Expert on U.S. appointed as China's new foreign minister

BEIJING -- He studied hard to become an expert in the American way -- hunting pheasant in South Dakota, doing the Sunday morning talk shows, learning to be equally comfortable raising a glass to the United States and denouncing it.

Li Zhaoxing, appointed Monday as China's foreign minister, has spent the past decade focused on the United States. He immediately found his hands full with Iraq -- a crisis that features the country he has spent so much time learning to understand.

"Keep your fingers crossed for peace," Li, 62, said in China's Great Hall of the People moments after being handed his post by the country's legislature.

Li, promoted from vice foreign minister to replace Tang Jiaxuan, becomes China's top diplomat as international relations -- and the U.N. Security Council, where China sits as a veto-wielding permanent member -- strain to the breaking point over Iraq.

He said China's attitude toward military action in Iraq would remain identical on his watch.

"The policy will be to urge peace and avoid war," he said.

Li went to work immediately. By Monday night, he had spoken on the phone to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. He also spoke with Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw overnight.

Reluctant to interfere

Li's appointment reflects not only Beijing's focus on the United States but its increasing involvement in international affairs at large. China has long coveted global influence.

Still, China retains a reluctance to involve itself too much in other nations' affairs, largely because it fears interference in its own.

Tang amplified Beijing's voice on the world stage, but he was thought to be an orders-follower, in contrast to Li, purportedly a Communist Party power broker who has called many of the shots in the Foreign Ministry for years.

Fluent in English, Li conveyed his bosses' message adeptly during his 1998-2001 tenure in Washington, becoming a vocal advocate for Chinese affairs in the United States. At turns congenial and hard-nosed, he moved effortlessly between praising ties between the countries and accusing various Americans, including Congress, of being anti-Chinese.

"They are trying to find a new enemy for America, and they are looking at China," Li said in 1999.

He has vehemently told Washington not to interfere with Taiwan. He has berated mayors of American communities who planned to honor Falun Gong, the spiritual movement China banned as an "evil cult." He has visited Montana to confer with wheat farmers and gone pheasant hunting with the governor of South Dakota to talk trade.

Once, Li agreed to testify before the U.S. Congress on China's human rights record but didn't show, prompting Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey to say: "Ambassador Li has stiffed the committee."