On the Staffing of Chinese Diplomacy

Recent events — the adoption of the “Law on foreign policy", the general significant activation of the People's Republic of China on the world stage, the resignation of the country's Foreign Minister Qin Gang and the return to the leadership of the Foreign Ministry Wang Yi — attract increased attention to Chinese diplomacy today. Meanwhile, this topic has not been fully disclosed in Russian and foreign studies. The main reason is the obvious opacity of the object of analysis. It is unlikely that Chinese diplomacy can be called completely closed, but information about it has to be collected literally bit by bit. The recently published texts by K.M. Barsky and E.V. Zhuravleva are very useful in this regard. Somewhat earlier, the formation of Chinese diplomacy was reviewed by Wang Chunying, a professor at the Diplomatic Academy in Beijing. Among the English-language efforts addressing the problems of Chinese diplomacy, John Garver's monograph "Chinese Quest: The History of International Relations of the People's Republic of China" (2016) should be mentioned. In general, this topic is far from being exhausted and requires further study. Our article examines in detail the features of the initial stage of the formation of the diplomatic personnel corps in the People's Republic of China, analyzes the evolution of forms and methods of training and retraining of Chinese diplomats, the legal regulation of their obligations and rights. The activities of the country's foreign ministers from 1949 to the present (Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi, Ji Pengfei, Qiao Guanhua, Huang Hua, Wu Xueqian, Qian Qichen, Tang Jiaxuan, Li Zhaoxing, Yang Jiechi, Wang Yi, Qin Gang) are briefly described.