Embassy Of China, Washington, D.C.

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States is the diplomatic mission of the People's Republic of China to the United States, located at Northwest Quadrant, Washington D.C.

The main chancery is located at 3505 International Place, Northwest, Washington, D.C., in the Van Ness neighborhood, while the visa section is located at 2201 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest in the Glover Park neighborhood. China also operates consulates general in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City.

History

Qing Empire and Republic of China

The Qing Empire opened its first mission to the U.S. in 1875, with Chen Lanbin as minister. From 1877 to 1883, the legation rented the former luxury town house of Alexander Shepherd designed by Adolf Cluss on 1705 K Street NW, one of Washington DC's most distinguished addresses at the time.

Then and until 1893, the legation was located in Stewart's Castle on Dupont Circle; and later, under Minister Wu Tingfang, in the former mansion of Thomas Franklin Schneider at 18th and Q Street, NW.

In 1902, the Qing legation moved to a purpose-built mansion designed by Waddy Butler Wood on 2001 19th Street NW. It is the oldest extant building erected in Washington by a foreign government, following the demolition in 1931 of the former British Legation on Connecticut Avenue, built in 1872. This became the legation of the Republic of China following the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. In 1935, the legation was upgraded to an embassy, and Alfred Sao-ke Sze became China's first ambassador to the U.S.

The embassy remained in the same building until 1944, then moved to the former Fahnestock Mansion designed by Nathan C. Wyeth on 2311 Massachusetts Avenue NW, where it stayed until official diplomatic relations were terminated on January 1, 1979. That building is now the embassy of Haiti.

Meanwhile, in 1937 the Republic of China's ambassador Chengting T. Wang (Wang Zhengting) started renting the Twin Oaks estate as ambassadorial residence from its then owner Grace Fortescue, and his successor Wellington Koo purchased it outright from her in 1947 for $350,000. The ROC kept it away from the People's Republic by transferring it temporarily for $10 in 1978 to a third-party owner, the Friends of Free China Association, and purchased it again in 1982. In the meantime, the Taiwan Relations Act of April 1979 provided additional legal protection to the Republic of China's ownership of Twin Oaks.

People's Republic of China

In the wake of the China-U.S. rapprochement of the early 1970s initiated by president Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, the principle of opening a liaison office, to be led by Chinese diplomat Huang Zhen, was agreed during Kissinger's visit to Beijing in February 1973, together with that of a parallel U.S. liaison office in Beijing. The first 10-strong delegation arrived in Washington on April 18, 1973, a few weeks ahead of the formal opening in May, and initially stayed for several months at the luxury Mayflower Hotel.

For the permanent chancery, Huang initially tried to purchase the former International Inn, then called the Ramada Inn, a highly visible building on Thomas Circle designed by Morris Lapidus and first opened in 1962 (still extant in altered form as the Washington Plaza Hotel). The negotiation foundered on price, however, and the liaison office was established instead in two adjacent buildings on a significantly less prominent location: respectively the Windsor Park hotel and apartments at 2300 Connecticut Avenue NW, and the St. Albans apartment building at 2310 Connecticut Avenue NW. The purchase was made at a steep price and publicized in November 1973. The Chinese team, which by then had grown to about 50 people, moved in soon afterwards. On January 1, 1979, this complex became a fully-fledged embassy in line with the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations released the same day.