The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States is the
diplomatic mission
A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...
of the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, located at
Northwest Quadrant,
Washington D.C.
)
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The main chancery is located at 3505 International Place,
Northwest, Washington, D.C.
Northwest (NW or N.W.) is the northwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and is located north of the National Mall and west of North Capitol Street. It is the largest of the four quadrants of the city (NW, NE, S ...
, in the
Van Ness neighborhood, while the visa section is located at 2201 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest in the
Glover Park
Glover Park is a neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., about a half mile north of Georgetown and just west of the United States Naval Observatory and Number One Observatory Circle (the Vice President's mansion). Every morning and evening, ...
neighborhood. China also operates
consulates general in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
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, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
,
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, and
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
History
Qing Empire and Republic of China
The
Qing Empire
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
opened its first mission to the U.S. in 1875, with
Chen Lanbin
Chen Lanbin (; 1816–1895), courtesy name Li Qiu (), was the first Chinese Ambassador to the United States during the Qing dynasty.
Born in Wuchuan City, Guangdong, he passed the Chinese imperial examination in 1853 at the age of 24, and entere ...
as minister. From 1877 to 1883, the legation rented the former luxury town house of
Alexander Shepherd designed by
Adolf Cluss
Adolf Ludwig Cluss (July 14, 1825 – July 24, 1905) also known as Adolph Cluss was a German-born American immigrant who became one of the most important, influential and prolific architects in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century, respons ...
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
Stewart's Castle, also referred to as Castle Stewart or Stewart's Folly, was a mansion in Washington, D.C., located on the north side of Dupont Circle between Connecticut Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue. The house owed its various names to the ...
on
Dupont Circle
Dupont Circle (or DuPont Circle) is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW ...
; and later, under Minister
Wu Tingfang
Wu Ting-fang (; 30 July 184223 June 1922) was a diplomat and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and briefly as Acting Premier during the early years of the Republic of China. He was also known as Ng Choy or Ng Achoy ().
Ed ...
, in the former mansion of
Thomas Franklin Schneider
Thomas Franklin Schneider (born 1859 in Washington, D.C. — d. 1938) was an American architect who designed about 2,000 houses in the capital city area.
Among his important buildings are the Cairo Apartment Building, National Park Seminary, T ...
at 18th and Q Street, NW.
In 1902, the Qing legation moved to a purpose-built mansion designed by
Waddy Butler Wood
Waddy Butler Wood (1869 – January 25, 1944) was a prominent American architect of the early 20th century and resident of Washington, D.C. Although Wood designed and remodeled numerous private residences, his reputation rested primarily o ...
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
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
following the fall of the
Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
in 1912. In 1935, the
legation
A legation was a diplomatic representative office of lower rank than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, minister. Ambassadors diplomatic rank, out ...
was upgraded to an
embassy
A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...
, and
Alfred Sao-ke Sze
Alfred Sao-ke Sze (; 1877–1958) was a prominent Chinese politician and diplomat during the most turbulent period in modern Chinese history.
Early life
Sze was born on April 10, 1877. In 1892, Sze moved to Washington, D.C. with his father, wh ...
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
Grace Hubbard Fortescue, (''née'' Bell) (November 3, 1883 – June 24, 1979), was a New York City socialite who murdered a man, later proven innocent, who was accused of raping her daughter. After being convicted of manslaughter at a sensatio ...
, and his successor
Wellington Koo
Koo Vi Kyuin (; January 29, 1888 – November 14, 1985), better known as V. K. Wellington Koo, was a statesman of the Republic of China. He was one of Republic of China's representatives at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
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
The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA; ; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: ''Thôi-van Kwan-hè-fap''; ) is an act of the United States Congress. Since the formal recognition of the People's Republic of China, the Act has defined the officially substantial but non-diplom ...
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
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and his
National Security Adviser A national security advisor serves as the chief advisor to a national government on matters of security. The advisor is not usually a member of the government's cabinet but is usually a member of various military or security councils.
