Mme. Ma Xiuhong is Vice Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee and Chairwoman of China Foreign Trade Centre. She started her career with the State Import and Export Administrative Commission and the State Foreign Investment Administrative Commission since the early stage of China’s reform and opening-up. Between 1982 and 1998, she worked as Deputy Director and Director at the Bureau of Foreign Investment Administration of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade (MOFERT), and then as Deputy Director-General and Director-General at the Department of Foreign Investment Administration of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC). Between 1998 and 2003, she served as Assistant Minister, and then Vice Minister of MOFTEC and Member of the Ministry’s Party Committee. Between 2003 and 2010, she served as Vice Minister of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), Member of the Ministry’s Party Committee, Secretary-general of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of the State Council and Secretary-general of the State Leading Group of Intellectual Property Rights.

Mme. Ma Xiuhong had been engaged in the work of foreign trade and economic cooperation for many years. She was long responsible for the work of attracting foreign direct investment, treaty and law, state-level economic and technical development zones, border economic and trade cooperation zones, China’s bilateral economic and trade relations with the United States, other countries and regions in America and Oceania, and anti-monopoly work. She is richly experienced in foreign trade and economic cooperation.  

Mme. Ma, born in 1948, is a Han national originally from Tang County of Hebei province.