152 Facts About Wellington Koo

Koo Vi Kyuin, better known as V K Wellington Koo, was a statesman of the Republic of China.

Wellington Koo was one of Republic of China's representatives at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Wellington Koo served as an ambassador to France, Great Britain and the United States; was a participant in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations; and sat as a judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague from 1957 to 1967.

Between October 1926 and June 1927, while serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Koo briefly held the concurrent positions of acting Premier and interim President of the Republic of China.

Wellington Koo was the first Chinese head of state known to use a Western name publicly.

Wellington Koo later wrote: "Ever since I was seven years old, when I heard with depressed heart the news of China's defeat by Japan, I had desired to work for China's recovery and the removal of the Japanese menace".

Wellington Koo's father resolved to give him a "modern" education to help him prepare for the coming 20th century and to work for China's modernization.

Aged 11, Wellington Koo was sent to be educated at the Anglo-Chinese Junior College in Shanghai, where he was taught in English various subjects such as modern science and geography, though his studies were cut short when he contracted typhoid fever.

Wellington Koo was shocked to discover that owing to extraterritoriality, the laws and rules that applied to Chinese in China did not apply to British subjects-in this instance laws prohibiting riding a bicycle on the sidewalk-and that a foreign policeman had power over the Chinese police.

Wellington Koo was left with a lifelong desire to end the status of extraterritoriality that had been imposed by the 19th century "Unequal treaties".

Wellington Koo studied at Saint John's University, Shanghai from 1901 to 1904, and Columbia University in New York City, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, a literary and debating club, and graduated with a BA in Liberal Arts and an MA in Political Science.

Wellington Koo served the Republic of China as English Secretary to President Yuan Shikai.

In 1915, Wellington Koo was made Republic of China's Minister to the United States and Cuba.

Wellington Koo had become close to President Woodrow Wilson, who invited him to visit the White House, where he was given to understand that the United States would support China's demands regarding the Shandong against Japan at the Paris peace conference.

Wilson asked for Wellington Koo to attend the peace conference in Paris, and moreover Wellington Koo travelled on the same ship that took Wilson and the rest of the American delegation to France in December 1918.

Wellington Koo argued very forcefully that though no Chinese troops had fought in Europe, the sacrifices of the Chinese coolies who dug the trenches amid appalling conditions on the Western Front entitled China to be treated as one of the powers that made an important contribution to the Allied victory.

When Macleay suggested that Britain would probably favor the Japanese claims on the Shandong Peninsula because Japan had done more for the Allied victory than China, Wellington Koo countered him with saying that besides for expelling the Germans from the Shandong in 1914 that Japan had done nothing for the Allied cause while Chinese coolies had dug the trenches from the fall of 1914 onward until the end of the war in 1918.

The next day, Lou disappeared and Wellington Koo took charge of the Chinese delegation.

Wellington Koo argued that under international law that treaties signed under threats of violence were invalid, and as such the Sino-Japanese treaty of 25 May 1915 was invalid as China had signed under duress as Japan was threatening war if its terms were not met.

Wellington Koo further stated that the original Sino-German treaty of 1897 was invalid as Germany was threatening war unless the Reich was granted special rights in the Shandong.

Wellington Koo stated that all the people of China were grateful to the Japanese for ending the harsh German rule over the Shandong in 1914, but noted: "But grateful as they are, the Chinese delegation felt that they would be false in their duty to China and to the world if they did not object to paying their debts of gratitude by selling the birthright of their countrymen and thereby sowing the seeds of discord in the future".

Wellington Koo noted that under Wilson's 14 Points, the basis of the peace was to be national self-determination, which led him to argue that Japan had no right to the Shandong as its people were overwhelmingly Han and wanted to be part of China.

Wellington Koo stated that the Shandong "was the cradle of Chinese civilization, the birthplace of Confucius and Mencius and a Holy Land for the Chinese".

