Ex-Chinese Minister dies aged 70

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 11

Ex-Chinese Minister dies aged 70

NZPA-Reuter ’ Peking Mr Qiao Guanhua, who as China’s Foreign Minister from 1974-76 helped launch a new era in Siho-Unlted States relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 70, the YNew China News Agency reports.

For three years, Mr Qiao headed China’s first representation to the United Nations after its admittance in 1971, and during his career took part in important foreign policy moves towards both the United States and the " Soviet

Union. Perhaps his most significant role was as the man who sat through the night in 1972 with Mr Henry Kissinger, then the American Secretary of State, drawing up the Shanghai communique which paved the way for a new stage in SinoAmerican relations. Several years before, in 1969, he led a team of officials in talks with the Soviet Union in an attempt to defuse an ugly series of armed clashes along their border. Mr Qiao will be re-

membered in international circles as a tall, urbane and well-dressed figure, whose cheerful presence at diplomatic gatherings in Peking was in stark contrast to most of the other highranking Chinese officials during jtjie years of the extreme-Leftist Government of Mr Mao Tsetung’s widow, Mrs Jiang Qing. Criticised and ridiculed by ultra-Leftist Red Guards at the start of the chaotic cultural revolution in 1966, Mr Qiao nevertheless took over the Foreign Ministry in 1974. _____