page_title: Ji Chaoding
section_title: Family background
hierarchical_section_title: Ji Chaoding / Family background
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Ji Gonquan and his family c. 1930
context_page_description: Ji Chaoding was a Chinese economist and political activist. His book Key Economic Areas in Chinese History influenced the conceptualization of Chinese history in the West by emphasizing geographic and economic factors as the basis of dynastic power.
  Ji was educated at Tsinghua University in China, then in the United States at University of Chicago and Columbia University. He became a member of the Communist Party of the United States and secretly joined the Communist Party of China. As an underground party member he was on the staff of the Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1930s before returning to China in 1939. He became a trusted adviser to the Ministry of Finance in the wartime Nationalist government but remained in China as a well-placed official in the new government of the People's Republic of China after 1949. Only after his death was his long-time Party membership acknowledged.
  Joseph Needham, author of Science and Civilisation in China, called Ji a "learned and brilliant writer" and Key Areas "perhaps the most outstanding book on the development of Chinese history among Western books in those days."
context_section_description: The Ji family was prominent in Shanxi education and politics. Chaoding's grandfather was a landlord who had a reputation for treating tenants honestly and supplying grain to the poor in times of shortage. His father, Ji Gongquan (冀貢泉; 1882–1967) studied law in Japan, but when the Republican Revolution of 1911 broke out and his government scholarship was suspended, he returned to China rather than accept Japanese government support.
  He became friends with Lu Xun, with whom he shared many progressive views. Ji Gongquan told his son Ji Chaozhu that he then calculated that "if I were to join the 'Preserve the Empire Party' I might lose face. If I were to join the Revolutionary Party I might lose my head. I decided I was wisest to keep both." He became education commissioner in the 1920s for the new Shanxi provincial government of Yan Xishan, but when he was ordered to open fire on student demonstrators, he resigned and moved his family from the capital back to Fenyang.
  Ji Chaoding had two younger brothers, Ji Chaoli (冀朝理, better known as Chao-Li Chi) and Ji Chaozhu (born 1929), who became a highly placed translator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after 1949, and a younger sister, Ji Qing (冀青).
caption: Ji Gongquan and his family, early 20th century. Ji Qing (l), Chaoli (c), Chaozhu (r).
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