The American secretary of state, Robert Lansing, wrote that Wellington Koo had crushed the Japanese with his speech.

Wellington Koo seized upon the 14 Points, which stated that secret treaties were invalid, to argue that the secret treaties in 1917 under which Great Britain, France and Italy all agreed to support Japan taking over the German rights in the Shandong peninsula, were invalid.

Wellington Koo was greatly hurt when Lloyd George casually told him that China had made only the most "minimal" contributions to the Allied cause as he dismissed the work of the Chinese coolies in digging the trenches on the Western Front as unimportant.

On 22 April 1919, in what Wellington Koo always saw as a betrayal, Wilson-whom he had invested such hopes in-came out in support of Japanese claims on the Shandong as he stated that "the war had been fought largely for the purpose of showing that treaties cannot be violated" and it was "better to live up to a bad treaty than tear it up" as he argued that China was bound by the 1915 treaty.

The Oei family, a wealthy huaren family from the Dutch East Indies, had decided that Wellington Koo should marry Oei Hui-lan.

Oei complained in her memoirs that Wellington Koo spent his days pursuing her instead of engaging in his "important work as the second Chinese delegate".

Wellington Koo found himself bombarded with telegrams from Chinese university students asking him not to sign the Treaty of Versailles if it meant ceding the Shandong, at one point receiving 7,000 such telegrams in a single day.

Wellington Koo called for an end to imperialist institutions such as extraterritoriality, tariff controls, legation guards, and lease holds.

Wellington Koo was keen to have China be one of the founding members of the League of Nations, which would signify its desire to be treated as an equal by the other nations of the world.

Wellington Koo discovered a loophole in that the Treaty of St Germain included the Covent of the League of Nations in its first section.

Wellington Koo was involved in the formation of the League of Nations as China's first representative to the newly formed League.

The implication of the ballad that Wellington Koo was a not a diplomat representing China who was worthy of respect, but rather just a foreigner with a "funny" name who existed to amuse the British greatly offended him.

In October 1921, Wellington Koo was reassigned as the Chinese minister in Washington.

Wellington Koo was to represent China at the Washington conference, hence his sudden reassignment to Washington just after his arrival in London.

From 1922, Wellington Koo served successively as Foreign Minister and Finance Minister.

On 15 May 1924, he was the target of assassination attempt when an ornate gift package arrived at his house addressed to him, which Wellington Koo's servants opened instead.

The man who sent the package fled to Japan, which Wellington Koo to conclude that the Japanese were behind the attempt on his life.

Later that month, Wellington Koo signed a treaty with the Soviet Union under which the Soviet Union renounced all "Unequal treaties" that China had signed with Imperial Russia in exchange for which Wellington Koo recognized the de facto independence of Outer Mongolia, which until then he had claimed as part of China.

Wellington Koo opened up talks with the British for the return of the British colony of Weihaiwei, which the British had signed a 25-year lease on in 1898, which led Wellington Koo to argue as 1923 had already passed, the lease had expired.

The talks were broken off when the warlord General Feng Yuxiang, aka "the Christian General" seized Beijing, forcing Wellington Koo to flee for his life.

Wellington Koo disliked Zhang, an illiterate bandit turned warlord who professed to be fighting to restore the "Great Qing Empire", but was willing to work with him as Zhang favored diplomacy to revise the "Unequal treaties" instead of war, a choice of options that coincided with Wellington Koo's own preferences.

Wellington Koo was Acting Premier from 1 October 1926 and acted concurrently as Interim President.

Wellington Koo served as Premier from January until June 1927, when he resigned after Zhang organized a military government.

Wellington Koo represented China at the League of Nations to protest the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Wellington Koo was assigned to the League's Lytton Commission-so called after its chairman, Lord Lytton-that was sent in December 1931 to go to Manchuria to investigate if Japan was an aggressor or not.

Wellington Koo concurrently served as the chief of the Chinese delegation to the League of Nations when it was holding its sessions in Geneva.

