Chen Mingming, male, Han nationality, is a native of Shandong Province. He was born in 1950 and graduated from Beijing Foreign Languages Institute.
For most of the 1980s, Chen was a senior staffer for the Translation and Interpretation Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After seven years with the department, he became second secretary for the Chinese Embassy in the United States in 1987; while there, he rose to assume the first secretary position before leaving to return to China in 1990.
Chen was assigned to the North American and Oceania Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he served as division director and counselor. In 1998, he became deputy director-general of the department.
After three years as deputy director-general, Chen was made ambassador to New Zealand and the Cook Islands in 2001.