Sha Zukang (Chinese: 沙祖康; pinyin: Shā Zǔkāng; born 1947) is a Chinese diplomat who is head of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. He was previously the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Office at Geneva.
Over his 37 years of diplomatic career, his portfolios cover a wide range of fields, including security, economy, social affairs, human rights and humanitarian affairs. In recent years, he served respectively as the Chairperson of the Government Group of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization, President of the Trade and Development Board of the United Nations, Chairman of the Preparatory Committee and the Committee of the Whole of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; Coordinator of the Like-Minded-Group of the Human Rights Council. He was also elected or appointed as President, Vice-President, Chairman, coordinator and expert in many international conferences in the field of trade, intellectual property, social affairs and telecommunications.
He previously served as Director-General, Department of Arms Control, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1997–2001) and earlier as Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs and Deputy Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland (1995–1997). He was Counsellor and Deputy Director-General, Department of International Organizations and Conferences, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1992–1995); First Secretary and Counsellor, Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations, New York (1988–1992); Third Secretary, Deputy Division Director and First Secretary, Department of International Organizations and Conferences, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1985–1988). He currently serves as Secretary-General[1] of Earth Summit, a global conference on sustainable development to be held in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro.
A graduate of Nanjing University, Sha started his diplomatic career as a staff member at the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom. He is noted for being outspoken. In a BBC interview on August 17, 2006,[2] he told the US to "shut up" regarding criticism on arms spending of China, noting that U.S. arms expenditure is half of the total arms expenditure of the whole world. In 2007, Foreign Policy magazine published a satirical commentary purporting to be by Sha, the "UN Secretary for Kicking Butt,"[3] and in 2010 called Sha "China's John Bolton" (the famously blunt U.S. ambassador to the UN under President George W. Bush). At an Austrian meeting of UN officials in September 2010, he said to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, "I know you never liked me, Mr. Secretary-General. Well, I never liked you, either" and about Robert Orr, an American UN official, that "I really don't like him: he's an American and I really don't like Americans." He added that he had come to respect the UN chief and praised Mr. Orr for a speech he had given.[4]