Long Yongtu, China's vice-minister of foreign trade and chief trade negotiator, has left Beijing for Geneva to attend the General Council meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a full-membership delegate of its 143th member.
The General Council meeting is to open on December 19 in Geneva, Switzerland.
China's meeting delegates from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (Moftec) will change accordingly their representative cards into blue-ones which instinguish WTO members from the observer members holding a red card.
Meanwhile, the Beijing-based China News Service reported on December 19 that Long's colleague Zhangxiang, another Moftec vice-minister will service as China's first ambassador to WTO.
Sixty-year-old Zhang, a graduate from China's prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing who later earned a docotor degree from Colombia University in the United States in 1979, once served as Shanghai's deputy director of its Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation Commission.
He was appointed Moftec vice-minister in 1998 while still acting as the president of Shanghai Jiaotong University's school of business administration.
(China Daily December 19, 2001)
