David H. Li
David H. Li was a Chinese-American accountant, chess player, sinologist, translator, and writer.
He wrote several books and also translated several Chinese classics to English. He was born in 1928 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, and moved to the United States in 1949, and lived for many years in Bethesda, Maryland. He was an accountant and accounting teacher. His academic career included lectures at the University of Washington, Seattle, and as a Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Later he joined the World Bank Group. After retirement, Li published a number of books in English on the culture of China, including translations of the Analects of Confucius, The Art of War, and Tao Te Ching, as well as several books on xiangqi or Chinese chess. He died after a brief illness, on July 12, 2018 in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the age of 89.
Hypothesis
In his book The Genealogy of Chess, Li surveys evidence regarding the origins of chess and concludes that an early version of chess called xiangqi was invented in China in 203 BC, by General Han Xin, who supposedly drew on the earlier game liubo as well as on the teachings of The Art of War. Li suggests that this game had spread via the Silk Road, to Persia and India, as well as to Japan and Korea.Li's idea has been contested.