Professor Jan Rowiński died on 2 January 2023 in Piaseczno (near Warsaw). He was a member of the Academic Council of the Centre of East Asian Studies at the University of Gdańsk and of the scholarly bi-annual journal Gdańsk East Asian Studies.

Jan Rowiński was a professor of the University of Warsaw. As a scholar and a diplomat, he was concerned with China for most of his professional life. He wrote many scholarly articles and books on the politics, culture, and history of China, and his passion for these subjects inspired generations of undergraduates, doctoral students, and colleagues. Inter alia, he owed his knowledge of China and the Chinese to the experience of the many years he spent there first as a student and later as a diplomat.

He was born on 11 May 1936 in Kiełpiny. From 1954 to 1959, he studied at the University of Beijing and at the Institute of Diplomacy in Beijing. From the beginning of his studies in Beijing he devoted his entire professional life to the study of East Asia, especially China. He witnessed the transformations that took place in China, and observed the changes in the structures of power there. China had a considerable influence on his way of life. It is difficult to overestimate his contribution to research into that part of the world.

His professional life ran on two tracks: on one hand, in diplomacy; on the other, in the academic world. As an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he worked in the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Beijing. Between 1995 and 2001, he was counsellor-minister plenipotentiary and deputy ambassador of the Republic of Poland to the People’s Republic of China. From 1969, he was connected with the Polish Institute of International Affairs, where he held several academic posts, and after completing his habilitation in 1987 was appointed professor there. In 2002, he became professor at the Institute of International Relations of the University of Warsaw in the Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, where he worked until 2013. At the University of Warsaw, he conducted classes on the foreign policies of China and Japan, the history and civilization of East Asia, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific region. He supervised the work of many doctoral students and reviewed doctoral and post-doctoral dissertations.

For his achievements, Professor Rowiński was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Gold Cross of Merit.