K. C. Hsiao


K. C. Hsiao was a Chinese historian and political scientist, best known for his contributions to Chinese political science and history.

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 , 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.

Selected works

Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi 中國政治思想史, 2 vols. Chongqing: Shangwu yinshuguan. . Seattle: University of Washington Press.Wenxue jianwang lu 問學諫往錄. Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe.Modern China and a New World: Kang Youwei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927. Seattle, London: University of Washington Press.Xiao Gongquan xiansheng quanji 蕭公權先生全集, 9 volumes. Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe.

Works cited

  • "Biography of Hsiao Kung-ch'üan", in David C. Buxbaum, Frederick W. Mote, eds. Transition and Permanence: Chinese History and Culture. A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. Hsiao Kung-ch'uan. Hong Kong: Cathay Press, 1972, xiii-xvi.
  • Knechtges, David R. "Wenwen ruya yishusheng - huainian Xiao Gongquan xiansheng 溫文儒雅一書生 - 懷念蕭公權先生", Zhongguo Shibao 中國時報, 25-26 February 1981.
  • "Xiao Gongquan jiaoshou zhuzuo mulu 蕭公權教授著作目錄", Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies 8 : 496-498.