K. C. Hsiao | |||||||||||||||
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Born | 29 December 1897 Taihe County, Jiangxi, Qing Empire |
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Died | 4 November 1981 Seattle, Washington, United States |
(aged 83)||||||||||||||
Institutions |
University of Washington Tsinghua University Sichuan University National Taiwan University |
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Alma mater | Cornell University | ||||||||||||||
Notable students | David R. Knechtges | ||||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 蕭公權 | ||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 萧公权 | ||||||||||||||
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Transcriptions | |
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Standard Mandarin | |
Hanyu Pinyin | Xiāo Gōngquán |
Gwoyeu Romatzyh | Shiau Gongchyuan |
Wade–Giles | Hsiao Kung-ch'üan |
Gan | |
Romanization | Hsieu Kung-chüon |
K. C. Hsiao (Chinese: 蕭公權; 29 December 1897 – 4 November 1981) was a Chinese scholar and educator, best known for his contributions to Chinese political science and history.
Hsiao first travelled to the United States in 1920 on the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, remaining there for six years and earning a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1926. He returned to China and was professor of political science at Yenching University from 1930 to 1932, then at Tsinghua University from 1932 to 1937. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he left to teach at Sichuan University and Kwang Hua University (now East China Normal University). Frustrated by the shortage of research materials produced by the Chinese Civil War, he went to teach at National Taiwan University in 1949, and continued to the United States later that year. He taught at the University of Washington – initially as a visiting professor, and from 1959 as a tenured professor – from 1949 to 1968.
Hsiao's magnum opus was his Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiang shi 中國政治思想史 ["History of Chinese Political Thought"], an authoritative work that traces Chinese political thought from its earliest recorded history in the Shang dynasty to his day. Hsiao hoped that the twentieth century would come to embody 'liberal socialism', thereby reconciling the political movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.