The People’s Republic of China has a new Ambassador in the Netherlands. This important role has been taken up by Dr. Xu Hong, a Doctor of Law and former Director-General of the Department of Treaty and Law of the PRC’s Foreign Ministry.
The government of the People’s Republic of China has recently nominated its new Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This important and at the same time delicate role has been taken up by H.E. Dr. Xu Hong, an experienced Chinese diplomat and high-level officer of Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Born in 1963 in Xishui County, in China’s Hubei Province, Mr. Xu Hong pursued his studies in the field of Law, earning a PhD in this subject and starting its career with the PRC’s Foreign Ministry in 1985. In his private life, Dr. Xu is married, and he has a daughter.
During his professional career, Dr. Xu held a number of different positions, including four years in the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group (1992-96), two years as Assistant Mayor of Mianyang City (2000-01), as well as two posts abroad, namely as a Counsellor at the PRC’s Embassy in Thailand (2001-04) and as Beijing’s Ambassador in Barbados (2011-13).
In between these diverse experiences, Dr. Xu regularly came back to work for the Ministry’s Department of Treaty and Law, each time with increased responsibilities and a higher rank. After having accumulated almost 20 years of work for the Department, holding positions at an increasingly senior level, in 2013 Dr. Xu became the Department’s Director-General, a post he held until 2019. Finally, in Spring 2019, Beijing’s government selected Dr. Xu as the new top envoy to the Netherlands, with the title of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.
In an exclusive piece written for Diplomat Magazine in July, Ambassador Xu compared the relations between his country and the Netherlands to “a great ship sailing the sea.” Talking about this long-standing relations, Mr. Xu defined “mutual respect and the pursuit of peace” as the ship’s compass, “hard working, bravery and perseverance” as its anchor, and “openness and inclusiveness, pragmatism and mutual benefit” as its sail.
Praising the significant gains achieved in Sino-Dutch cooperation in the past, Ambassador Xu also indicated the way forward in these complex times. As when riding a bicycle – Dr. Xu said using another metaphor – balance can only be maintained by going forward, that is, pinpointing current challenges and jointly investigating how to address them. “Only in this way can our ship sail steady afar” – the Ambassador concluded.
