China names new foreign minister ahead of key meet

China abruptly replaced its foreign minister yesterday, elevating former ambassador to the US Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) to the post in an early reshuffling of top positions ahead of key political meetings.

The removal of Li Zhaoxing (李肇星) as foreign minister had been widely expected -- but not until much later this year, when the Chinese Communist Party convenes a once-every-five-year congress to reapportion top jobs.

At 66, Li was already a year past the customary retirement age for Cabinet ministers. Along with Li, the ministers of land and resources and science and technology also retired yesterday, and the executive committee of the national legislature announced their replacements, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The transition at the foreign ministry was unlikely to substantively alter China's foreign policy at a time when Chinese economic and diplomatic might are surging.

Major policy directions are set by the communist leadership, especially Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who has built a more assertive diplomacy to protect Chinese interests while avoiding major conflict.

The new foreign minister, like his predecessor, is a career diplomat regarded as an expert on US affairs -- signaling the importance China places on steady relations with the superpower.

"China emphasizes major-power foreign policy, and the US is the most important major power," said Shen Dingli (沈丁立), dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Other countries can rest assured that foreign policy will not change.''

The Cabinet reshuffle was another sign of Hu's firmer hold on power after five years on the job. He is certain to be given a second term at the party congress, which is expected to be held in the fall and which normally invites fractious infighting.

Two of the departing ministers, Li and Science and Technology Minister Xu Guanhua (徐冠華), were closely associated with Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin (江澤民), who has retired but retains a waning influence.

More pugnacious than charming, Li often struck an undiplomatic posture internationally. As ambassador to the US, Li excoriated Washington for what it said was the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo War.

The 57-year-old Yang is more low-key in approach. Shortly after becoming ambassador to Washington, Yang worked to defuse tensions after a US EP-3 spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet and the plane and its crew were held at a Hainan island air force base in 2001.

A native of Shanghai, Yang studied at the London School of Economics in the early 1970s as part of an effort to revive China's diplomatic corps devastated by persecution during the radical Cultural Revolution.

Yang once served as an interpreter for former US president George Bush in the mid-1970s when he ran the US liaison office in Beijing, and Bush reportedly gave Yang the nickname "Tiger."