Shanghai celebrates 130th birthday of famed diplomat Wellington Koo
To commemorate the 130th anniversary of Shanghai-born diplomat Wellington Koo’s birth, a series of programs is going on in the city. That includes the newly expanded Wellington Koo Museum in Jiading District that reopened yesterday and a memorial concert for Koo presented by young musicians at Shanghai Poly Grand Theater last night.
Most importantly, 250 boxes of Koo’s archive long preserved at Columbia University has recently been digitalized, and two copies are kept at Shanghai Library and Fudan University, with free access to scholars and ordinary people who are interested.
Born in 1888 Jiading, Koo received his PhD in international law and diplomacy from Columbia University and became a diplomat for the Republic of China in 1912.
As a member of the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Koo demanded Japan return Shandong to China, and also called for an end to imperialist institutions in China. With the claims denied, the Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
Koo also fought to get China recognized as a major power throughout the world and his name was the first signed on the United Nations Charter in 1945.
Koo retired from the Chinese diplomatic service in 1956, and worked another 10 years at International Court of Justice in The Hague. After that, he moved to New York where he lived until his death in 1985.
Koo’s history as diplomat reflects that of China’s struggle to rise from weakness to recognition as a major power in the world, according to Jin Guangyao, professor of Fudan University.
With Koo’s 13-volume memoirs completed in 1976, he donated 300 boxes of files covering his diplomatic career mostly from 1931 to 1956 to Columbia University. The files include letters, diaries, memorandums, scripts, notes, print materials and photos that he carefully kept.
“It was a huge archive, with much valuable information which was not even covered in his memoir. They are certainly very helpful for us to study about China’s diplomacy in the early 20th century, since Koo has been part of almost every important diplomatic issues concerning China at the time,” said Professor Jin, who spent a whole year in 1997 at the Columbia University reading through Koo’s archive.
For example, in the archive a telegram from Koo to Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) in 1944, Koo suggested diplomatic strategies to ensure China was one of the four major powers after World War II. It paved way for China to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council later. And it was also him who suggested a Chinese delegation with representatives of different parties to the UN founding.
“Koo always said that he is of no parties, but a mere Chinese who loved his country,” said Yang Hsueh-lan, stepdaughter of Koo, who brought the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Columbia University together in 2014 to digitalize 250 boxes of the archives kept in the US.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing got one copy of the completed digital archive, while another two copies were given to Shanghai, the hometown of Koo. “Koo would