Qu Dongyu

Qu Dongyu (; born October 29, 1963) is a Chinese diplomat who took up office as the ninth Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on 1 August 2019. He is the first Chinese national to head the Organization. Qu won the nomination on the first round of voting at the 41st FAO Conference on 23 June 2019, obtaining 108 of the 191 votes cast by the 194 member countries.

Early life and education Qu was born in Yongzhou, Hunan, China in October 1963. He trained to become a biologist, gaining a bachelor's degree from Hunan Agricultural University, a Master's degree in plant breeding and genetics from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and a Doctorate in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences from the University of Wageningen, Netherlands in 1986. He joined the Chinese Communist Party the same year.

Career From 2001 to 2011 he was vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Qu Dongyu contributed to the sequencing of the potato genome through his role (Principal Investigator) in the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium, at the Chinese Institute of Vegetables & Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The research took six years and found that the potato contains about 39,000 genes.

Qu Dongyu received the World Potato Congress Industry Award, as part of a team in 2006.

Between 2011 and 2015 he served as vice-chair of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China and in 2015 he became vice-minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, where he was involved in promoting international collaboration with organizations such as FAO and Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International.

In 2013, Qu Dongyu co-authored research into genetic resistance of potatoes to late blight.

Food and Agriculture Organization

Qu was supported by China in the 2018 election for Director-General of the FAO. Allegations of bribery and coercion by China to secure the votes of other FAO delegates featured prominently in the election. After Qu's election, Chinese nationals were appointed to central departments and approvals for pesticides containing ingredients banned in the EU were granted for use in Asia and Africa.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, diplomats have criticized Qu for failing to address the 2022–2023 food crises. According to a former UN official interviewed by Politico Europe, "Nobody actually takes him seriously: It's not him; it's China," and "I'm not convinced he would make a single decision without first checking it with the capital." According to The Economist, "Many governments privately accuse the Chinese head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (sic), Qu Dongyu, of downplaying the impact on food security of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a huge grain producer. They presume the aim was to spare China's ally, Mr Putin, from criticism."

In 2023, a joint study by German public broadcasters found that Qu "instrumentalized" the FAO "to serve Beijing's interests." Under Qu's tenure, the FAO has supported Belt and Road Initiative projects and inked its first agreement with a pesticide company, Syngenta, which is a subsidiary of state-owned ChemChina.