Lai Lian, also known as Lai Jinghu, was born in 1900 in Yong Ding, Fujian Province. He graduated from Yali Junior College in 1919 and went to Illinois University in the United States for further study in Mechanical Engineering in the same year. In 1925, he went back to America and entered the Graduate School of Cornell University and achieved the Master’s Degree.
Since 1932, he served as officials in Nanjing and Lianyungang, being the Secretary-general of Nanjing Government, Director of Financial Bureau, Mayor of Lianyungang, Vice-minister of the Education Ministry and Deputy Director of the Oversea Department of the National Government. When he was in US, he founded the newspapers “Sino-American News Agency” and “Sino-US Daily Newspaper”. He was admitted into the United Nations Secretariat as the Head of the Chinese-language Team in 1953.
He served as Dean of the Northwest Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1944.