Wang Yi

Wang Yi (born 19 October 1953) is a Chinese diplomat and politician who has been serving as Director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office since January 2023, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs of China since July 2023 (previously from 2013 to 2022).

Wang is a member of the 20th Politburo.

After graduating from high school in September 1969, he was sent to Northeast China.

He subsequently served in the Northeast Construction Army Corps in Heilongjiang Province for eight years.

In December 1977, Wang returned to Beijing and in the same year was enrolled in the department of Asian and African Languages of Beijing International Studies University.

He studied Japanese at the institution, graduating in February 1982 with a bachelor's degree.

He is known to speak fluent English and Japanese.

Upon graduation from university, Wang was sent to the Asian section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by his father-in-law Qian Jiadong, where he began his career as a diplomat.

In September 1989, he was sent to the Chinese embassy in Japan and served there for five years.

When he returned to China in March 1994, Wang was appointed as vice section chief of the Asian section of the foreign ministry and was promoted to section chief the next year.

From August 1997 to February 1998, Wang was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Foreign Relations of Georgetown University in the United States.

Soon after his return, he was promoted to assistant minister and the director of office of policy research.

From September 1999, Wang studied international relations at China Foreign Affairs University and obtained a doctoral degree.

In February 2001, Wang was elevated to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of Asian affairs.

In September 2004, Wang was appointed as China's Ambassador to Japan.

He served in this post until September 2007.

In June 2008, Wang succeeded Chen Yunlin as the director of Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of China.

On 16 March 2013, during the first session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), Wang was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Yang Jiechi.

China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping's has been described as increasingly assertive, even to the point of being dubbed Wolf warrior diplomacy.

Wang initiated a significant state visit to the Middle East in December 2013 to visit Israel and Palestine.

He discussed with leaders of both countries the importance of the nuclear agreement with Iran and the importance of the continued peace talks, saying "War does not solve the problems. Violence increases the hatred. The peace talks are the appropriate and the only path".

In his inaugural press conference as Foreign Affairs Minister in March 2014, Wang characterized this new direction as "proactively striving for achievements to let the world hear of the Chinese solutions and Chinese voices."

In July 2016, Wang became an internet celebrity on the Chinese micro-blog Sina Weibo.

A fan club on Weibo devoted to Wang has more than 130,000 followers.

During a joint news conference in Ottawa on 1 June 2016, with Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion, Wang responded to Canadian reporter Amanda Connolly of online news site iPolitics over a question she raised regarding human rights in China, saying "Your question was full of prejudice against China and an arrogance that comes from I don't know where. This is totally unacceptable to me".

In 2017, Wang's leader described the "Two Guidances", the principles that: (1) China should guide the global community in building a more just and reasonable world order, and (2) that China should guide the global community in safeguarding international security.

Following the "Two Guidances", Wang compared China as the "leading goat" in "guiding the reform of global governance."

During Wang's current Foreign Ministry leadership, he has facilitated obtaining the diplomatic recognition of China by Panama in 2017 as well as getting the Dominican Republic and El Salvador to switch over in recognizing China (People's Republic of China) instead of Taiwan (Republic of China) in 2018.

In March 2021, Wang supported the decision to have only "patriots" rule Hong Kong, stating that "loving Hong Kong and loving the motherland are consistent requirements...in the past 24 years since Hong Kong's [handover], no one has cared more about the [SAR's] democracy, prosperity and stability than the central government."

He previously served as State Councilor of China from 2018 to 2023, Minister of Foreign Affairs of China from 2013 to 2022, Director of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office from 2008 to 2013, and Chinese Ambassador to Japan from 2004 to 2007.

Wang was born in Beijing.

In March 2018, Wang was promoted as a State Councilor by the NPC.

On the evening of 15 April 2018, Wang was received by his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono, on the first such official visit of a Foreign Minister of China to Japan since November 2009.

In 2018, Wang said the world should ignore "gossip" about Xinjiang internment camps.

In March 2021, Wang said that "We welcome more people to visit Xinjiang - seeing is believing. This is the best way to debunk rumours."

However, journalists from the British state broadcaster BBC claim without providing evidence to have been followed by unmarked cars, chased out of restaurants and shops, and compelled to delete footage while trying to report from Xinjiang.

It is unclear however if the BBC team broke any Chinese laws or were suspected of malicious intentions in their work in China.

It was reported that during Wang's visit to Norway in August 2020, he said that while China was the first country to report the existence of the virus to the World Health Organization, "it does not mean that the virus originated in China. Actually, for the past months, we have seen reports ... showing that the virus emerged in different parts of the world, and may have emerged earlier than in China".

On 22 February 2021, Wang urged the administration of US President Joe Biden to lift the sanctions on trade and people-to-people contact imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

At the Foreign Ministry forum on US-China relations, he said that the US "must not interfere in the internal affairs of China".