Alma mater Cornell University Name K. Hsiao Traditional Chinese 蕭公權 Education Cornell University | Simplified Chinese 萧公权 Hanyu Pinyin | |
 | ||
Fields Political Science, Philosophy Institutions University of Washington
Tsinghua University
Sichuan University
National Taiwan University Died November 4, 1981, Seattle, Washington, United States Books Rural China, A history of Chinese political thought | ||
Notable students David R. Knechtges | ||
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.
Contents
Life and career
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. 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 from 1949 to 1968, initially as a visiting professor, and from 1959 as a tenured professor.
Hsiao's magnum opus is his two-volume Zhōngguó zhèngzhǐ sīxiǎng shǐ 中國政治思想史 ["History of Chinese Political Thought"], a work that traces Chinese political thought from its earliest recorded history in the Shang dynasty to his day. An English translation of the first volume by the American Sinologist Frederick W. Mote was published by Princeton University Press in 1979, but the second volume has never been translated into English. Hsiao hoped that the 20th century would come to embody 'liberal socialism', thereby reconciling the political movements of the 18th and 19th centuries.