Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
Now I understand 
why the old poets of China went so far
and high 
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
"The Old Poets of China" by Mary Oliver

The UP Asian Center congratulates Professorial Lecturer Jaime A. FlorCruz for being appointed as the Philippine Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China on 7 December 2022.

AMBASSADOR APPOINTMENT

Professor Jaime A. FlorCruz was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the People’s Republic of China, on 19 October 2022 according to the Commission of Appointment’s (COA) records. As the ambassador, Prof. FlorCruz will also have jurisdiction over the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Mongolia. He succeeded the late ambassador Hon. Jose Santiago “Chito” Sta. Romana, also a former lecturer at the UP Asian Center.

PROFESSOR JAIME FLORCRUZ

Professor Jaime A. FlorCruz is a Professorial Lecturer at the UP Asian Center where he teaches courses on China. He is a veteran journalist and one of the world’s most respected China watchers. A former student activist, Ambassador FlorCruz was forced to exile in China in 1971 during the Martial Law in the Philippines. He studied at Peking University with a degree in Chinese History and continued to live in the country as an intellectual with an expert and broad knowledge of China. His recent book The Class of ’77: How My Classmates Changed China was published in 2022.

For inquiries, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 8 981 8500 local 3580.
The Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The UP Asian Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. It also offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. For an overview of these graduate programs, click here. As an area studies institution, the Asian Center also publishes Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, the latest issue of which can be downloaded at the journal's website.