Yang Jiechi
Yang Jiechi was appointed minister of Foreign Affairs in spring 2007; he is also a member of the 17th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee.
Born in May 1950 in Shanghai, Yang joined the CCP in 1971. He has a PhD in history and studied at Bath University and the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s.
Yang has had a long career in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with several postings at the PRC Embassy in the United States. Yang joined the foreign ministry in 1975 as second secretary, Department of Translation and Interpretation. He came to Washington, DC, for the first time in 1983, serving successively as second secretary, first secretary, and counselor until his return to China in 1987. During the next three years he was counselor and division director at the ministry's Translation and Interpretation Department. In 1990, Yang became deputy director general at the Department of American and Oceanic Affairs, a position he held until 1993 when he returned to Washington, DC, to serve for the next two years as deputy chief of Mission at the PRC Embassy.
In 1995, Yang returned to China and was promoted to assistant foreign minister and was then promoted again in 1998 to vice foreign minister. In 2001, he was appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the PRC to the United States, a position he held for four years.
Yang resumed his duties as vice foreign minister in China in 2005.
He is fluent in English.