the majority of capital in the company. During the Boxer Uprising and the ensuing occupation of the area by troops of the foreign powers, the company's financial problems were augmented by operating difficulties. At the time, it appeared advisable to put the mines temporarily under foreign protection by registering the company as a British firm. A complicated series of agreements were negotiated with foreign entrepreneurs (including Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer). The result, unforeseen by Chang Yen-mou and his colleagues, was that control of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company passed into foreign hands.

After the failure of subsequent Chinese attempts to recover partial control of the mines by law courts, Chou Hsueh-hsi and others, with the support of Yuan Shih-k'ai, decided to set up a rival company in the Kaiping basin. Early in 1907, the Lan-chou Official Mining Company was formed with the financial backing of the Tientsin Bank, of which Chou was an officer. In May 1908 Chou became manager of the new company, and in 1909 he was elected to its board of directors. Coal production began late in 1908, and by 1911 the foreign-controlled company, feeling the pinch of competition, had initiated a price war. By 1912 the rival companies were ready to come to terms, and on 27 January of that year an agreement was signed that led to a merger of the two companies. The result, which restored a measure of Chinese control over the coal mining operations in the Kaiping region, was the formation of the jointly operated Kailan Mining Administration. Chou Hsueh-hsi was one of its first directors and later held the managing directorship of the organization for many years. After the establishment of the republic and the inauguration of Yuan Shih-k'ai as president, Chou Hsueh-hsi served as minister of finance from July 1912 to May 1913 and from January 1915 to March 1916. During his first period in office, in the Chao Ping-chun cabinet, Chou was confronted with the task of putting in order the chaotic finances of the national government. To this end, he proposed a series of financial policies, including a national banking system that would issue a uniform bank-note currency for all of China; a modernized tax structure in which the likin would be abolished and direct taxation instituted in the form of income, inheritance, stamp, and other taxes; the expansion of the sources of tax revenue by stimulating the development of new industrial and commercial enterprises; and government operation of such basic industries as mines and railways. Although Chou was unable to implement these policies, he did succeed in carrying out another of his proposals, the floating of a foreign loan, secured mainly on the salt gabelle, to finance the initial operations of the nearbankrupt government of the new republic. Negotiations with a five-power banking consortium, representing banks of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Japan, resulted in the £125 million Reorganization Loan Agreement, signed in April 1913 by Chao Ping-chun as premier, Lu Cheng-hsiang (q.v.) as minister offoreign affairs, and Chou Hsueh-hsi as minister of finance. However, when it became apparent that Yuan Shih-k'ai intended to divert the loan funds to finance his military plans to suppress the growing opposition to his regime, Chou, on 1 6 May 1913, resigned from Yuan's government. He resumed the cabinet post in 1915, reportedly at the insistence of Yuan Shih-k'ai. The men close to Yuan were split into two rival factions: the Anhwei clique, led by Yang Shih-ch'i; and the more powerful Kwangtung clique (Communications clique), headed by Liang Shih-i and Yeh Kung-cho (qq.v.). Chou Hsueh-hsi was a native of Anhwei, and Yang sought to strengthen his own position by securing Chou's appointment as minister of finance. Under pressure, Chou accepted the post.

In 1915 Chou Hsueh-hsi sought to develop the fiscal policies he had proposed during his first term in office and gave special attention to the problems ofincreasing the sources ofrevenue through revisions in the land tax system, expansion of salt production, and institution of new government monopolies of tobacco and wine. Chou also concerned himself with the larger problems of national economic reconstruction. With a view to stimulating agricultural and industrial production, he advocated a system of agricultural and industrial banks to provide lowinterest credit in rural areas and drew up a set of proposed government regulations for the formation of special developmental banks to finance new commercial and industrial enterprises. Some of these proposals were later to be implemented, although in substantially modified form, by the Dai Wen Agricultural and Commercial Bank [Ta-wan nung-kung yin-hang], founded at Peking in 1918, and the National Industrial Bank of China [Chung-kuo shih-yeh yin-hang], established at Tientsin in 1919. Most of Chou's efforts during his two periods as minister of finance were either hampered or nullified by the policies pursued by Yuan Shihk'ai and by the other officials in his regime. After the monarchical movement began in the summer of 1915, he took prolonged sick leave; however, his resignation was not accepted by Yuan until the spring of 1916.

