China
Wellington Koo
1888–1985 Chinese minister to the United States, 1915–1920; delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
Born in Shanghai, Koo earned a doctorate in international law and diplomacy at Columbia University in 1912 and returned to China as secretary to President Yuan Shikai. In 1915 he became China's minister to the United States and Cuba. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he was a member of the Chinese delegation led by Foreign Minister Lu Zhengxiang, and in January he told the Allied leaders that Germany's lease of Shandong had been extorted by force and that the territory should return to China, not pass to Japan. The conference nevertheless awarded the rights to Japan, and the Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Koo later served as a judge of the International Court of Justice from 1957 to 1967 and died in 1985.
In the chronicle
Sources
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Koo
- c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/v_k_wellington_koo.html
- en.wikisource.org/wiki/Who's_Who_in_China_(3rd_edition)/Ku_Wei-chun
- history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv03/d50
- history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv03/d1
- en.wikisource.org/wiki/1926_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Japan