Lu Zhengxiang

陸徵祥
Beiyang government and warlords China China 1871–1949 ○ Died in a Belgian abbey

Diplomat who refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and became a Benedictine monk

Born in Shanghai, he studied French and began his career in 1893 as an interpreter at the legation in Saint Petersburg, later serving the Qing as delegate to the Hague peace conferences and as minister to Russia. As the Republic’s foreign minister he modernised the Foreign Ministry, and he was premier in the summer of 1912 but soon resigned for lack of political leverage. In 1915 he negotiated Japan’s Twenty-One Demands with Cao Rulin, and during Yuan Shikai’s imperial venture he was Secretary of State. He led the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and, when reservations to the Shandong clauses were refused, declined to sign, leaving China the only participant that did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. After his wife’s death he entered the Benedictine abbey of Sint-Andries in Bruges in 1927, became a priest and died there in 1949.

Also known as: Lou Tseng-Tsiang · Pierre-Célestin Lou

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