National sec ...
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
, the principle of opening a liaison office, to be led by Chinese diplomat
Huang Zhen
Huang Zhen (; 8 January 1909 – 10 December 1989) was a politician of the China, People's Republic of China.
Biography
Huang was born in Tongcheng, Anhui, Tongcheng County, Anhui during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). After graduating from ...
, 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
The Mayflower Hotel is a historic hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., located on Connecticut Avenue NW. It is two blocks north of Farragut Square (one block north of the Farragut North (Washington Metro), Farragut North Washington Metro, Metro ...
.
For the permanent chancery, Huang initially tried to purchase the former
International Inn, then called the
Ramada Inn
Ramada is a large American multinational hotel chain owned by Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. As of December 31, 2018, it operates 811 hotels with 114,614 rooms across 63 countries under the Ramada brand.
Name
The ''Ramada'' name derives from t ...
, a highly visible building on
Thomas Circle
Thomas Circle is a traffic circle in Northwest Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW, Vermont Avenue NW, 14th Street NW, and M Street NW. It is named for George Henry Thomas, a Unio ...
designed by
Morris Lapidus
Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was an architect, primarily known for his Neo-baroque "Miami Modern" hotels constructed in the 1950s and 60s, which have since come to define that era's resort-hotel style, synonymous w ...
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
Connecticut Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., and suburban Montgomery County, Maryland. It is one of the diagonal avenues radiating from the White House, and the segment south of Florida Avenue was one ...
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
The Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations of January 1, 1979, established official relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China (commonly called "China").
Its announcement coincided with the end ...
released the same day.
Meanwhile, in 1973 Huang and his team identified four houses on S Street NW in the
Kalorama neighborhood of Washington DC for the residence of senior staff, including the former
Adolph C. Miller house at 2230 S Street NW that Huang had intended as his residence.
[ Eventually China only purchased two of these four houses: the former home of educator and diplomat William Richards Castle Jr., designed in 1929 by ]Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère ( ; November 9, 1858 – March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (architect), Thomas Hastings (March 11, 1860 – October 22, 1929), was one of the outstanding American Beaux-Arts architecture, Be ...
at 2200 S Street NW; and that of bankers William Andrew Mearns and Edward Stellwagen, designed in 1905 by Frost & Granger
Frost & Granger was an American architectural partnership from 1898 to 1910 of brothers-in-law Charles Sumner Frost (1856–1931) and Alfred Hoyt Granger (1867–1939). Frost and Granger were known for their designs of train stations and terminals, ...
at 2301 S Street NW, which became the ambassador's residence. On March 1, 1979, ambassador Chai Zemin
Chai Zemin (; October 1916 – June 7, 2010) was a Chinese diplomat, and the first ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States after the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, normalization of t ...
went from there to the White House to present his credentials to Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
.
The current chancery building in the International Chancery Center was built between 2005 and 2009 on a design by Pei Partnership Architects
PEI Architects, formerly Pei Partnership Architects, is an international architecture firm based in New York City. Co-founded by the sons of I. M. Pei, Chien Chung (Didi) Pei and Li Chung (Sandi) Pei, in 1992, PEI Architects has specialized in ...
, with I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei
– website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...
as consultant. The construction contractor was China Construction America
China Construction America () Founded in 1985, China Construction America (CCA) is a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation Ltd. (CSCEC) — the world's largest construction and real estate conglomerate and the biggest gl ...
, a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering
The China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) () is the largest construction company in the world by revenue and the 8th largest general contractor in terms of overseas sales, as of 2020.
While most of the assets of CSCEC were flo ...
. The new building's first day of operation was April 1, 2009.
The previous embassy complex on Connecticut Avenue was torn down in 2012 (except the 1922 St. Albans façade on Connecticut Avenue) to be replaced by a 130-unit apartment building for Chinese embassy employees, on a design by Phil Esocoff, since 2015 a member of the global leadership at Gensler
Gensler is a global design and architecture firm founded in San Francisco, California, in 1965.
