April 28, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1428

BEIJING: China’s choice of a former ambassador with personal ties to the Bush family as its new foreign minister shows the priority Beijing places on its relationship with Washington, analysts said.Yang Jiechi, who turns 57 next month, was ambassador to Washington from 2001 to 2005, and he has spent most of his diplomatic career focused on China’s most important strategic relationship.

Beijing will call on his expertise in handling that relationship, which is marked by an increasing economic interdependence but still dogged by stubborn tensions on trade, human rights and China’s growing presence in the world.

“This won’t change Sino-US relations, but since (Yang) was ambassador to the US, he knows a lot about the relationship between the two countries,” said Niu Jun, a professor with Peking University’s School of International Studies.

“It will help China handle issues between China and the US.”A Shanghai native who has served since 2005 as one of seven vice foreign ministers, Yang replaces 66-year-old Li Zhaoxing, who stepped down after four years in the post.

Yang has a reputation as a pragmatic and competent diplomat, but his longtime familiarity with the Bush family may have also played a part in his selection, according to observers.

Then a junior foreign ministry official, Yang in the late 1970s travelled with former US president George H.W. Bush, who was stationed in Beijing, on trips to some of China’s most remote regions.

Later, as a diplomat in Washington during Bush Sr.’s term as president, he was rewarded with an invitation to the White House, a gesture not normally bestowed on diplomats below ambassadorial level.

Li was also an ambassador to Washington before becoming foreign minister, noted Jin Linbo, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who said it was an important pattern.

“Both Yang Jiechi and Li Zhaoxing used to be the ambassador to the United Sttates, that means China attaches importance to the US relationship,” Jin said.

The Sino-US relationship is regularly strained by a range of disagreements between the world’s reigning superpower and the rising power in the east, and Yang takes the post with those strains clearly evident.

US officials have repeatedly expressed concerns over a dramatic expansion of China’s military and a recent Chinese test of a satellite-killing missile.—AFP