Chengting T. Wang
Chinese politician and diplomat (1882–1961)
Chengting Thomas Wang or C. T. Wang (Chinese: 王正廷; pinyin: Wáng Zhèngtíng; Wade–Giles: Wang2 Cheng4-t'ing2, 7 September 1882 – 21 May 1961), also known under the Pinyin spelling Wang Zhengting, was Foreign Minister, Minister of Finance, Minister of Justice and acting Premier in governments of the China in the 1920s.
"Chengting T. Wang" was the preferred form of his name in English.
Early life
Wang was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, and his father was an Anglican minister just outside Shanghai, where Wang attended mission schools before entering the preparatory school for Peiyang University. After teaching in the Provincial High School in Changsha, Hunan. Wang studied in Tokyo, where he was secretary of the Chinese YMCA, then in 1907, went to the United States to study law at the University of Michigan. He soon transferred to Yale University, graduating in 1910 and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Life in government
Wang returned to Shanghai in June, 1911, and took another position with the YMCA before being recruited to join the new Republican government in Beijing, then in Sun Yat-sen's opposition government in Canton.
He represented the interim Canton government in China's delegation, headed by Lu Zhengxiang, at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 after World War I. He and Wellington Koo, another US-educated lawyer, played prominent roles in presenting the case for returning Shandong to China and in the decision not to sign the Treaty of Versailles because it stipulated the transfer of German rights in Shandong to Japan. Notwithstanding their competitive positions domestically, Wang and Koo joined forces in staunchly promoting the formation of the League of Nations, jointly authoring a pamphlet on the subject.
Wang was on the constitutional committee for Hunan province, which was the only province to implement a constitution during the 1920s as parts of various province efforts towards self-rule.
“Chengting T. Wang” enters the record as chinese politician and diplomat (1882–1961). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chengting, Wang and Chinese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Chengting T. Wang” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chengting, Wang and Chinese provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6127766. VIAF identifies the subject as 40798676. The Library of Congress control number is n85047421. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1961, 1907 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chengting T. Wang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.