On December 18, Chinese President Xi Jinping appointed Qu Xing as the Chinese ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, in accordance with the decision of the Standing Committee of the People’s National Congress of China. Before this appointment, Qu was the director of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) in Beijing. This appointment has piqued the interest of Chinese scholars in international relations, some of whom see it as a sign of the beginning of a revolving door era in China.
Qu Xing is a well-known scholar in the international relations sphere in China. He holds a PhD and Master’s Degree in Political Science from Sciences Po in France and a Bachelor Degree in French from the Beijing Foreign Languages University. He is also a commenter for several TV channels, including China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 4, the International Channel. Being the director of the CIIS, he is well known to many in the academic world of international relations in China. His publications have often appeared in major academic journals such as Shijie Jingji Yu Zhengzhi (World Economy and Politics), China’s leading journal on international relations, and in newspapers like the Global Times, which is the People’s Daily’s official newspaper on foreign affairs. Thus, he has cultivated a reputation in both the academic and popular spheres.
This is also not the first time that Qu Xing has been chosen as a diplomat. The scholar was appointed envoy to the Chinese Embassy to France in 2006 when he was the Vice-Dean of the Chinese Foreign Affairs College. After returning from Paris in 2010, he became the director of CIIS, which is a major think tank on foreign affairs in China and directly led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). This time, however, he has been appointed an Ambassador, a far bigger role than his previous post in France. For some observers, it may be a sign that more Chinese scholars are to take important posts in the near future. But is this possible?
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