President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has appointed CNN’s former Beijing bureau chief Jaime A. FlorCruz as the country’s ambassador to China, and Luli Arroyo-Bernas, daughter of former President and now Senior Deputy Speaker Gloria Arroyo, as ambassador to Austria.
The President also appointed former Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Andres Centino as the country’s ambassador to India.
Former consul general to Vancouver Maria Andrelita Austria was also nominated to be the country’s ambassador to Canada.
FlorCruz was among the list of nominees published by the Commission on Appointments as of October 27. According to the document, he was appointed on October 19, but the Palace has yet to make an official confirmation.
The 71-year-old FlorCruz, who also served as TIME Magazine’s Beijing Bureau chief and correspondent and Newsweek’s correspondent in China, will have concurrent jurisdiction over North Korea and Mongolia.
According to his biography posted on CNN, FlorCruz is considered as the “dean” of the foreign press corps in Beijing, being the longest-serving foreign correspondent in China to date.
He was a two-term president of the 200-member Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China and a member of the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
FlorCruz has studied, worked, and traveled in China for more than 40 years and reported on the country as a journalist since 1980.
The post of Philippine ambassador to China has been vacant since Chito Sta. Romana died last April.
FlorCruz, who is fluent in English, Filipino, and Mandarin Chinese, has an undergraduate degree in advertising from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and a degree in Chinese history from Peking University.
Arroyo-Bernas, for her part, will have concurrent jurisdiction over Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia.
She previously served as chairperson of the National Museum board of trustees.
Centino, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1988, will also be the country’s top envoy to Nepal.
Austria, a career diplomat, previously served as assistant secretary for American affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs She also worked at the Philippine embassy in Washington DC and the Philippine consulate general in San Francisco.
