Shao Shaoyi

Místo: Xiangshan County

Narozený: 1862

Smrt: 1938

Životopis:

Tang Shaoyi, also spelled Tong Shao Yi, courtesy name Shaochuan (少川), was a Chinese statesman who briefly served as the first Premier of the Republic of China in 1912. In 1938, he was assassinated by the staff of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics in Shanghai. Tang was a native of Xiangshan County, Guangdong. Tang was educated in the United States, attending elementary school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and high school in Hartford, Connecticut. He later studied at Queen's College, Hong Kong, and then Columbia University in New York on the Chinese Educational Mission. He was a member of Columbia College's class of 1882 before being recalled back to China by the Qing government. Tong was a classmate and close friend of future Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler. Tang was a friend of Yuan Shikai; and during the Xinhai Revolution, negotiated on the latter's behalf in Shanghai with the revolutionaries' Wu Tingfang, ending up with the recognition of Yuan as President of the Republic of China. He had been a diplomat with Yuan Shikai's staff in Korea. In 1900, he was appointed head of the Shandong Bureau of Foreign Affairs under governor Yuan Shikai.Widely respected, he became the Republic's first Prime Minister in 1912, but quickly grew disillusioned with Yuan's lack of respect for the rule of law and resigned. He later took part in Sun Yat-sen's government in Guangzhou. Tang Shaoyi opposed, on constitutional grounds, Sun's taking of the 'Extraordinary Presidency' in 1921; Tang resigned from his position. In 1924, he refused an offer to be foreign minister under warlord Duan Qirui's provisional government in Beijing.