Wellington Koo: Half a Diplomat in Modern Chinese History

When you pick up a biography, the initial urge is usually curiosity about a person. And if that person carried real historical weight, you end up just as curious about the era they lived through.

The first time Wellington Koo caught my attention was his speech at the Paris Peace Conference defending China’s rights over Shandong. Throughout modern history, China’s representatives on the international diplomatic stage were mostly timid, aging figures from a bygone dynasty. That year, Koo was only 30, already four years into his post as minister to the United States. He stood before the conference speaking fluent, idiomatic English, defending his country’s rights.

I speak for a quarter of the human race, four hundred million Chinese people. Shandong is the cradle of Chinese civilization, the birthplace of our sages Confucius and Mencius. Shandong belongs to China—politically, economically, and culturally. China cannot lose Shandong, just as the West cannot lose Jerusalem. …

This was the moment after World War I when the victors sat down to carve up the spoils. If you aren’t familiar with this stretch of history, a few keywords say it all: right before came the “Twenty-One Demands,” and right after came the “May Fourth Movement.” Across that entire humiliating era, Koo’s speech was practically the only thing that actually lifted people’s spirits. Yet under 民国的政治逻辑, the outcome didn’t really change at all.

Historian Tang Degang once wrote, “In modern Chinese history, there were only two and a half diplomats, and Wellington Koo was that half.” His career was essentially the entire diplomatic history of modern China:

  • In 1904, at age 16, he went to New York to study. In 1912, at 24, on the recommendation of Tang Shaoyi, he returned to China to serve as secretary in the presidential office and cabinet under Yuan Shikai’s government.
  • From 1912 to 1927, he served a rotating cast of warlord governments in Beijing, taking part in the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington Conference.
  • From 1931 to 1956, he served the Nationalist government across Nanjing, Chongqing, and Taipei.

He lived through Yuan Shikai’s monarchical restoration, the Nationalist Revolution, the Mukden Incident, the War of Resistance against Japan, and the Chinese Civil War, served as ambassador to the US during the Taiwan period, and eventually witnessed the People’s Republic of China return to the United Nations.

Reading his biography, the pattern you run into most often goes: foreign powers violate sovereignty -> Koo argues based on international law / speaks at peace conferences / seeks American help -> consults the government at home -> reaches a perhaps-acceptable compromise. You see it in the Twenty-One Demands, the Tanggu Truce, and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance (though Koo didn’t handle all of them).

The old saying that “a weak nation has no diplomacy” was demonstrated all too thoroughly in modern Chinese history.

Yet Koo held a different conviction:

A nation, whether strong or weak, must rely on diplomacy; only the methods differ. And diplomacy for a weak nation is especially vital. A strong nation can afford to be somewhat careless in its diplomacy, because if it loses a little ground, it has other means to make up for it. A weak nation cannot afford to let its guard down for an instant.

He still did everything in his power: working every connection he could find, building relationships with foreign diplomats and government officials well in advance, and making full use of international law—using justice to push back against brute power, doing whatever was humanly possible.

The only real highlight in modern Chinese diplomatic history was probably securing its place among the “Big Four”—alongside the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—in the Allied coalition against fascism. That status was earned on the Chinese battlefield through the enormous sacrifices of countless Chinese people fighting fascism. After the war, with the Big Four as its core, a new international peacekeeping body was formed: the United Nations. As China’s representative, Wellington Koo was the first person to sign the UN Charter.

It remains one of his most defining moments on the world stage.

Even after finishing his biography, I still can’t say I truly understand his life.

His career and the era he was dealt gave him the natural traits of a tragic hero. I often struggle to face this kind of fear: if failure is already guaranteed anyway, should we still keep trying? Does our effort actually make any difference?

The story of Sisyphus keeps speaking to every generation. Every day he pushes a boulder up a mountain, and the moment he reaches the summit, it rolls right back down to his feet. He pushes it up, it rolls down, he pushes it up again… We all assume this is his torment. But maybe that isn’t the truth at all.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

During the ten years from 1957 to 1967, Koo served as a judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He was no longer working for any single volatile regime, but speaking for humanity as a global citizen. It was, without question, the happiest post of his entire life:

Of all the public posts I held throughout my life, this was the one that brought me the greatest joy and contentment. There were three reasons: (1) My doctorate from Columbia University was in public international law. Serving on the court at The Hague finally allowed me to put what I had studied to good use. (2) Whenever disputes between nations could not be resolved, they submitted them to the International Court for a ruling under the law. The attorneys arguing on both sides were world-renowned jurists, and their debates fascinated me. (3) The court consisted of fifteen judges, all distinguished figures. Some had served as presidents of their countries… We got along wonderfully, stayed in the same hotel, and sometimes walked to the courtroom together in the morning. Beyond that, to speak frankly, the standing of an International Court judge is remarkably high—free from the control of one’s own government and untouched by interference from the United Nations. The entire world respects their independence and freedom. It was nothing like serving as an official in a domestic government, where even the highest offices like presidents and prime ministers are constantly besieged by headaches that ruin their sleep. My colleagues were all true gentlemen; there was zero power struggle between us, and we treated one another with mutual courtesy. And international disputes didn’t happen all that often.

In his later years, Koo began writing his memoirs in 1960—a seventeen-year endeavor totaling six million characters. A life like his doesn’t need any verdict from you or me.

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