In March 1933, Wellington Koo gave what was described as a very strong speech, urging the League to finally act against Japan, now that it was established by the Lytton commission that Japan had committed aggression.

Wellington Koo wrote at the time that at the League's headquarters in Geneva there was "a general sickening atmosphere at the impotence and cowardice" of the League in face of the Italian aggression against Ethiopia.

In 1936, France and China upgraded their relations from the legation to embassy level, and Wellington Koo thus became the first Chinese ambassador to France.

Wellington Koo was forced to tell her that he was actually the Chinese ambassador and the last thing he wanted to see was his country being "shallowed up" by Japan.

Likewise, Madame Wellington Koo tried to leave a party by asking her hosts to call for her chauffeur and her limousine, only for the Japanese ambassador's limousine and chauffeur to appear, as her hosts did not know the difference between Japanese and Chinese.

Wellington Koo spent many sleepless nights in the summer of 1937 as he worried deeply about the crisis.

Wellington Koo met several times with diplomats from the Japanese embassy in Paris in an attempt to find a diplomatic solution, but the Japanese kept making extreme demands that Wellington Koo rejected.

Wellington Koo broke off talks with the Japanese who had rejected his demand that Beijing be returned to China.

Wellington Koo wrote in his diary that reports that the Japanese were heavily bombing Tianjin "made his hair stand up" with fear.

Later that same month, the Japanese took Tianjin, which Wellington Koo called his diary the "most depressing and sickening news".

Several times, the French cabinet considered closing the railroad following complaints from the Japanese embassy in Paris and dark hints that Japan might invade Indochina if the railroad were not closed, but Wellington Koo was always able to persuade the French to keep the railroad running.

Wellington Koo felt that the best response to the Japanese invasion was a Sino-Soviet alliance with "Anglo-American-French material co-operation in the background".

Wellington Koo believed that as the victors of World War I that both Britain and France had a vested interest in upholding the international order created after that war with "the moral sympathy and support of the United States".

Wellington Koo argued that the Franco-Soviet alliance provided for a certain stability in Europe, and the lack of the same stability in Asia was what was explained why "Japan could run amuck".

Wellington Koo felt it was in their own interests of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States to support China, and he was gravely disappointed when he discovered that his viewpoint was not as widely shared as he had assumed.

Wellington Koo did not expect the League to take action, and the failure of the League to save Ethiopia was hardly an auspicious precedent.

However, Wellington Koo thought an appeal to the League might win public sympathy in the West.

At a meeting with the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos, Wellington Koo learned that the French "advised delay".

Wellington Koo in turn told Delbos: "The aggression of Japan against China was too flagrant, and if the League should refuse to take cognizance of it, the League would become a complete farce".

In September 1937, Wellington Koo gave a speech to the League, asking for Japan to be declared the aggressor.

Wellington Koo reported to Nanking that it was clear that "the League could not do much" and that "the matter hinged with Britain and France", the two veto-holding members of the League Council.

Wellington Koo himself thought that calling for sanctions would be a mistake as American "collaboration" with imposing sanctions was essential, but the Waichiaopu insisted that Wellington Koo ask for sanctions against Japan.

Wellington Koo was urged to take his case to the League's Far Eastern Advisory Committee instead of the League Assembly, advice he was predisposed to accept.

Wellington Koo wrote it "was useless to force things if the powers were unwilling" and it was better to "work with them instead of against them".

On 16 September 1937, Wellington Koo gave a speech at the League's Far Eastern Advisory Committee, asking for the League to declare Japan the aggressor, impose wide-ranging sanctions to cripple the Japanese economy and provide China with economic support.

All that Wellington Koo achieved was a resolution from the League criticizing the Japanese policy of indiscriminate bombing of Chinese cities, and instead asked for the Japanese to engage in discriminate bombing of Chinese military targets.

