Dr. Zhang Xiaotong is the Executive Director of Wuhan University Centre for Economic Diplomacy, and Associate Professor of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Wuhan University. He previously worked at the U.S. Desk of China’s Ministry of Commerce and serve as Trade Attaché at the Chinese Mission to the European Union in Brussels between 2004 and 2010. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in political science at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. His major research interests include economic diplomacy, trade policy, US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP), EU-China bilateral investment treaty and US-China relations.
Zhang recently published Brussels Diary, a biography about his experiences as a trade diplomat, and is working on a new book, China’s Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century (English). He is a reviewer for the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Hague Journal of Diplomacy and China Journal of International Politics. He is also the founder of a peer-review electronic journal, Journal of Economic Diplomacy (Chinese). Dr. Zhang has spoken for the OECD, European Parliament, Chatham House and London School of Economics.
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Charles Dickens expressed it best in his famous novel Tale of the Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.


