China's outspoken foreign ministry press department chief Hua Chunying promoted to vice-minister

Outspoken diplomat Hua Chunying, who has been heading the Chinese foreign ministry's press department, has been promoted to vice-minister, Beijing announced on Monday.

After her promotion Hua, 54, who has been a foreign ministry spokeswoman since 2012, is the youngest of the five foreign vice-ministers and the only woman among them.

She was promoted to assistant foreign minister and the director general of the ministry's press department in 2021. According to the foreign ministry website, she still leads the press department, although it is not clear whether she will retain this position following her promotion.

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Hua is seen to embody China's Wolf Warrior diplomacy, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic when she called on the US to open up its lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, for investigation in response to accusations from the Trump administration that a lab in Wuhan was the origin of the virus.

Hua joined X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2020 as part of Beijing's wider push to promote its own narrative, and has around 2.5 million followers on the platform.

On X, she often blasts Western officials over their accusations and criticism against China. In 2020, she exchanged a series of tweets with then-US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus, rebuking the American's criticism that China's Covid-19 policies lacked transparency.

As US-China relations have worsened in recent years, Hua has often been seen attacking US policies, including over the Israel-Gaza war. Last month, she posted several photos and video screenshots criticising what appeared to be a US police crackdown on large-scale campus protests against US support for Israel.

"Remember how US officials reacted when these protests happened elsewhere," she said in one post that appeared to show video of police arrests.

She has often accused the US of having a "double standard", comparing the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, with the storming of Legislative Council in Hong Kong in 2019 - and questioning why the US called the protesters on Capitol Hill "rioters" but those in Hong Kong were deemed "democratic heroes".

She has also accused the US of using the alleged "overcapacity" issue as "a new narrative trap against" China.

Washington and its allies are ramping up measures to target what they say is overcapacity, or excessive Chinese products flooding the global market.

Hua joined the foreign ministry in 1992 and had held several diplomatic roles, serving as counsellor in the department of European affairs in 2010. Her overseas stints included a significant term at the Chinese Mission to the European Union in Brussels.

She is married with one daughter.

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