John Addis

Sir John Mansfield Addis KCMG (* June 4, 1914, † 31 July 1983) was a British diplomat.

Life

John Mansfield Addis was the twelfth child and fifth son of Sir Charles and Lady Addis. He studied from 1928 to 1932 at Rugby School and then at Christ Church (Oxford) College, Oxford. He joined the Foreign Service in 1938. From 1938 to 1941 he was Private Secretary to Permanent Under- Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Cadogan. From 1942 to 1944 he was with the Allied Forces Headquarters, which migrated from London to Algiers to Caserta, busy. In 1944 he was Botschaftrssekretär second class in Paris. From 1945 to 1947, private secretary to Clement Attlee. In 1947 he was transferred to China and served as Secretary of the Embassy first class diplomatic representatives in Nanjing. From 1951 to 1954 he was in the department of China and Korea Foreign Office busy. From 8 May to 21 July 1954 he took part in the Indochina Conference in Geneva. From 1954 to 1957 he was Counsellor and Consul General in Beijing. From 1957 to 1959 he headed the Southern Division of the Foreign Office. From 1960 to 1962 he was ambassador in Vientiane, Laos. From 1962 to 1963 he was a Fellow at the Institute for International Affairs of Harvard University. From 1963 to 1969 he was ambassador in Manila. From 1970 to 1974 he was ambassador to Beijing People's Republic of China. He retired in 1974.

In 1975 he was elected as a Senior Research Fellow on Contemporary China Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford, and held this position during his retirement. He was also a member of the Advisory Board of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a Trustee of the British Museum, a member of the Board of HSBC, Barclays and consultants of Great Britain China Centre.