Tang Shaoyi

Study in America and Sixteen Years in Korea

Tang Shaoyi, also known by a variant form of his given name, courtesy name Shaochuan, was born in Tangjia village, Xiangshan County, Guangdong (now part of Zhuhai). An article in the Tianjin Daily New Post carried by China News Service gives his date of birth as 2 January 1862, while an article published by The Paper gives 1860. Born into a tea merchant’s family, he went to the United States in 1874 as one of the 120 boys of the Chinese Educational Mission, the first government-sponsored Chinese students abroad, and studied through secondary school to Columbia University until the Qing recalled all the students in 1881. Fu Guoyong notes that newspapers of the time wrote his name with a different character because he shared a name with Puyi.

After returning he first worked at the Kaiping mines and elsewhere, and in 1883 was sent to Korea as secretary to Paul Georg von Möllendorff, newly appointed head of the Korean customs. According to the Daily New Post article, during the Gapsin Coup of 1884 he stood guard with a rifle at Möllendorff’s residence, where he met Yuan Shikai, who had arrived with troops; when Yuan became the Qing’s resident commissioner in Korea, he chose Tang as his Western interpreter and foreign-affairs aide, and in 1891 recommended him to Li Hongzhang as his deputy. Tang spent sixteen years in Korea and became Chinese consul-general there (the article dates this to 1891 in one place and 1895 in another).

Late-Qing Career

After Yuan became viceroy of Zhili and Commissioner for the Northern Ports in 1901, he appointed Tang customs intendant at Tianjin. In 1904 Tang went to India as plenipotentiary to negotiate with British representatives over Tibet, and in 1906 he signed the Anglo-Chinese Convention on Tibet. He then served as vice-minister of foreign affairs, director-general of railways and vice-minister of posts and communications, and in 1907 became governor of Fengtian. The Paper writes that his excellent English and diplomatic skill won Yuan’s confidence, making him Yuan’s agent in late-Qing foreign affairs and railway administration, and that he also went to the United States as special envoy to negotiate over the Boxer indemnity; the Heibonsha World Encyclopedia records that he rose to minister of posts and communications.

Northern Delegate at the North–South Peace Talks

After the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, Yuan Shikai appointed him plenipotentiary to negotiate with the southern chief delegate Wu Tingfang. According to Fu Guoyong, before going south Tang declared publicly that the form of government might become republican but the title of monarch should be preserved, and the newspapers published a twenty-two-article plan for a “monarchical republican constitution” retaining the Qing emperor; once in Shanghai, however, he found there was almost no chance of keeping the emperor, and the plan could not serve as a basis for discussion. He told Wu Tingfang that his own republican ideas predated Wu’s, having been formed while studying in America. According to the Daily New Post article, he cut off his queue on the special train the night he left for the south on 8 December.

The Paper writes that Tang agreed to a national assembly of provincial representatives to decide the form of state, and that until then the Qing government would neither draw on foreign loans already contracted nor raise new ones. Members of the National Assembly, among them Yushan, telegraphed Yuan’s cabinet accusing him of acting in name as the Qing’s delegate while in fact planning everything for the revolutionaries. After the provincial delegates elected Sun Yat-sen provisional president on 29 December, Yuan repudiated what had been agreed; Tang offered his resignation on 1 January 1912, and the next day Yuan withdrew his credentials. Views differ on his relationship with Yuan: the French consul in Shanghai thought Tang seemed strongly affected by the atmosphere around him, while Fu Guoyong argues that Yuan knew Tang leaned towards a republic and that Tang’s negotiations in Shanghai in fact required Yuan’s approval.

First Premier of the Republic

In March 1912 Yuan appointed him the first premier of the Republic of China. According to the Daily New Post article, he joined the Tongmenghui when he took office; pressing for cabinet government, he repeatedly clashed with Yuan over whether appointments and finances must follow the Provisional Constitution. In May Dai Jitao published an article titled “Kill!” in his paper Minquan Bao naming Tang, Xiong Xiling, Yuan Shikai and Zhang Binglin as public enemies of the nation; when Dai was arrested in the Shanghai International Settlement, Tang telegraphed Shanghai on his behalf, saying that freedom of speech was guaranteed by the Provisional Constitution.

In early June the south nominated Wang Zhixiang, who was close to the Tongmenghui, as military governor of Zhili; Tang supported the nomination, but Yuan refused to sign the appointment. On 15 June Tang left Beijing for Tianjin by train without telling anyone, asked for sick leave and then resigned; the education minister Cai Yuanpei, justice minister Wang Chonghui, agriculture minister Song Jiaoren and acting commerce minister Wang Zhengting also resigned. The Paper attributes his break with Yuan to his single-minded pursuit of responsible cabinet government; from then on the two went their separate ways.

Cooperation and Divergence with Sun Yat-sen

After resigning he moved to Shanghai and in August 1912 joined the Nationalist Party. According to The Paper, during the National Protection War of 1915 he opposed Yuan’s monarchy alongside Sun Yat-sen as one of the leading anti-monarchists in Shanghai; according to the China News Service article and Japanese reference works, he later joined Sun’s Constitutional Protection Movement as finance minister of the military government in Guangzhou; The Paper records that he served as the southern chief delegate at the second North–South peace conference in 1919, and the following year became one of the military government’s four directors. In November 1920 he sailed back to Guangdong with Sun, Soong Ching-ling, Wu Tingfang and others to re-establish the military government in Guangzhou.

The two soon diverged, however: Tang favoured convening a regular parliament, settling the North–South standoff through party politics and pursuing a federation of autonomous provinces, while Sun convened an extraordinary parliament, was elected extraordinary president and launched a northern expedition. Pleading illness, Tang refused to take up his appointment as finance minister of the Guangzhou government and returned to his home at Tangjiawan. The Paper says the two remained personal friends.

County Magistrate of Zhongshan and Assassination in Shanghai

Japanese reference works record that he later served as a member of the Nationalist government, among other posts, and was at odds with Chiang Kai-shek. In 1931 he became magistrate of Zhongshan Model County, planning to turn it within twenty-five years into a tariff-free international commercial port; the Daily New Post article, citing his relative Tang Hongguang, says that Chen Jitang, chairman of the Guangdong provincial government, fearing he would make Zhongshan an “independent kingdom,” sent troops to surround the county government in October 1934, forcing him to leave Guangdong. The article also says that after 1949 Mao Zedong several times cited his move from premier to county magistrate as an example to teach cadres to accept both promotion and demotion.

From 1937 to 1938 he lived on Route Ferguson (now Wukang Road) in the Shanghai French Concession. After full-scale war with Japan broke out, The Paper writes, he became an object of competition and courtship among various political forces; in September 1938 he was assassinated at his Shanghai home by agents of the Juntong, the Nationalist military intelligence service. The Heibonsha encyclopedia states that he was assassinated by Nationalist agents because he would not cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek. The sources consulted for this page do not agree on the specific motive for the killing.