Ji Chaoding

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Ji Chaoding (Chinese: 冀朝鼎; Wade–Giles: Chi Ch'ao-ting; 1903–1963) was a Chinese economist, communist activist, and spy. His book Key Economic Areas in Chinese History (1936) influenced the conceptualization of Chinese history in Europe by emphasizing geographic and economic factors as the basis of dynastic power. Ji was educated at Tsinghua University in China, then in the United States at University of Chicago and Columbia University. He became a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and secretly joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As an underground party member, he was on the staff of the Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1930s before returning to China in 1939. From the West, he worked as a spy, providing intelligence directly to Zhou Enlai. He became a trusted adviser to the Ministry of Finance in the wartime Nationalist government but remained in China as a well-placed official in the new government of the People's Republic of China after 1949. Only after his death was his long-time Party membership, and 20-year career as a spy for the communist faction acknowledged. Joseph Needham, author of Science and Civilisation in China, called Ji a "learned and brilliant writer" and Key Areas "perhaps the most outstanding book on the development of Chinese history among Western books in those days."