The following graphs examine the number and level of offices that Chinese Rotarians took in the service of the club. We distinguished three main level of service (from bottom to top): committee, board and Rotary International. The two first graphs offer two different ways of visualizing the number of offices taken in relation to the number of officers (graph line and funnel). The third one shows the distribution of offices across the various levels of service while the fourth one examines in more detail the nature of positions. The last graph ranks the top Chinese Rotarian officers based on their respective number of positions in the club.
Original data comes principally from Rotary International archives and the table we built for conducting the statistical analyses are available in the "Tables" section.
Relying on the rosters and lists of officers available in Rotary archives, we identified 69 Chinese Rotarians who held 266 positions in the club between 1920 and 1948. While the majority (35) served at the committee level only, twenty-eight members took higher positions as officers or board members, and six were appointed to supreme positions in the organization as Chinese representatives of Rotary International (RI) in Chicago, Ill.
Early Chinese members took high positions as officers prior to 1930. The first Chinese treasurer was elected in 1920 (Y.C. Tong), the first vice-president in 1926 (Fonc F. Sec), and the first president in 1927 (Luther M. Jee). The level of position increased in the 1930s, with three Chinese presidents elected: Fong F. Sec (1931-2), Percy Chu (1934-5) and W.H. Tan (1937-8). Mid-level positions as committee members also boomed during these years, which means that although all Chinese Rotarians could not reach the highest ranks, a growing number of ordinary members became more actively involved in the life of the club.
Individually, forty-seven officers totaled less than five positions, thirteen between five to ten, and four over ten (cf. table 2). Fong Sec ranked first with twenty-seven positions, followed by Percy Kwok (17), Percy Chu (16) and L.M. Jee (10) (cf table 3). There was a strong correlation between the number and the level of positions taken (cf. table 4). Thirty-four Rotarians held sixty-six positions as board members, some of them being reelected for two or more successive years: Percy Chu (1928-35), Fong Sec (1926-35), T.K. Ho (1925-1938), Habin Jsu (1924-6), Percy Kwok (1931-5), V.F. Lam (1925-31), H.C. Mei (1933-35), S.D. Ren (1923, 1935). Four Chinese served as treasurer (10 positions), three of them being reelected three times to that position (K.P. Chen, Percy Chu and V.F. Lam).
Over its entire existence (1919-52), the Rotary Club of Shanghai elected five Chinese presidents. Three of them topped the list of the twelve most active officers in the history of the club (L.M. Jee, Fong Sec and Percy Chu). In addition to the four presidents already mentioned (Jee, Fong, Chu, Tan), William Sung was elected the year before the club ceased functioning during the war (1941). He was reelected to that position when the club was reorganized in November 1945. Fong and Chu had previously served as vice-president (Fong in 1926 and 1928, Percy Chu in 1930-1931). The latter also became sergeant-at-arms after retiring as president in 1935.
Four presidents were appointed to international positions in the organization. In 1922, Fong was sent as the first Chinese delegate to the Annual Convention of Rotary International (RI) in Los Angeles. He was later elected member of the board of directors of Rotary International (1932-4) and district governor for two consecutive years (1936-8). L.M. Jee was appointed commissioner of Rotary International in China for three consecutive years (1927-30). Although he never took positions in the Rotary Club of Shanghai itself, C.T. Wang was also appointed commissioner of Rotary International and first district governor when the 81st district (covering China and the Philippines) was officially established in 1935. As such, he was specifically in charge of arranging the Annual Convention of Rotary International that took place for the first time in China (Shanghai) in April 1936. During the war, he served as RI advisor to China (1942-6) and was elected board member (1944-6) and even vice-president of Rotary International (1945-6). In the postwar years, he was again appointed district governor (1946-7, 1948-9) and RI advisor for China, Hongkong and Macao (1951-3). W.H. Tan also acted as district governor (1940-1, 1947-8) and governor’s representative (1942) in the war and postwar years. William Sung served briefly as acting district governor in 1941.
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