ChinaObituaryXiong Xianghui
As a spy, he helped Mao to victory; as an envoy, he brokered the thaw with the USThe former senior Chinese diplomat Xiong Xiang-hui, who has died aged 86, played a vital undercover role during the final phase of the communist revolution, after the second world war, which may have tipped the balance in Mao Zedong's favour. Twenty or so years later, he was a key figure in the re-emergence of the country onto the international scene, attending secret meetings in Beijing with the US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and joining communist China's first delegation to the United Nations in 1971.
Outside China, however, Xiong's importance is barely known. His name does not appear in Kissinger's memoirs or in recent biographies of Mao. The full extent of his exploits was only revealed in 1991, when he published Twelve Years Underground with Zhou Enlai, followed by several essays on his postwar career. But though the revelations attracted media attention in China, they went virtually unnoticed in the outside world.
Xiong's involvement in politics began as a student in 1936. After secretly joining the Communist party, he managed to get onto the staff of Hu Zongnan, one of the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek's most able generals, serving as his confidential secretary for 10 years.
Xiong's greatest coup came almost by accident in 1947, at the height of the civil war between the nationalists and the communists, when he was about to go to the US on study leave. Preparing to board a ship in Shanghai, he was intercepted by Chiang's secret police and escorted back to the general. Fearing that he had been exposed, Xiong told his wife to prepare for the worst, but Hu greeted him with smiles and a dossier of papers. "We are going to attack Yan'an [Mao's communist base in north-west China]," said Hu, telling Xiong to read the plans in a locked room and help with the preparations.
Within days, Xiong had secretly informed Yan'an of the planned offensive, giving Mao sufficient time to take to the hills and avoid a pitched battle. Mao said that Xiong's information was "worth several divisions". In the event, Hu captured an empty town, and spent months in fruitless pursuit of the elusive communists. It was the turning point in the civil war: two years later, the People's Liberation army entered Beijing.
Like many young students who joined the Communist party, Xiong came from the educated bureaucracy which ran imperial China. His father was a county magistrate in Shandong when Xiong was born, and rose to become a senior high court judge in Hubei province.
Talent-spotted in 1937 by Mao's close colleague Zhou Enlai to infiltrate Hu's entourage, Xiong showed a resourcefulness beyond his age. Wishing to attract the general's attention at a meeting of young volunteers, Xiong did not jump to attention when his name was called out, but remained sitting and calmly replied "Here I am." Hu was intrigued, and asked him why he wanted to join the army: "To make revolution," Xiong responded. Was not Hu's army fighting the Japanese, he went on, and was that not the most important task of the nationalist revolution? Impressed by the young man's poise, Hu summoned him for a personal interview and, a year later, took him on his staff.
Although Xiong could not reveal his real affiliation to anyone in his family, someone else had to know. "I am a member of the Communist party," he told his future wife, Chen Xiaohua, on the second occasion they were alone together. "Will you share a life of danger with me?" Chen, a serious-minded student aged just 21, instantly agreed.
After the failure of the 1947 assault on Yan'an, Xiong finally left - on Hu's recommendation - for his US studies. Two years later, he returned to startle his former nat- ionalist colleagues by joining the New China's diplomatic service. He soon became one of Zhou Enlai's most trusted subordinates, attending the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina at which Britain and China agreed to exchange chargés d'affaires. In 1962, Xiong himself took up the post in London.
Except in the area of trade, during this period Sino-British relations languished in the shadow of Washington's hostility to communist China. While in London, Xiong spent some time trying - unsuccessfully - to get planning permission to rebuild the Chinese embassy, a listed Adams building, in Portland Place.
At the start of the cultural revolution in 1966, the foreign ministry in Beijing was denounced by the Red Guard for alleged "revisionism". Xiong added his name to a petition, signed by 71 Chinese diplomats, seeking to defend the foreign minister Chen Yi, and was quickly targeted himself. But Mao had not forgotten Xiong's exploits, and authorised Zhou to intercede on his behalf. In 1969, while most of his colleagues were exiled to the countryside, Xiong stayed in Beijing on an crucial assignment.
At Mao's request, he sat in on secret discussions between four of China's most senior military generals to consider the tense international situation, in which China was now threatened by the Soviet Union as well as by the US. In documents drafted by Xiong, they recommended "playing the American card" to counter the Soviet threat, and suggested high-level talks with the US. This began a subtle shift in China's position, which helped pave the way for the Kissinger talks in 1971, President Nixon's visit in 1972 and the thaw in US-China relations. During the Kissinger meetings, Xiong was Zhou's assistant.
As new horizons opened up for China, Xiong joined the delegation which, in 1971, took back Beijing's seat at the United Nations, occupied until then by Taiwan. Xiong concluded his diplomatic career as ambassador to Mexico, where he pledged China's support for the nuclear-free Latin America established by the Tlatelolco treaty of 1967.
A lively and colourful person in his private life, Xiong's public role was understated to the end. His wife died in 2001; his two children survive him.
· Xiong Xianghui, diplomat, born April 12 1919; died September 9 2005
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKaVrMBwfo9pbGirlaV8c4KOoKyaqpSerq%2B7waKrrpminrK0esKhoKeZ