Quo Tai-chi

Quo Tai-chi (Chinese: 郭泰祺; pinyin: Guō Tàiqí; Wade–Giles: Kuo T'ai-ch'i; 1888–1952) was a diplomat during the Republican era of China and an active member of the Kuomintang from the early years of the Republic of China until shortly after the fall of mainland China to the Communists.

Quo was born in Hupei (Hubei) province in 1888 and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911, Phi Beta Kappa.

He was one of the technical delegates of China to the Paris Peace Conference, 1918–1919. At a time when the victors of the Great War were negotiating the spoils of war and punishment of the conquered, Quo controversially stated it would be better for the Germans to retain their concessions in Shantung (Shandong) than to allow the aggressive, militarist Japanese to take possession of them. The Chinese delegation's wishes were largely ignored by the European powers, and Quo's words proved prophetic as over the next three decades, Japan's appetite for conquest proved genocidal.

Quo published a book in English, entitled China's Fight for Democracy, in 1920, at a time when the Kuomintang was actively struggling against several regional warlords to reunify China as a democratic republic.

Quo Tai-chi held a variety of posts, including commissioner of foreign affairs of the "Canton government" in 1927 and Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1929, he resigned the post of vice-minister of foreign affairs in protest of the placement of so many former imperial and warlord bureaucrats in the Kuomintang's Nanking (Nanjing) government, but was convinced to return. During one of his tenures as Vice-Minister, he was beaten by an angry, nationalist mob in Shanghai in May 1932 for his decision to sign an armistice with the Japanese, who were continuously pushing further into Chinese territory. He signed the armistice from the hospital, but resigned his post that year.

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