François Bourdrez

François Joseph Martial Bourdrez (18 July 1901, in The Hague – 10 May 1939, in Zhaotong) was a Dutch civil engineer who worked for the League of Nations in China for seven and a half years. He advised the Chinese Kuomintang government of General Chiang Kai-shek on road construction and hydraulic engineering.

Bourdrez worked on the first network of paved roads in China and helped the Chinese government to manage the major rivers. Together with some Dutch colleagues, he stood at the cradle of a long cooperation between the Netherlands and China in the field of water management. Bourdrez and two Chinese colleagues were killed together on May 10, 1939, when their boat sank while exploring the upper Yangtze River.

Life and work

François Bourdrez was born on July 18, 1901, in The Hague. He studied civil engineering at the TU in Delft. After his studies and military service, he worked for three years in the then Dutch East Indies at Du Croo & Brauns in Surabaya and at the Deli Maatschappij in Medan. From 1928 to 1931, Bourdrez worked for Koninklijke Philips in Eindhoven, where he oversaw the construction of new factories in various European countries. However, the great economic crisis of the 1930s brought Philips into financial difficulties and Bourdrez lost his job. The relationship between the League of Nations and China was complex, however, because the League of Nations failed to intervene when Japan seized the Northeastern province of Manchuria in 1931.

In China, Bourdrez was mainly involved in road construction from 1931 to 1933. Together with his Polish League of Nations colleague Mieczysław Okęcki, Bourdrez advised the Chinese government on the construction of the first network of paved roads connecting the major cities in eastern China. From 1933 on, Bourdrez became increasingly involved in hydraulic engineering. Chinese Finance Minister Tse-Ven Soong had managed to obtain a loan in kind from the United States, known as the "Cotton and Wheat Loan". The US got rid of its surplus cotton and grain and the Chinese government sold the cotton and grain to its own people or paid workers in kind. In 2016, Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment Melanie Schultz van Haegen mentioned the anniversary of the NHRI and the memorial plaque in a speech.