Ma Zhaoxu
Ma Zhaoxu (; born September 1963) is a Chinese diplomat who serves as vice-minister of Foreign Affairs since 15 July 2019. Previously he served as China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) in New York City from January 2018 to July 2019. He formerly served as the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (PRC), as well as the director-general of its Information Department. Biography. Ma Zhaoxu was born on 1 September 1963 in Harbin. He graduated from Peking University with a degree  in international relations. In 1986, he participated in the inaugural Asian college students debating competition organized by the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) and won the "best debater" award, becoming well known to PRC college students at the time. Ma joined the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1987 and served in various departments and embassies, including counselor at the PRC embassy in the United Kingdom from 2001 to 2002 and counselor at the PRC embassy in Belgium from 2002 to 2004. He was appointed deputy director of the Policy Planning Department in 2004 and director in 2006. In January 2009, he replaced  Liu Jianchao as the director-general of the Information Department as well as the head spokesperson of the ministry. Ma is married with one daughter and one grandchild. His daughter was a student at Carnegie Mellon University and George Washington University. Recently, there has been some controversy surrounding Ma Zhaoxu's statement “there are no dissidents in China”, while China responds disapprovingly to the Nobel prize having been awarded to incarcerated Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. On 6 April 2016, he was appointed as the Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva  (UNOG) and other International Organizations. In 2018, Ma succeeded Liu Jieyi as China's Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. Ma was appointed vice-minister of Foreign Affairs on July 15, 2019. As vice-minister, he is responsible for managing international organizations and conferences, international economy and arms control affairs.