Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period/Wang Hua-chên
WANG Hua-chên 王化貞 (T. 肖乾, H. 乾山), d. 1632, Ming official, a native of Chu-ch'êng, Shantung, received his chin-shih degree in 1613, and started his career as a second class secretary in the Board of Revenue. In 1620 he assisted in the defense of Kuang-ning, in Liaotung, where he earned praise for his compromises with the Mongol invaders. In the following year he was raised to the post of military administrator at Kuang-ning and delighted the Court officials with impressive projects for recovering the territory lost to the Manchus. His plans for fortifying the left bank of the Liao river, for hiring 400,000 Mongol mercenaries, and for attacking the Manchus through Korea (see under Mao Wên-lung), were all bitterly opposed by Hsiung T'ing-pi [q. v.], and his undertakings uniformly went down in failure. When Kuang-ning was taken in March 1622 and the Chinese troops fled through Shanbaikuan, he was put under arrest and condemned to death. His execution was postponed by friends at Court, but was finally carried out in 1632. The only literary works attributed to him appear to be treatises on medical science, and these seem not to have been preserved.
[M.1/259/12a; K'ai-kuo fang-lüeh; Ming t'ung-chien (see bibl. under Wang Chih-ts'ai) 78/1a; Chu-ch'êng hsien-chih (1764) 32/2b, 13/3a.]
George A. Kennedy