President of the Federation of University Sports of China President of Peking University President of the 37th Session of the General Conference of UNESCO

Professor HAO Ping, President of the 37th Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, is an internationally-recognized writer and scholar with a successful career in Government and University administration. Having served as Vice Minister of Education and Chairperson of the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO, he became Chair of the University Council of Peking University in December 2016, and President of the Federation of University Sports of China in January 2019. He is also the member of FISU Academic Advisory Board.

Professor Hao Ping was born in Qingdao, Shandong Province. He gained his Bachelor’s degree in history at Peking University (1982) and received his Master’s degree in history at the University of Hawaiʻi (1995) and later a Ph.D. degree at Peking University (1999) in international relations.

Professor Hao is profoundly dedicated to the cause of UNESCO, by starting his career in education administration in 1982. He has successively assumed the administrative positions at the Office of Policy Research, the President’s Office, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of International Relations, Peking University. Later, Professor Hao served as the Assistant President, the Deputy Secretary-General of PKU Education Foundation and then Vice President of Peking University. In 2005, Professor Hao became the President of Beijing Foreign Studies University. Later, he was appointed in 2009 Vice Minister of Education, Executive Member of the CPC Leading Group of Ministry of Education, Chairperson of the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO and Executive Member of the Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters.

In 2013, Professor Hao was elected as the President of the 37th session of the General Conference, UNESCO; the first ever Chinese to hold this position. He endeavored to promote dialogue and synergy between the governing bodies of the Organization, as well as trust and solidarity among Member States. He advocated world widely the mission and ideal of UNESCO with the strong commitment of China to multilateralism. During his mandate, the Chinese President XI Jinping paid a historic visit to the headquaters of UNESCO in March 2014, and Madame Professor PENG Liyuan was nominated as the Special Envoy of UNESCO for Girls' and Women's Education.  

Returning to Peking University in December 2016, Professor Hao was promoted as an Alternate Member of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and also a Member of the National Committee of the 11th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Professor Hao has published a number of academic papers and three books, which are Peking University and the Origins of Higher Education in China (1998, with multilinguistic translation of English, Russian and Korean etc, and published internationally including in the United Kingdom, Russia, Korea and other countries), Sun Yat-sen and America (2000, later translated in English and published in the United States) and John Leighton Stuart and China (2011, later translated in English and published in the United Kingdom).

Professor Hao Ping is being recognized for his achievements as a scholar and a distinguished leader of university, government and international organization. The intensity and quality of international collaboration that Chinese universities engage in today is in no small part thanks to his leadership and vision. With his profound understanding of sports values in education and under his leadership, the university sports in China will be more and more promising and prosperous.