Mrs Zhang Xiuqin is Director General Department of International Cooperation & Exchanges, Ministry of Education, China. She entered Tianjin Foreign Languages Institute in 1978. In the same year, she won a Chinese government scholarship to be an exchange student at Durham University, England for three years. In 1986, she was awarded a British Council scholarship and got her Master Degree of Education Administration from Leeds University, UK. Mrs Zhang joined the Department of Study Abroad, Chinese Ministry of Education in 1981. In 1988, she was posted as Third Secretary (educational) at the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC. From 1995 to 1998, she was the Head of the Education Office of the Consulate General of the People Republic of China in Toronto, Canada. Mrs Zhang Xiuqin was appointed Secretary General of the China Scholarship Council in 2004 after serving as the Deputy Director General of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchange, Chinese Ministry of Education for six years. In 2008, she took up the current position as the Director General of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Chinese Ministry of Education.

Mrs Zhang Xuiqin is participating in the World potential; making education meet the challenge and the China 2020: the internationalisation agenda sessions.