Career scientist and cybersecurity expert appointed deputy chief of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong
Dr Tan Tieniu, formerly a vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will become the liaison office’s seventh deputy director, despite having little diplomatic experience
Beijing has appointed a computer scientist and cybersecurity expert as a deputy chief of its liaison office in Hong Kong, in a move seen as part of the central government’s efforts to reach out to academia and professional elites.
Xinhua announced on Friday that 52-year-old Dr Tan Tieniu, formerly vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, would become the office’s seventh and youngest deputy director.
The move came three days after Song Zhe, the foreign ministry’s commissioner in the city since 2012, was named a deputy director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing as part of a management reshuffle.
Tan is the first academic to be parachuted into the liaison office since Beijing appointed Tsinghua University law dean Wang Zhenmin to head the office’s legal department in January.
Tan has spent his career as a scientist after receiving his bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from Xian Jiaotong University in 1984.
After receiving his master’s degree in the same field from Imperial College London in 1986, he spent 13 more years in Britain. During that period, he obtain his PhD from Imperial in 1989, and worked as a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Reading’s computer science department.