Shao Yunhuan

Early Life and Career at Xinhua

Shao Yunhuan was born on 19 June 1951 in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang province. In 1975 she graduated from the Beijing Foreign Studies Institute and, being fluent in Serbian, was assigned to Xinhua News Agency's Reference News editorial department. Over the following two decades she worked mainly on translation and research related to Yugoslavia, becoming a recognised in-house expert on the country. In September 1990 she was posted to Xinhua's Belgrade bureau as a correspondent for the first time; in March 1999, as the Kosovo War erupted and NATO began its bombing campaign, she was sent to Belgrade a second time to report from the conflict zone.

Death in the NATO Bombing of the Chinese Embassy

On 7 May 1999 (local Belgrade time; 8 May in Beijing), US-led NATO forces struck the Chinese Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with missiles. Shao Yunhuan was killed instantly, along with Guangming Daily journalists Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying; Shao, then 47, was the oldest of the three victims. The Chinese government subsequently posthumously honoured all three as revolutionary martyrs.

Family and Posthumous Remembrance

After her death, Shao's husband, Cao Rongfei, never remarried and raised their son alone; the son later followed in his mother's footsteps and became a journalist himself. Shao's death prompted widespread mourning across China, and she, together with Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying, has since been commemorated in the media on successive anniversaries of the bombing, making the three of them among the most widely recognised symbols of the NATO attack on the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.