Wellington Koo wrote the British offer "fell like a bomb, deafening the senses".

Wellington Koo was dissatisfied with the attempt to shift the onus on action from the League to the signatory powers of the Nine-Power Treaty, saying that: "the Washington Treaty cannot relieve League members of their obligations under the Covenant".

Wellington Koo was chosen to head the Chinese delegation to the Brussels conference, which took place in November 1937.

However, Wellington Koo's hopes were dashed by a meeting with William Christian Bullitt Jr.

Wellington Koo was warned that the United States was unwilling to take a leadership role at the conference and would prefer that Wellington Koo not attend to provide "full liberty of discussion".

On 17 October 1937, Wellington Koo was informed that France would continue to allow arms to be sold to China, but none could be taken in via the Indochinese railroad, which in effect cut China off from French arms.

On 31 October 1937, Wellington Koo left Paris for Brussels, and his train took him through a number of battlefields of World War One.

On November 3,1937, the conference opened and Wellington Koo gave a speech accusing Japan of aggression.

Wellington Koo who had expected more of the Americans was deeply discouraged.

Wellington Koo argued that: "just as domestic order requires more than laws on the statue books, mere words are insufficient to restore peace and order in the face of international violence".

At a press conference, Wellington Koo stated that at the conference Britain had acted like a "friend" towards China while the United States had not, a remark that infuriated Davis.

However, Wellington Koo continued to invest his hopes in the United States, writing "that the United States could save the situation if it only act quickly and energetically".

Wellington Koo hoped that the Panay incident might lead to the United States taking action against Japan, and he was disappointed when Roosevelt chose instead to accept the Japanese apology that the sinking of the Panay was a mistake, despite the fact the Panay was flying the American flag at the time the Japanese aircraft bombed the gunboat.

Wellington Koo noted in his reports that the French were worried that keeping the Indochinese railroad open would lead to a Japanese invasion of Indochina.

Wellington Koo countered this thesis by arguing that if the Japanese conquered China, it would be likely that they would try to conquer Indochina, and it was in France's own interest to assist China.

Wellington Koo believed that this represented a precedent that could be applied to China.

The French cabinet minister that Wellington Koo was most close to was Georges Mandel, the minister of the colonies.

Wellington Koo reported that through the French Premier Edouard Daladier did not always support the anti-appeasement faction in his cabinet led by Mandel, but that Daladier was sympathetic towards China and overruled Bonnet when he pressed to have the Indochinese railroad closed.

The ambassador that Wellington Koo spoke with the most was William Christian Bullitt Jr.

Wellington Koo had hopes that speaking to Bullitt would influence Roosevelt.

In September 1938, Wellington Koo attended the fall session of the League of Nations in Geneva, where he pressed for sanctions against Japan.

Wellington Koo wrote that the result of the Sudetenland crisis had badly damaged the prestige of France, which led him to predicate that the French would become more preoccupied with European affairs at the expense of Asian affairs.

Wellington Koo wrote that the way that Czechoslovakia-a major French ally since 1924-had been forced to accept a highly unfavorable settlement in the form of the Munich Agreement, had left France's other allies in eastern Europe such as Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania "fearful" of the future.

Wellington Koo predicated that the French would either accept eastern Europe as being in the German sphere of influence or make an attempt to retain influence in eastern Europe by strengthening their existing alliances, arguing that the latter was the more likely of the two scenarios.

Wellington Koo described the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain as an "old man" who ignored "obligations under international law or the principle of international morality" during the crisis.

Wellington Koo wrote that Chamberlain wanted to revive the 19th century Concert of Europe by creating an Anglo-German duumvirate that would "dominate and control the smaller and weaker powers".

Wellington Koo argued that Chamberlain's attempts to create an Anglo-German dominated new Concert of Europe had finished off the League of Nations as a force in world politics and would have a disastrous impact on Anglo-Soviet relations, which had never been friendly to begin with.

