Li Choh-ming

Li Choh-ming, KBE, (李卓敏, 1912 – 1991) was a Chinese-born U.S. economist and educator. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1963. He compiled The Li Chinese Dictionary (Cantonese-Mandarin). He was an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and at Nankai University in Tiensien during his academic career.

Born in Canton, China in 1912 to Kanchi and Mewshing Li, Choh-Ming Li was the third child and the eldest son in a family of 11 children. He graduated from Puiying High School in Canton before heading off to the U.S. at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned his B.S. in commerce (1932), M.A. (1933) and Ph.D. in economics (1936). Eventually, three of his brothers Choh-Hao, Choh-Hsien, Choh-Luh and a sister, Djoh-i, came from China to study various sciences at U.C. Berkeley.

Li returned to China to teach economics at Nankai University in Tiensien in 1937. From 1938-1943, Li taught at the National Southwest Associated University (Lianda) when the top three universities in China (Tsinghua, Peking, Nankai) consolidated into one, moving to Kunming and Chungking as the Sino-Japanese war broke. Li was among the key economists to bring Western economic ideas into China, both in teaching and serving as China’s representative at various international missions. In 1945-47 Li was named Deputy Director-General of the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA)in Shanghai, to work with the United Nations (UNRRA) in managing the postwar relief and recovery effort in China. As the war ended, Li became China’s permanent delegate to the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in 1948-49 and Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Rehabilitation Affairs (BOTRA) 1949-50 to help reconstruct China with long-term economic development.

In 1951 Li immigrated to the U.S. where he began as a lecturer in economics, becoming professor of business administration in 1958, and Chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies (1961) at his alma mater, the University of California-Berkeley. Upon becoming a U.S. citizen, Li was able to bring his wife Sylvia and family of 2 sons, Winston and Tony, and a daughter Jeannie, to the U.S. from Hong Kong in 1955.

His scholarly contributions focused on the economic system of Communist China and its performance. His books, the Economic Development of Communist China (1959) and The Statistical System of Communist China (1962) were seminal works before China sealed itself off from outsiders. Li’s continuous study of social and economic problems of China helped establish UC-Berkeley as a center for scholarly research on China. His expertise in international trade and economics helped establish international business in the School of Business Administration curricula.

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