People · Jiangsu diplomatic commissioner, Huangpu Conservancy Board director
Xu Yuan
许沅Xǔ Yuán · b. 1873
Chinese diplomatic official who served as Jiangsu commissioner for foreign affairs and director of the Huangpu Conservancy Board in the 1920s.
Xu Yuan (许沅, Xǔ Yuán), born in 1873 in Dantu, Jiangsu, was a Chinese foreign-affairs official who dealt with the foreign communities of Shanghai in the 1920s. The gazetteer gives no death date.
He trained in modern schools in Nanjing and elsewhere and spent most of his career in foreign-affairs offices in several provinces, including Henan, where he co-founded a public health association with Bishop William White. In May 1920 he was named Jiangsu commissioner for foreign affairs, the official through whom Shanghai’s consuls dealt with Chinese authority, and he also directed the Huangpu Conservancy Board, which managed the river channel.
In 1923 he took charge of the bureau handling Russian residents’ trade affairs, with Russian consular powers, until he resigned in 1924. He returned as Jiangsu commissioner in 1925, briefly acted as head of the Songhu port superintendency in 1927, and retired in 1931, when he became president of a native-place association.