Finally, Wellington Koo concluded that Joseph Stalin was angry at the way that the Soviet Union had been snubbed during the Sudetenland crisis, which he argued would focus Soviet attention on Europe at the expense of Asia.

Wellington Koo felt that the possibility of an Anglo-German new Concert of Europe would greatly strain Anglo-Soviet relations.

Wellington Koo stated that he believed that the Soviet Union would never a risk a war with Japan as long as Germany continued to expand into Eastern Europe and would hence limit the amount of aid it would provide China to avoid a war with Japan, through he predicated that the Soviets would not cut off aid to China as they preferred to keep the Japanese engaged in the war.

Wellington Koo was especially encouraged by the American statement, which he felt reflected "a hardening of the American attitude vis-a-vis Japan".

Wellington Koo noted that the French were still permitting military supplies to be sent to China through French Indochina, and his thesis that helping China was a way of helping France by keeping the Japanese engaged was winning him friends in Paris.

Wellington Koo tried to associate China with the "peace front", arguing that supporting China would benefit both Britain and France by keeping the Japanese engaged in China, which in turn would limit the possibility of the Japanese attacking the British and French colonies in Asia.

Wellington Koo described Japan as a nation bent "on the conquest of China, subjection of Asia and finally domination of the world".

Somewhat paradoxically, Wellington Koo found himself defending the "unequal treaties" that he was normally opposed as he argued to French leaders that the Japanese conquest of China would "make it impossible to safeguard legitimate western rights and interests, and that respect for China's sovereignty and maintenance of the open door".

In June 1939, Wellington Koo discovered a senior Chinese diplomat, Huang Zheng, had been selling visas to Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The leaders of several French Jewish groups met with Wellington Koo to ask him to lobby the Waichiaopu to allow the Jewish refugees to travel with the visas, arguing that though Huang was corrupt, that the refugees had purchased the visas in good faith to escape Europe.

Wellington Koo did press the Waichiaopu to allow the Jewish refugees to go to China.

On 22 June 1939, Wellington Koo stated he read reports in the French press of a plan to settle Jewish refugees in Yunnan province, leading him to ask his superiors what was the Chinese attitude towards accepting Jewish refugees.

Wellington Koo noted the refugees wanted to settle in Shanghai, which was the largest and wealthiest city in China, and which had been occupied by the Japanese in November 1937.

Wellington Koo argued it was not clear if the Japanese would actually allow the Jews to settle in Shanghai, but that allowing Jewish refugees to travel to Shanghai with visas issued by the Republic of China was an important symbolic gesture that the Republic of China was still the legitimate government of all China.

Wellington Koo wrote in his diary on 3 September 1939: "These are momentous days in history, the beginning of a war which may alter the face of the world and of civilization itself".

Shortly afterwards, Wellington Koo suggested in a message to Chiang Kai-shek that China formally declared its wish to align with the Allied powers and to offer Chinese resources and manpower to aid the Allied cause in Europe.

Wellington Koo briefly served as the Chinese ambassador in Vichy, where he was forced to live under reduced conditions.

Wellington Koo spent the rest of the summer of 1940, trying to persuade Vichy officials to resume arms shipments.

Wellington Koo reported to Chongqing that France was "powerless" in Asia as he stated that he had information on good authority that the Germans had ordered that the French should not "provoke" the Japanese.

Wellington Koo decided that wartime London was too dangerous for his family to live, and sent his wife and children to New York.

Madame Wellington Koo had wanted to go to London and went to New York most unwillingly.

Many in the Foreign Office disliked Wellington Koo as one of Britain's "bitterest enemies" in the 1920s, charging that he was a Chinese nationalist who rejected the "white man's burden" view of Britain's role in the world.

Wellington Koo was deeply worried about a possible Japanese invasion of Burma, which would close the Burma Road.

Wellington Koo pressed for more British aid to China, only to be told that the British were fully committed to the struggle against Germany and had little to spare to assist China.

