Beijing has replaced another senior diplomat in charge of US affairs after an earlier reshuffle of top diplomatic staff overseeing its troubled relations with Washington.
Lu Kang has stepped down as head of the foreign ministry’s Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs after 2½ years in the job, according to the ministry’s website. His successor, Yang Tao, was previously head of the Department of International Organizations and Conferences at the ministry. There has been no announcement yet on Lu’s new role.
While Lu, a former ministry spokesman, is a veteran when it comes to US relations and the media, Yang appears to be little known publicly apart from his handling of United Nations matters and other multilateral groups and events.
Yang Tao is the new head of the foreign ministry’s Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs. Photo: Handout
The personnel change came as another former foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, 55, became China’s new envoy to the United States in July. He replaced the longest-serving Chinese ambassador to the US, 68-year-old Cui Tiankai, in a generational transition of the country’s ageing diplomatic corps.
That followed a change in the top ministry post responsible for day-to-day dealings with the US earlier this year, with Xie Feng, 57, taking over from Zheng Zeguang as foreign vice-minister, overseeing Lu’s department.
While Lu, 53, is seen as a rising star among the new generation of Chinese diplomats, Yang is among a group of even younger diplomats born in the 1970s.
Yang joined the foreign service in 1994 after graduating from the ministry-affiliated China Foreign Affairs University.
In 2001, he was sent to warring Afghanistan to help reopen China’s embassy in Kabul, which had been temporarily closed in 1994 due to the escalating conflict, according to a 2008 report in China Youth Daily. Yang and five other diplomatic staff accomplished that task within 60 days, which he described as “the most tiring days of my life”.
The Afghan mission was a career highlight that helped Yang rise through the diplomatic ranks. He went on to head a division responsible for UN Security Council affairs in 2008 and became chief of the international affairs department in 2019.
Similar to new US ambassador Qin – who was previously a vice-minister responsible for European affairs and protocol matters – Yang has had little direct involvement in handling the difficult US-China relationship.
In contrast, his predecessor Lu was the second-ranking diplomat at the Chinese embassy in Washington and headed two of the ministry’s most important departments – information and North American affairs. He became a familiar figure in Washington in 2012 when he, as then foreign vice-minister Cui’s top assistant, helped avert a diplomatic crisis by negotiating a face-saving deal to grant blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng asylum in the US.
Beijing has been reshuffling its diplomatic service ahead of a sweeping leadership shake-up expected next year, with the rise of a group of younger diplomats who are seen as the post-Cultural Revolution generation.
In October, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, 51, Lu’s successor as head of the information department, was elevated to assistant minister, while assistant minister for the Middle East and African affairs Deng Li, 56, became a vice-minister.
