People · geologist, Shanghai port commissioner, negotiator for the Mixed Court
Ding Wenjiang
丁文江Dīng Wénjiāng · 1887–1936
Geologist who as head of the Songhu Commercial Port Office signed the 1926 provisional agreement returning the Mixed Court to Chinese control.
Ding Wenjiang (丁文江, Dīng Wénjiāng) was a geologist whom the gazetteer records for one short episode in Shanghai: the 1926 negotiation that handed the Mixed Court (会审公廨) back to Chinese authority. The Mixed Court was the settlement court that heard cases involving Chinese residents, and its control had long been shared with the consuls.
Born in Taixing, Jiangsu, he studied in Japan and Britain, graduating from Glasgow in 1911, and in 1913 he began Chinese state geological work. In May 1926 he became director-general of the Songhu Commercial Port Office, the Chinese body for the area around the foreign settlements. In that post the gazetteer credits him with a plan to unify Chinese administration of the Shanghai area, a municipal health bureau, and the talks with the consular body on the Mixed Court. He signed the provisional regulations on 1 August 1926 for the Jiangsu provincial government.
After Shanghai he returned to academic and scientific posts, including the Academia Sinica from 1934. He died in 1936.
Timeline
- 1911Takes a Glasgow University degree in zoology and geology1
- 1913Appointed head of the geological section of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce's mining bureau1
- 1926Becomes director-general of the Songhu Commercial Port Office (May); signs the Mixed Court agreement on 1 August1
- 1934Becomes secretary-general of the Academia Sinica1