China Vitae

Biography

Xu Zhiqin, female, Han nationality, is a native of Chongqing, Sichuan Province. She graduated from the Geology and Geography Department of Peking University in 1964 and obtained a doctorate degree from France National Geotectonic University in 1987. Xu is a structural geology expert.

Xu began her career studying rift structures. Since the 1980s, she has focused on new tectonic theories and examined the Qinghai-Tibet plateau as well as deformed structures of the peripheral Orogenic Belt. She also calibrated more than 50 large-scale malleable shear zones in China and divided the "tectonic types" of orogenic stages and continental mountain chains.

Xu put forward the "Tethys-Himalayan orogenic complex" and new views about the serious phorogenesis of western part of China since the Variscian period.

She is credited with discovering ultra-high pressure coesite minerals in the Zhonggubie Mountains and directed China's continental scientific drilling research team.

Xu was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995.