Because he had been unable to obtain government support for his economic development projects, Chou Hsueh-hsi turned his attention to private enterprise. During his second term as minister of finance he had proposed various schemes for the expansion of native cotton production and of privately owned textile industries in north China, and he had ordered machinery from the United States for a new cotton textile mill. After his retirement from office in 1 9 1 5, he and his younger half-brother, Chou Hsueh-hui, continued to work on this project. In 1916 they set up the Hua Hsin Cotton Spinning Mill in Tientsin as a privately owned enterprise, with Chou Hsueh-hsi as manager. Mills were subsequently established at Tsingtao in Shantung, at T'angshan in Chihli, and at Weihui in Honan. All of these mills continued to operate, with varying degrees of success, until the Japanese invasion of 1937. Chou also was active in promoting the expansion of cotton growing in north China to supply the Chinese textile industry with native cotton. He took part in organizing the Hsinghua Cotton Industry Company, which planned to set up new cotton mills throughout the provinces of north China and a large network of cotton gins, compresses, and warehouses in all the cotton-producing localities. However, because of the unsettled military conditions in north China after the death of Yuan Shih-k'ai, this venture soon had to be abandoned.

Because of his interest and experience in the cotton industry, Chou Hsueh-hsi was appointed national director of the Cotton Development Administration by Hsu Shih-ch'ang (q.v.) in 1919. He established a number of experimental farms where American strains of cotton were introduced to improve the quality of nativegrown cotton. Following the example of Chang Chien (q.v.), who had sought to develop cotton enterprises in Kiangsu, Chou set up a technical school to train Chinese experts in the cultivation, spinning, and weaving of cotton and sought to reclaim coastal lands for cotton production. In 1920 he proposed the reclamation of some four million mu of land from the abandoned Ch'anglu salt farms, but the plan was not implemented. Chou Hsueh-hsi was also noted for his philanthropy. During the severe droughts of 1921-22 in north China, he donated large sums for famine relief; and after the earthquake of 1923 in Japan, he also made substantial contributions to relief activities. Chou's main interest as a philanthropist, however, was his native district of Chiente, Anhwei. In accordance with the last wishes of his mother, a devout Buddhist, he set up and financed clinics, health stations, vocational chools, and agricultural experiment stations. Chou continued his philanthropic activities after he retired from business in 1925. In his later years, Chou Hsueh-hsi gave increasing attention to Confucian moral teachings. After his retirement he set up a family school, the Shih-ku-t'ang, where members of his large family gathered to read the Confucian classics and traditional poetry. Chou Hsueh-hsi compiled several books designed to revive the popularity of the works of Confucian sages and scholars of antiquity, including the Shih-ku-t'ang ts'ung-k'o, privately published by Chou in 1929, and the Ku-hsun ts'ui-pien [a selected anthology of ancient teachings], published in 1932. According to the biography written by his granddaughter Chou Shu-chen, he also left an autobiography and a collection of poems. A number of his public papers, prospectuses, and reports concerning his enterprises were published as anonymous works. Though actively interested in Confucian learning, Chou also turned to Buddhism. In a note to a poem dated 20 May 1939 he stated that he had begun the daily practice of reciting the name of the Buddha in 1926 and that he had completed 1 0,000,000 repetitions in 13 years. He died on 26 September 1947. Of Chou Hsueh-hsi's five brothers, the two eldest, Chou Hsueh-hai (d. 1906) and Chou Hsueh-ming (d. 1911), were both chin-shih of 1892; the youngest, Chou Hsueh-hui, was a chü-jen of 1903 and, during the early years of the republic, a member of the lower house of the National Assembly and an industrialist. One of Chou's sisters was the wife of Yuan K'o-chen, the eighth son of Yuan Shih-k'ai. Chou Hsuehhsi had five sons, one of whom died in childhood. Although a native of Anhwei, Chou Hsuehhsi spent most of his life in north China. As leading promotors of industrial and commercial enterprises in modern China, Chou and Chang Chien were known together as "Nan-pei liangssu hsien-sheng" because both were the fourth among their brothers and because one was active in the south and the other in the north.