Wellington Koo noted that the Japanese victories in southeast Asia were further cutting off China from the rest of the world, but at least had the benefit of making British officials more respectful as he noted after the fall of Singapore, the British lost their customary disdain for Asians.

Wellington Koo noted that though Churchill was firmly committed to the "Europe First" strategy that the Japanese victories in southeast Asia that had pushed the Imperial Japanese Army right to the frontiers of India increased the importance of keeping China in the war.

Wellington Koo pressed hard to end the 19th century "unequal treaties" and especially wanted the end of British extraterritorial rights in China.

On 11 January 1943, Wellington Koo signed in London a new Sino-British treaty that saw Britain renounce all of its extraterritorial rights in China, through the British refused to return Hong Kong as the Chinese had wanted.

Chiang ordered Wellington Koo to provide him with an assessment of British public opinion regarding India.

Wellington Koo reported that on the basis of statements made in the House of Commons and in the British press that only a minority in Britain favored independence for India with the majority favoring continuing the rule of the Raj after the war.

Wellington Koo followed his orders by stating to British officials that China only wanted to see India to become a Dominion, and was shocked to hear various British officials insist that to give India Dominion status would lead to "twenty years of anarchy and disorder".

When Wellington Koo asked why the Indians could not be trusted to govern themselves, he was told that "occidental influence had only penetrated the top strata of Indian society".

Wellington Koo met Churchill at 10 Downing street, where he found the prime minister to be "a little peeved and sullen".

Soong, visited London, where he met with Eden and Wellington Koo to discuss plans for a British offensive from India into Burma with the aim of reopening the Burma Road.

Wellington Koo reported to Chongqing that Eden was the only member of the British cabinet who was sympathetic towards China, and expressed regret that Eden was not the prime minister, writing that Anglo-Chinese relations would be much better if Eden instead of Churchill were the prime minister.

Unlike Chiang, who had a deep mistrust of Britain, Wellington Koo favored an Anglo-Chinese alliance after the war, preferably with the United States joining.

Wellington Koo stated he felt with the long-standing vexatious issue of extraterritorial rights finally settled in China's favor, it would be possible to make an alliance with the United Kingdom against the Soviet Union after the war.

Chiang was opposed to Wellington Koo's ideas, believing that such an alliance would limit his ability to deal with the Soviets by committing China to a rigidly anti-Soviet line, and would only agree to such an alliance if the United States joined in, which he thought was unlikely.

Wellington Koo advised Chiang to accept the French offer, stating that France would probably a major power again after the war.

In 1945, Wellington Koo was one of the founding delegates of the United Nations.

Wellington Koo later became the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and focused on maintaining the alliance between the Republic of China and the United States as the Kuomintang began losing to the Communists and had to retreat to Taiwan.

Wellington Koo noted that the new Communist government in Russia, which denounced liberalism as a device for Western imperialism and renounced all of the special Russian rights in China gained under the Tsarist regime, won tremendous prestige in China as the one power that seemed willing to treat China as an equal, which led directly to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1920.

In 1908, Wellington Koo married his first wife, Chang Jun-o.

Wellington Koo died in the US during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

Wellington Koo was previously married, in 1909, to British consular agent Beauchamp Stoker, by whom she had one son, Lionel, before divorcing in 1920.

Wellington Koo wrote two memoirs: Hui-Lan Koo : An Autobiography and No Feast Lasts Forever.

On September 3,1959, Wellington Koo married his fourth wife Yen Yu-yun, the widow of Clarence Kuangson Young, who had been his long-term mistress since 1930s while her husband was still alive He had three stepdaughters from this marriage: Genevieve, Shirley and Frances Loretta Young.

Wellington Koo lived long enough to see two of his sons die before him.

Wellington Koo died surrounded by his family on the night of 14 November 1985, aged 97.

Wellington Koo was survived by his fourth wife, two children, nineteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.