Veteran envoy Wu Jianmin killed in car accident

Veteran Chinese diplomat Wu Jianmin was killed in a car accident early Saturday morning, whose commitment to China's diplomatic efforts for over half a century have been widely reviewed and debated. He died while on his way to a lecture in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, according to the Foreign Ministry. Wu, 77, a representative of China's rational moderates, remained involved in facilitating communication between the world and China after he retired in 2009. Wu joined the Foreign Ministry in 1959. In 1965, the French major became an interpreter for Chinese leaders such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. He was part of the first delegation sent by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the UN in 1971, when the UN General Assembly recognized the PRC as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people to the UN. In the 53rd Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Wu, then Chinese Ambassador to the UN Office in Geneva, defended China's human rights record and managed to block a resolution which he condemned as "an outrageous distortion of China's reality," The New York Times reported in 1997. Despite his efforts to push back international criticism of China, Wu's views were criticized as soft by domestic hardliners and had triggered debates about his moderate diplomatic views. "Wu might have over-emphasized the friendliness of the West to some extent," Su Wei, a professor at the Party School of the Chongqing Committee, told the Global Times. He added that the difference between social systems and ideologies might have been "intentionally or unintentionally downplayed a little bit," even though Wu indeed shared goodwill to make our country better and stronger. In 2014, Wu engaged in a public debate with prominent military hardliner Major General Luo Yuan on Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television. Luo argued that China's pursuit of peace and development does not mean the country just grins and bears it, while Wu denied threatening the use of force as an option for China's current foreign strategy.