Tang Shaoyi

Tang Shaoyi (; 2 January 1862 – 30 September 1938), also spelled Tong Shao Yi, courtesy name Shaochuan, was a Chinese statesman who briefly served as the first Premier of the Republic of China in 1912. In 1938, he was assassinated by the staff of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics in Shanghai. Early life Tang was a native of Xiangshan County, Guangdong. Tang was educated in the United States, attending elementary school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and high school in Hartford, Connecticut. He later studied at Queen's College, Hong Kong, and then Columbia University in New York on the Chinese Educational Mission. He was a member of Columbia College's class of 1882 before being recalled back to China by the Qing government. Tong was a classmate and close friend of future Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler. Career Tang was a friend of Yuan Shikai; and during the Xinhai Revolution, negotiated on the latter's behalf in Shanghai with the revolutionaries' Wu Tingfang, ending up with the recognition of Yuan as President of the Republic of China. He had been a diplomat with Yuan Shikai's staff in Korea. In 1900, he was appointed head of the Shandong Bureau of Foreign Affairs under governor Yuan Shikai.