Lou Tseng-Tsiang

Lou Tseng-Tsiang (Dom Pierre-Célestin)
Lou Tseng-Tsiang in 1922
Premier of the Republic of China
In office 1912
Preceded by	Tang Shaoyi
Succeeded by	Zhao Bingjun
Prime minister of the Empire of China
In office 1915–1916
Monarch	Hongxian Emperor
Preceded by	Xu Shichang
Succeeded by	Xu Shichang
Personal details
Born	(1871-06-12)12 June 1871 Zhejiang, Qing Dynasty
Died	15 January 1949(1949-01-15) (aged 77) Belgium
Nationality	Chinese
Spouse(s)	Berthe-Françoise-Eugénie Bovy
Occupation	Diplomat Benedictine Monk

Lou Tseng-Tsiang (Chinese: 陸徵祥; 12 June 1871 – 15 January 1949) was a Chinese diplomat and a Roman Catholic monk. He was twice Premier of the Republic of China and led his country's delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He sometimes used the French name René Lou in earlier life, and his monastic name was Pierre-Célestin, O.S.B..

Lou was born on 12 June 1871 in Zhejiang Province, and was raised a Protestant in religion and a Confucianist in philosophy. His father, Lou Yong Fong, was lay catechist for a Protestant mission in Shanghai. He studied at home until the age of thirteen, when he entered the School of Foreign Language in Shanghai, specializing in French. He continued his education at the school for interpreters attached to the Foreign Ministry, and in 1893 he was posted to St Petersburg as interpreter (fourth-class) to the Chinese embassy. At that time the diplomatic international language was French, but Lou also gained fluency in Russian. The ambassador, the reform-minded Xu Jingcheng, took an interest in his career. Lou married a Belgian citizen, Berthe Bovy, in St Petersburg on 12 February 1899, and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. The couple had no children.

His early years were marked by the Boxer Rebellion, during which his mentor, Xu Jingcheng, was beheaded in Beijing. Lou served the Qing regime as Chinese delegate at the first and second Peace Conferences in The Hague (1899 and 1907), as Minister to Belgium, and as Ambassador to Russia, but he never forgot the imperial government's betrayal of his "second father". When the 1911 Revolution broke out he was Ambassador in St Petersburg, and he took it upon himself, against the advice of his colleagues at other European capitals, to cable Beijing that there could be no hope of assistance from the Great Powers.