Background
Mr. Hsu was born in Tianjin, China, in 1886.
Mr. Hsu was born in Tianjin, China, in 1886.
He studied at the Imperial College of Languages, Peking. Mr. Hsu was sent to Belgium in 1908 as attache to the commission studying finances. He entered Liege University and graduated in 1911 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. In 1912 Hsu Shih-tsang travelled in Europe studying commercial and railway problems.
In 1909 Hsu Shih-tsang was sent to Belgium by the Civil Governor of Kirin to investigate commercial conditions. He was appointed Chinese Minister to Italy in 1911 and representative to the Turin International Exposition, for which he was given a medal by the Italian Government. Mr. Hsu returned to China and joined the Ministry of Communications assistant accountant of the Lunghai Railway in 1913. He was an assistant engineering director for the Lunghai Railway between 1914 and 1916.
Mr. Hsu served as an assistant managing-director of the Peking-Hankou Railway from 1916 to 1917. He studied communications administration in Japan in 1917. On returning, Hsu Shih-tsang was appointed managing-director of the Pukou-Singyang Railway and of the Tianjin-Pukou Railway. He was a member of the joint commission for prevention of plague on Chinese railways and chief of the plague prevention bureau of the Tianjin-Pukou Railway since 1918.
He was a member of the traffic conference in 1918. In 1919 Mr. Hsu was an adviser to the Inspector-General of the Yangtze River, adviser to the Military Governor of Jiangsu, adviser to the Civil and Military Governors of Shandong and co-director of the administration for the repatriation of enemy subjects. Hsu Shih-tsang worked as a managing-director of the Pu-Hsing Railway and of the Tianjin-Pukou Railway in 1920. He was later appointed vice-Minister of Communications and concurrently Director-General of Railways.
Mr. Hsu served as a chairman of the standing committee on the unification of railway accounts and statistics, deputy governor of the Bank of Communications and chairman of the commission to study problems of international communications. He was also ordered to make preparations for the establishment of a communications university. In 1921 Hsu Shih-tsang was a chief of the International Communications Bureau, associate director of the Famine Relief Bureau and director-general of the Currency Bureau.
He retired from public life in 1922.
