Tien-Min Li

Who was Tien-Min Li?

Li Tianmin, or Li Tien-Min, was a Chinese Nationalist politician and political historian.

Born in Sichuan province, Li studied at the Central Military Academy in Wuhan and completed his undergraduate studies in economics at Waseda University. He was elected as the Kuomintang candidate in 1948 to represent the municipality of Chengdu in Sichuan province in the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China. He held this seat from 1948 until 1991, even after fleeing to Taiwan with the Nationalist government in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

A historical biographer, and a professor at National Chengchi University, he wrote six books on Chinese Communist party leaders Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Lin Biao.

Li had seven children. His second son and youngest child, Kai-Fu Lee, is a prominent computer science researcher, the founding president of Google China and previously the founder of Microsoft Research Asia.