Ji Chaozhu

Ji Chaozhu (July 30, 1929 – April 29, 2020) was a Chinese English language diplomatic interpreter and diplomat who held diverse positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Most notably, he was English interpreter for Chairman Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, Ambassador to the Court of St. James's (United Kingdom), and then served as an Under-secretary General of the United Nations, a post from which he retired in 1996. He was one of the principle interpreters in the talks leading up to and during President Richard M. Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China.

His memoir, The Man on Mao's Right, was published in July 2008, by Random House.

Early years in U.S. Ji was born on July 30, 1929, in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province to an affluent family who were also sympathetic to the Communist Party. His father, Ji Gongquan, was a land-owner, lawyer, and provincial official, while his eldest brother, Ji Chaoding, was a secret member of the Chinese Communist Party who earned a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. Ji and his family fled Fengyang, their family home, in 1937, at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Ji earned a high school diploma from Horace Mann-Lincoln High School (now known as Horace Mann School), He was a sophomore at Harvard University in 1950 when the Korean War broke out, which saw his native homeland and his adopted country fight on opposite sides. Ji described how he "was torn between [his] love for two countries", but knew that he "was fundamentally Chinese". When he could not join China's nuclear program, he studied chemistry at Tsinghua University in Beijing, He was highly respected by US officials, so much so that in 1981, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig specifically asked the PRC to send Ji to meet with Ronald Reagan in an attempt to defuse tensions between the two sides. This arose as a result of president's plans to sell sophisticated weapons to Taiwan. Ji met with every American president from Nixon to Clinton.

Family and political life In 1956, Ji married Wang Xiangtong,

Death Ji Chaozhu died on April 29, 2020, at the age of 90 from an undisclosed illness. News of his death was first announced by the China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a brief notice to the Associated Press.

From 1987 to 1991 he was Ambassador to the Court of St James (United Kingdom).