In 2021, Gensler generated $1.235 billion in revenue, the most of any architecture firm in the U.S. As of 2021, Gensler operated offices in 49 citi ...
.
Protests
Soon after the embassy opened, four members of the Revolutionary Communist Party vandalized and ransacked the embassy. The police caught and arrested all four members, including the leader, Jim E Loudermilk, who was found in possession of an unregistered firearm. Against U.S. Attorney Earl J. Silbert's objections, Judge June Green gave the group lenience and sentenced them to probation and $815 restitution.
On February 5, 2014, the Uyghur American Association
The Uyghur American Association ( ug, ئامېرىكا ئۇيغۇر جەمئىيىتى, ئامېرىكا ئۇيغۇر بىرلىكى, translit=Amérika Uyghur Birliki, ; zh, s= 维吾尔裔美国人协会, p=Wéiwú'ěryì Měiguórén Xiéhu ...
organized a demonstration in front of the Embassy of China in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the Ghulja Incident.
In January 2022 a protest against China's hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics
The 2022 Winter Olympics (2022年冬季奥林匹克运动会), officially called the XXIV Olympic Winter Games () and commonly known as Beijing 2022 (2022), was an international winter multi-sport event held from 4 to 20 February 2022 in Beij ...
was held in Washington, D.C. outside the embassy. Attendees included Chen Guangcheng
Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971) is a Chinese civil rights activist who has worked on human rights issues in rural areas of the People's Republic of China. Blind from an early age and self-taught in the law, Chen is frequently describe ...
and Chris Smith (New Jersey politician)
Christopher Henry Smith (born March 4, 1953) is an American politician serving his 21st term as the U.S. representative for . Though it has taken various forms, his district has always been situated in central New Jersey. Currently, the district ...
. Smith described the 2022 Olympics as the “Genocide Games.”
Street renaming proposals
In June 2014 during the 113th United States Congress
The 113th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, from January 3, 2013, to January 3, 2015, during the fifth and sixth years of Presidency of Barack Obama, Barack Obama's presiden ...
, Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
Senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
Ted Cruz
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas from ...
introduced a simple resolution In the United States, a simple resolution is a legislative measure passed by only either the Senate or the House. As they have been passed by only one house, simple resolutions are not presented to the President, and do not have the force of law. Th ...
while Republican Representative
Representative may refer to:
Politics
* Representative democracy, type of democracy in which elected officials represent a group of people
* House of Representatives, legislative body in various countries or sub-national entities
* Legislator, som ...
Frank Wolf also proposed to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy after the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo (; 28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017) was a Chinese writer, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-par ...
. This would make the embassy's new address "1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza". But both of them got stuck in the introduction stage. BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, dismissed the lawmakers' move as "nothing more than a sheer farce", and restated the government's position that Mr. Liu had been convicted for breaking domestic laws. ''
'' also reported that when Hua was asked if China would retaliate by renaming the street in front of the
, she smiled and asked rhetorically, "Do you think China should take identical action as America?" Many Chinese commented online, suggesting China do just that. Proposal included "
in 2016, both Sen. Cruz and Rep.
to continue the efforts. On February 12, the senate passed Cruz's version unanimously. On February 16, the administration announced that US President
legislation for the renaming act.
, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a press conference that China hoped that the Obama administration could "put an end to this political farce." On February 23, Cruz's bill was referred to
but never cleared the House to present to President Obama for him to veto it.
During the
, on May 18, 2017, Sen. Cruz and Rep. Meadows re-introduced bills to resume their push to rename the address. After Dr. Liu's death on July 13,
that he is "definitely more optimistic" about Cruz's bill getting enacted with President
in office.
In 2020, a group of Republican senators and representatives proposed renaming the street after whistleblower
, who was warned by authorities after drawing attention to the initial outbreak of
in Wuhan.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Embassy of China in Washington, D.C.