Hu Shi: A Biography

The first full biography of Hu Shi--the visionary reformer who modernized China and forged a historic alliance with the United States during World War II.The first comprehensive biography of one of the most influential Chinese figures of the 20th century, one whose efforts to bridge East and West at a pivotal point in world history remain both historic and controversial. Born in Shanghai, Hu Shi became a professor at Peking University in 1917 after attending Cornell and Columbia universities in the US. Almost singlehandedly, he tried to reform the rigid and tradition-bound Chinese educational system, applying progressive American ideas. He also led the push for co-education, women's rights, and, most dramatically, replacing classical Chinese characters with simplified versions. This momentous shift made literacy rates rise and made education more accessible. The New York Times hailed him as "the best of the new and old China," and his Chinese contemporaries dubbed him the "Father of the Chinese Renaissance." After Japan invaded China in 1937, Hu Shi was named Chinese ambassador to the United States--China's darkest hour. Hu Shi found America--where he had of course lived for a number of years--entrenched in isolationism. He launched a speaking campaign across the United States, working with President Roosevelt and his cabinet to secure loans for China. Known for his soft-spoken manner, Hu Shi nonetheless lost his temper when he sensed that FDR might capitulate to the Japanese insistence on U.S. non-intervention and reminded the president of his pledges to assist China. This culminated on the morning of December 7, 1941, when Roosevelt called a special audience with Hu Shi, informing him that he had firmly refused the Japanese proposal. Hu Shi was the last foreign diplomat the president had met on that fateful morning, and one of the first to learn from FDR, merely hours later, that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. "Now my country can breathe," he said. The Chinese ambassador had helped to keep China and US together and won the greatest triumph of his diplomatic career.After World War Two, Hu Shi returned to a civil war-torn China and continued to call for the reforms he had initiated. When he Communists defeated Chaing Kai-shek and his Nationalist Army, Hu Shi's former student, Mao Zedong, denounced him for his liberal Western ways. In America, he was dismissed by his former colleagues as a "McCarthyite" for speaking out so forcefully against communism. Not for the first or last time in his life he was caught between worlds and yet, this time, unable to bridge them. What endured was his legacy of helping modernize China, and his conviction that ongoing dialogue between China and the US was vital to world security.Authoritative, richly detailed, and appreciative, Moying Li's biography illuminates Hu Shi's life as well as his legacy in both the United States and in China, where in recent years there have been prominent efforts to revive his name and acknowledge his achievements. Read more