The central government "has decided to appoint" Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Xianfa commissioner of the Foreign Ministry in the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR), Xinhua reported today.
According to the official website of the Foreign Ministry in Beijing, by the time of his appointment Liu's areas of responsibility consisted of administrative and financial affairs.
Liu, who was born in Qingdao in April 1963, holds a doctoral degree in Management Science. He worked as a teacher between 1984 and 1986 for the East China Petroleum Institute. He was a graduate student between 1986 and 1989 at the University of Petroleum's Department of Petroleum Refining in Beijing.
Between 1989 and 1993, Liu was a staff member of the Department of Development of China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec). He worked between 1993 and 1998 in senior positions (deputy division director, assistant manager and assistant director-general) for Sinopec.
Liu worked between 1998 and 2011 in senior positions for the State Administration of Petroleum and Chemical Industries, State Economic and Trade Commission, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and China National Petroleum Corporation.
He was deputy consul-general at the Chinese Consulate-General in Los Angeles between 2011 and 2012. Between 2012 and 2013 Liu was consul-general in Lagos, the most populous city of Nigeria.
Liu was ambassador to Kenya, permanent representative to the UN Environment Programme and permanent representative to the UN Human Settlements Programme between 2013 and 2018.
He was ambassador at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing between 2018 and 2019. He was appointed one of the ministry's three assistant ministers in 2019.
Liu, who is married with a son, will replace Shen Beili who after two years ended her posting to Macau in July last year to take up the post of vice-minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
In the interim, Wang Dong was the acting commissioner of the Foreign Ministry Commissioner's Office in Macau.
