Wu Dawei

Chinese
t=武大偉citation|title=驻大韩民国历任大使 (Ambassadors to the Republic of Korea)|url=http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/chn/ziliao/wjrw/2167/2168/t9132.htm|date=2006-08-30|accessdate=2008-03-16|publisher=Ministry of Foreign Affairs|publication-place=People's Republic of China]
s=武大伟
p=Wǔ Dàwěi

Wu Dawei (born Heilongjiang, 1946) is the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China.citation|title=Wu Dawei, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs|date=2005|accessdate=2008-03-16|publisher=Ministry of Foreign Affairs|publication-place=People's Republic of China|url=http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zygy/gyjl/wdw/default.htm]

Wu's career has largely taken him back and forth between China and Japan. His first assignment with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was as an attaché to the Chinese embassy in Japan, lasting from 1973 to 1979. He returned to China in 1979 to take a position in the MFA's Department of Asian Affairs, and in 1980 was promoted to deputy office director of the General Office. He went to Japan again in 1985 to serve as second secretary and later first secretary in in the Chinese embassy; after coming back to China in 1989, he continued to work his way up through the ranks of the Department of Asian Affairs. In 1994, he was posted back to Japan as minister counselor.

Wu's first ambassadorial-level assignment was to South Korea, lasting from September 1998 to July 2001. Controversies which arose during his tenure there include his 1999 remarks in which he condemned South Korean and non-governmental organisation involvement with the issue of North Korean refugees in northeast China, deriding it as "neo-interventionism", and claimed that the safety of refugees repatriated to North Korea had been guaranteed. [citation|url=http://archives.lemonde.fr/gop/archives_40/0,0-0,37-45567,0.html|title=Pékin sévit contre les missionnaires à la frontière nord-coréenne|periodical=Le Monde|date=1999-10-08|accessdate=2008-03-16] His comments spurred South Korean human rights activists to hold protests at the Chinese embassy in Seoul and circulate a petition urging the United Nations to grant refugee status to North Koreans in China. [citation|title=Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas|last=Noland|first=Marcus|publisher=Peterson Institute for International Economics|date=2000|page=189|isbn=0881322784]

Following his time in South Korea, Wu became China's ambassador to Japan, serving from July 2001 until August 2004; he returned to China to take up his post as Vice Minister of Foreign affairs at the end of that assignment.citation|title=驻日本国历任大使 (Ambassadors to Japan)|url=http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/chn/ziliao/wjrw/2167/2168/t9142.htm|date=2007-10-01|accessdate=2008-03-16|publisher=Ministry of Foreign Affairs|publication-place=People's Republic of China]

Wu is married and has one daughter.

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