Secretary-General Feng Wei Attends Opening Ceremony of BIMUN

The 2018 Beijing International Model United Nations Conference (BIMUN) was held on May 10, 2018 at the Shahe campus of China Foreign Affairs University (CFAU). The conference was hosted by CFAU, and co-directed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, the Central Committee of Communist Youth League and the UN Association of China. Over 700 young people from 176 universities and high schools around the world participated.

Attending and addressing the opening ceremony were Qin Yaqing, president of CAFU, H. E. Xie Bohua from the International Organization and Conference Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Wenjie, deputy secretary of the Communist Youth League of Beijing, Feng Wei, Secretary-General of Beijing Wu Jianmin Foundation, H.E. Ms. Marielza Oliveira, Director and Representative of UNESCO Beijing Office, and Minister Counsellor Asad Beg, Head of Political, Press and Information Section of the European Union Delegation to China.

Secretary-General Feng congratulated the BIMUN on behalf of Chairman Shi Yanhua and Director General Wu Jiansheng, and said that the Foundation was honored to co-host the conference.

Nurturing highly qualified Chinese diplomats has always been Ambassador Wu’s dream and lifetime mission, said Secretary-General Feng. Ambassador Wu believed that the UN was the classroom for diplomats and an effective platform for training such diplomatic talents, and that multilateral platforms could provide a broader view and larger space than bilateral ones. Ambassador Wu himself was an example. He was an extraordinary diplomat trained on multilateral platforms. In 1961, at age 22, he was assigned to his first overseas post at the headquarters of World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) in Budapest, which counts as grassroots multilateral diplomacy. In 1971 he went to New York as a member of the first Chinese delegation to UN. He went back there in 1985 at age 46. Ten years later, in 1995, he became Chinese ambassador to UN in Geneva. In 2003, he was elected chairman of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). It was the first time a Chinese and an Asian person was ever elected to that position. He grew and matured in multilateral diplomacy. Ambassador Wu was a great orator and often gave speeches without having to refer to a manuscript. His first impromptu speech in English was at a seminar in UN headquarters in New York back in the 1980s. It was a great success and it also gave him encouragement and confidence. He was an excellent orator who spoke Chinese, English and French, which is very rare in China. UN provided the platform for this extraordinary diplomat to grow.

The Wu Jianmin Foundation upholds the will of Ambassador Wu and is willing to contribute to producing a new generation of talents to engage in multilateral diplomatic affairs, said Secretary-General Feng. He proposed that the Foundation would join the BIMUN – which has had many successes in the past – to establish the Ambassador Wu Jianmin Award to get the young people “up close with the UN.” It will award outstanding delegates from the conference with the opportunity to experience in the field how UN and international organizations operate. Delegates will be able to bring the knowledge and skills learned through the model UN activities into practice and improve their diplomatic capabilities in real life. He expressed wishes that there will be more future diplomats amongst the delegates, who, like Ambassador Wu, could represent their own countries with excellence and dedicate themselves to facilitating international exchange and building a better world. 

Before the opening ceremony, Secretary-General Feng and the colleagues at the Wu Jianmin Foundation toured the “Exhibition of Ambassador Wu Jianmin: a life in diplomacy” at the CFAU.