Chu Chia-hua (30 May 1893-3 January 1963), held office in the National Government as minister of education (1932-33; 1944-48), minister of communications (1932-35), and vice president of the Examination Yuan (1941-44). From 1939 to May 1944 he headed the organization department of the Kuomintang. He also served as secretary general (1936-38) and acting president (1940-58) of the Academia Sinica. A native of Wuhsing hsien, Chekiang, Chu Chia-hua was born into a mercantile family. When Chu was only ten sui his father died, and his mother died the following year. The boy was raised by his elder brother. Since there were no schools in their immediate area, Chu was sent to a primary school in Nanhsun. In 1907, at the age of 15 sui, Chu Chia-hua was sent to Shanghai, where he enrolled in the T'ung-chi Medical School, a German-sponsored institution. The Wuchang revolt in the autumn of 1911 caused great excitement among the youth of Shanghai. Chu Chia-hua joined a student corps dedicated to opposing "foreign imperialist agression" in China, and the group played a minor part in the attack on the Kiangnan arsenal at Shanghai by republican forces. In the winter of 191 1 Chu interrupted his school work to join a Chinese Red Cross mission that went to Wuhan. When he returned to Shanghai in 1912, an engineering course had been inaugurated at the T'ung-chi School, and he transferred from the medical course to engineering. During the so-called second revolution in 1913, Chu worked with the republican forces in the attempt to dislodge Yuan Shih-k'ai from power. Chu then resolved to seek an advanced education abroad, and in March 1914 he left Shanghai for Berlin, traveling through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. After gaining some practical experience in a mine in the Ruhr district, Chu enrolled at the Metallurgical Institute in Berlin in November 1914. Because of the war he was unable to get money from China and was obliged to subsist on a small allowance paid him by the manager of the mine where he had worked. The Metallurgical Institute later was amalgamated with the University of Berlin. The German students were drafted for the army, and Chu and two overseas Chinese students from the Netherlands East Indies were the only ones left in the class. When the two overseas Chinese left the school, Chu followed suit. He returned to Shanghai early in 1917.

Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei (q.v.), the chancellor of Peking University, offered Chu Chia-hua a post teaching German. A year later he received a scholarship from the ministry of education to study in Europe. After traveling through the United States and stopping in Paris, Chu arrived in Switzerland at the end of 1918. During the first half of 1919, Chu studied geology at the University of Bern. He fell while climbing in the Swiss Alps and was hospitalized for several weeks. After his convalescence, he attended the University of Zurich for one semester. He transferred to the University of Berlin in 1920, continued to study geology, and completed his doctorate in 1922. He remained in Germany until 1924, conducting advanced research in Berlin and visiting England and France during vacations.

In August 1924 Chu Chia-hua resumed teaching at Peking University, where he served as professor of geology and as head of the German department. Like other members of the Peking University faculty, Chu was disturbed by the policies of the government in power at Peking and was increasingly outspoken in support of the new forces of Chinese nationalism then gaining strength at Canton. After the May Thirtieth Incident at Shanghai in 1925, he was one of the Jeaders in organizing student demonstrations against imperialism. In November 1925 he was a sponsor of a mass demonstration at Peking that supported the Nationalist regime at Canton and demanded the resignation of TuanCh'i-jui(q.v.). In March 1926 he was identified as a leader of student demonstrations and had to take refuge in the French Hospital at Peking. Chu Chia-hua surreptitiously left Peking in the summer of 1 926 and went to Canton, where the military forces for the Northern Expedition were being trained under the guidance of Chiang Kai-shek. In the autumn of 1926 Chu was named professor of geology at National Chung-shan (Sun Yat-sen) University, then headed by Tai Chi-t'ao. Increasing political dissension between the Kuomintang and the Communists at Canton, however, soon disrupted the operations of the university, and a five-man board was named to assume charge. The board was composed of Tai Chi-t'ao, Ku Meng-yu, Hsu Ch'ien, Ting Weifen (qq.v.), and Chu Chia-hua. Because the other members of the board all had substantive official posts in the National Government at Canton, Chu was the only man actually concerned with the affairs of the university during that troubled period.

