Wu Tingfang

伍廷芳
Republic of China state institutions Liberalism and republicanism China China 1842–1922 ○ Died of illness

First ethnic Chinese barrister, who reformed Qing law and represented the revolutionaries in the 1911 peace talks

Born in Malacca and schooled in Hong Kong, he became the first ethnic Chinese barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in 1876 and in 1880 the first Chinese unofficial member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. As Qing minister to the United States, Spain and Peru and then, in 1903–1906, as reviser of the Qing code with Shen Jiaben, he helped abolish death by a thousand cuts and torture in interrogation. Supporting the 1911 Revolution, he was chief delegate of the revolutionaries at the Shanghai peace talks and, as justice minister of the Nanjing Provisional Government in 1912, argued for an independent judiciary. He was acting premier in 1917, then joined Sun Yat-sen’s Constitutional Protection Movement as a director and foreign minister of the Guangzhou government, acting for Sun in his absence. He died of pneumonia in Guangzhou in June 1922, shortly after Chen Jiongming’s revolt.

Also known as: Wu Ting-fang · Ng Choy · Ng Achoy

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