Wou Sao-fong and ‘Planetary Civilisation’

A Working Paper by Ken Yang | 2026

This working paper examines one early invocation of the notion ‘planetary civilization’ by the Republican Chinese international civil servant Wou Sao-fong (1898-1993). A member of the Chinese Nationalist Party and proponent of Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People, the French-educated Wou was recommended to work at the League Secretariat and serve as an intermediary between the League and the wary Chinese government. In 1945, after years working for the International Free World Association, a wartime anti-fascist network, Wou authored the memorandum ‘Towards the Creation of a Planetary Civilization’ in preparation of the San Francisco Conference. Wou’s proposal of anchoring post-war peace and prosperity upon East-West civilizational (cultural) fusion—while decidedly human-centric—provides a unique opportunity for the study of non-Western invocations of the notion ‘planetary’. To contextualise this work, this study turns to Wou’s extraordinary trajectory, from his involvement in Chinese revolutionary politics to his international career at the League and beyond.

Yang, Ken (2026), Wou Sao-fong and ‘Planetary civilisation’, EUI, HEC, Working Paper, 2026/03, ECOINT - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/95610