Chu Chia-hua made his entry into politics in 1927, following the initiation of the so-called party purification movement at Shanghai, which was designed to eliminate the Communists from the Kuomintang. When the Kwangtung provincial government was reorganized in the spring of that year, Chu was named acting chairman of its standing committee, commissioner of civil affairs, and a member of the Canton sub-council of the Central Political Council. Three months later, the Kwangtung provincial government was reorganized again. Chu was named commissioner of education and vice chancellor of Chung-shan University, of which Tai Chi-t'ao had been reappointed chancellor. As a result of the Kuomintang purges, political conditions at Canton and at the university were very unsettled, and in December 1927 during the Communistled insurrection known as the Canton Commune, the university campus suffered extensive physical damage. Chu Chia-hua was obliged to leave his government and university posts. The National Government at Nanking then named him commissioner of civil affairs in Chekiang, which had come under the jurisdiction of the Kuomintang. Chu served under Chang Jen-chieh, who headed the Chekiang provincial government from late 1928 until January 1930. Because he was a native of the province and had the personal support of his superior, Chu was able to introduce a series of administrative reforms in Chekiang, including the reduction of land rents, the organization of a census, the establishment of some local self-government, the holding of civil service examinations for district magistrates, and the establishment of a police school. Chu was elected to membership on the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang at its Third National Congress in 1929. After resigning from his post in Chekiang in the autumn of 1930, Chu Chia-hua returned to Canton, where, for a short time, he held the chancellorship of Chung-shan University. In November 1930 he was summoned to Nanking to head National Central University. In the spring of 1931 he was named chairman of the Sino-British Educational and Cultural Endowment Fund, which not only selected and sponsored Chinese students for higher education in British universities but also allotted the Boxer Indemnity funds remitted by the British government for the development of railroads and for other construction in China. He held that influential post for many years. In February 1932 Chu left National Central University to become minister of education, succeeding Li Shu-hua (q.v.), who had been interim minister during the late months of 1931. Chu was responsible for the enactment of a series of laws and regulations aimed at modernizing China's educational system. In November 1932 he was also named minister of communications at Nanking. He continued to serve as minister of education until April 1933, when he was succeeded by Wang Shih-chieh (q.v.). As minister of communications Chu helped to expand China's communications facilities, including civil aviation, steam navigation, and telecommunications, and also helped to streamline the postal and postal savings systems.

After leaving the ministry of communications at the end of 1935, Chu Chia-hua was named secretary general of the Academia Sinica early in 1936, succeeding V. K. Ting (Ting Wenchiang, q.v.). At the end of that year he was named governor of Chekiang. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war made Chekiang an important military area. During the early stage of the hostilities, Chu was credited with preserving Hangchow by checking the plans of overzealous Chinese officials to destroy parts of the city in the face of the enemy advance. The provincial government soon was reorganized in accordance with the new military situation, and Chu relinquished the governorship.

In the wartime period from 1937 to 1945 Chu Chia-hua's influence in the Kuomintang rose steadily and substantially. At the Fifth National Congress in 1935 he had been elected not only to the Central Executive Committee but also to the Central Political Council. He was present at the Extraordinary Conference of the Kuomintang at Hankow in March 1938, at which Chiang Kai-shek became tsung-ts'ai [party leader]. The San Min Chu I Youth Corps was established as a new apparatus for recruiting and training party workers. In April 1 938 Chu Chiahua was named secretary general of the central headquarters of the Kuomintang and acting chief secretary of the new youth corps. In December 1939 he was named to succeed Ch'en Li-fu (q.v.) as head of the organization department of the Kuomintang. Chu Chia-hua held that key post in the central party structure until May 1944, when he was succeeded by Ch'en Li-fu's elder brother, Ch'en Kuo-fu (q.v.). Although Chu Chia-hua was associated with the faction of the Kuomintang led by the two Ch'en brothers, he gradually gained strength and came to have his own personal following. At Chungking, Chu also served as vice president of the Examination Yuan from 1941 to 1944. In November 1944 Chu Chia-hua became minister of education, and Ch'en Li-fu resumed direction of the organization department of the Kuomintang. Chu served as minister of education during the final period of the Japanese war and the ensuing civil war against the Communists. When he finally left office in December 1948, he could look back upon a period of 17 years during which that key post in the National Government had been held by only three men: Wang Shih-chieh (q.v.), Ch'en Li-fu, and himself. In the summer of 1949 he became vice president of the Executive Yuan. In 1950, after the removal of the National Government to Taiwan, he resigned from that office and became a senior adviser to the President.

Despite the demands of Chu Chia-hua's many official positions, throughout his career he engaged in many outside activities. In the summer of 1935 he founded the Sino-German Cultural Association. He also was influential in Sino-British cultural circles. Chu was vice president of the international League of Nations Union from 1937 to 1946. After 1946 he was chairman of the Chinese Association for the United Nations and an honorary vice president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations. Chu was an original sponsoring member of the Academia Sinica when it was founded in 1928. He held the post of secretary general of the Academia Sinica from 1936 to 1940. He then became its acting president in 1940, after the death of Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, and helped to develop the principal research institutes of the organization. After his resignation from that office in 1958, the members of the Academia Sinica elected Hu Shih to succeed him. Chu remained in Taiwan until his death of a heart ailment on 3 January 1963 at the age of 70 sui. Ho Ying-ch'in served as chairman of the committee in charge of his funeral arrangements.

Chu Chia-hua was a handsome and affable man. His taste ran to Western dress at a time when the great majority of his colleagues still favored either the traditional gown or the Sun Yat-sen uniform.

Despite his long association with academic institutions and circles, Chu, preoccupied with official duties, produced no original scholarly work. A memorial volume entitled Chu Chia-hua hsien-sheng shih-shih chi-nien ts'e was published in Taiwan in 1963.