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CHINA> Profiles
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New Taiwan office chief a modest man of action
By Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-04 07:17 Different people see Wang Yi's appointment as the minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council differently. Some say it's the start of a bright future for cross-Straits relations, while others see it as a big promotion for the veteran diplomat. Pan Shoujun, Wang's former Japanese language teacher at the Beijing International Studies University, says Wang's is a surefire success story of a thoughtful and modest man.
"He was one of the most impressive students in class. The depth of his thinking was really beyond his age," says the dean of the university's Japanese Language Department who taught Wang's class from 1977 to 1978. Wang was born in Beijing in October 1953, and enrolled in the university in 1977 after passing the national college entrance exam, which was resumed that year after more than a decade. Before that, he worked for eight years in Northeast China's countryside as one of the hundreds of millions of urban youths sent to rural areas for "re-education". "Wang used the opportunity to the maximum and threw himself into studies. Rather than limiting himself to his majoring subject, he read almost every book he could get his hands on, from history to politics," Pan says. "I still remember how surprised I and other teachers were when we read his graduation thesis. It went far beyond the area of Japanese language studies with a deep observation into and understanding of Japanese culture and society." With dark eyes and brushy brows, Wang was one of the most handsome boys on the campus, greatly admired by many girls, Pan says. "But he was a decent and amiable man. His good character and excellent ability won him the respect of other students." After graduation, Wang joined the Foreign Ministry and rose from a staff member to division chief of the department of Asian affairs in 1995 and to vice-foreign minister in 2001, rewriting the ministry's record of the youngest vice-minister. Wang is married and has a daughter and, according to sources close to him, is fond of mountaineering. His role in paving the way for the Six-Party Talks has been widely appreciated. The Japan Times, in a special report, highlighted Wang's "language that referred to the need for parallel and synchronous steps to bridge the gap". Wang became China's ambassador to Japan in 2004, when bilateral ties were going through a rough patch. During the three years he was on the post, he traveled across Japan to meet not only VIPs, but also the common people. He delivered more than 100 lectures and played a key role in thawing the ice between the two neighboring countries. "Wang has walked a smooth career path and become the highest-level official among all the graduates of our Japanese Department. But he remains modest and has always been very kind to his former teachers, including me," Pan says. On the eve of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's ice-breaking visit to China in October 2006, Pan led a delegation to Japan. Despite his tight agenda of preparing for the first visit of a Japanese prime minister in five years, Wang managed to organize a gathering of his college classmates to give his teacher a warm welcome. Pan says Wang and his family lived a pretty low-profile life. "I have never seen Wang's wife through all these years," he says, though he knows she insisted on developing her own career despite her husband's position. Wang's appointment as minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office at a time when cross-Straits relations are warming up is not a big surprise for Pan. |
