Wang Yi

Early Life

Wang Yi was born in Beijing in October 1953. According to his official résumé published by Xinhua, he began working in September 1969 and spent the next eight years in the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps as a soldier, company messenger, battalion reporter and acting propaganda officer. He returned to Beijing in 1977 to await assignment, working at the information institute of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications; from 1978 to 1982 he studied Japanese in the Asian and African languages department of the Beijing Second Foreign Languages Institute, joining the Communist Party in 1981.

The Asian Affairs Department and Japan

In 1982 Wang joined the Foreign Ministry's Department of Asian Affairs as a junior staff member, rising to attaché, deputy division director and division director. From 1989 to 1994 he served as counsellor and minister-counsellor at the embassy in Japan; on his return he became deputy director-general and, from 1995 to 1998, director-general of the Asian Affairs Department, spending part of that time as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University. In 1998 he became assistant foreign minister and head of the ministry's policy research office, earning a master's degree in economics from Nankai University, and in 2001 he became vice foreign minister.

From 27 to 29 August 2003 the first round of the Six-Party Talks on the Korean nuclear issue was held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing; Wang headed the Chinese delegation and chaired the closing session, afterwards calling the talks a historic opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue. He again led China's delegation at the third round in 2004. From 2004 to 2007 he was ambassador to Japan, returning to become party secretary and vice minister of the Foreign Ministry.

Taiwan Affairs

From 2008 to 2013 Wang was director of the Taiwan Work Office of the CCP Central Committee and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, a period that broadly coincided with the Kuomintang administration of Ma Ying-jeou, during which direct cross-strait shipping, flights and mail were established. On 15 December 2008, the day direct cross-strait shipping began, he told a ceremony at Tianjin port that it was another important day in the history of cross-strait relations and that the trend of peaceful development in cross-strait relations could not be stopped.

Foreign Minister (2013–2022)

Wang became Minister of Foreign Affairs in March 2013 and was also a State Councilor from 2018. After the China–India clash in the Galwan Valley in 2020, he met Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Moscow on 10 September that year, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting; the two sides issued a joint press statement setting out a five-point consensus that included quick disengagement of border troops. On 18–19 March 2021 he and Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, held a China–US high-level strategic dialogue with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska. In October 2022 he was elected to the CCP Politburo; that December Qin Gang succeeded him as foreign minister.

Foreign Affairs Commission Office and Return as Foreign Minister

From 2023 Wang has been director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. From 6 to 10 March that year delegations from Saudi Arabia and Iran held talks in Beijing; on 10 March the three countries issued a joint statement under which Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore diplomatic relations, and Wang chaired the closing session. On 25 July 2023 the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress removed Qin Gang as foreign minister and appointed Wang to the post again, so that he held the positions of director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office and foreign minister at the same time. After Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met in San Francisco on 15 November that year, it was Wang who briefed the media on the meeting.