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An official website of the United States government
An official website of the United States government
The Consulate General of the United States in Wuhan was re-established in 2008 under the provisions of the 1981 U.S.-China Agreement on Consular Facilities. The United States previously had a Consulate in the Hankou area of Wuhan dating from 1861 until its closure in 1949. During World War II, the Hankou Consulate served as the U.S. Embassy for a period of time. The Consulate General currently focuses on providing emergency services to American citizens in the region, promoting U.S. exports and fostering other aspects of our commercial and economic relations, and expanding cultural and educational exchanges between the U.S. and central China. The groundbreaking ceremony for the Consulate General’s new office space in Wuhan was held on February 10, 2017. The Consulate General expects to open its new office and provide full consular services.
Following the Treaty of Tianjin, the United States expressed its intention to open a consulate in the newly designated trading port of what would become Hankou in 1861. The first consul arrived in 1861. The post became a Consulate General in 1903. The consulate was housed in several different buildings in the early years, until moving into the iconic red brick baroque building on the Yangtze riverfront in Hankou about 1915. Today, that building is the Wuhan Human Resource Service Center located on Yanjiang Avenue.
When China’s capital was moved to Wuhan in 1937, our consulate’s building served as a temporary U.S. Embassy to China for nearly a year. The Consulate General in Hankou officially closed in December 1949.
The return of a consulate in Wuhan began sooner after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. An agreement signed between our two countries in 1981 identified Wuhan as the future site of a consulate, one of five in China. Planning for the reopening of Wuhan’s consulate began in earnest in the early 2000s.
On November 20, 2008, the United States re-opened a Consulate General in Wuhan at our current location in the New World Trade Building in Hankou.
The Consulate General in Wuhan covers Henan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces. Since 2008 our main purposes have been to provide emergency services to American citizens in the area, promote trade, and enhance commercial cooperation between the U.S. and Central China, and to explain and share American culture with the people of central China.
The consulate had just one diplomat, the Consul General, until 2012 when a Public Affairs Officer position was added. Our U.S. Department of Commerce’s commercial service office was officially launched in early 2015.
Melissa J. Lan assumed the role of Consul General of the Consulate General of the United States of America in Wuhan, China, on October 18, 2021. Ms. Lan is a career Foreign Service Officer and prior to her arrival was the Acting Director of the Office of Afghanistan Affairs.
Ms. Lan has focused on East and South Central Asia for over a decade, including as the U.S. Embassy Beijing 2008 Olympics Coordinator, in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and with the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Her other assignments include the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the Executive Secretariat, Foreign Policy Advisor, Office of Maghreb Affairs, and U.S. Embassy Beirut, Lebanon. She also served at the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen and following suspension of operations in 2015 helped establish the Yemen Affairs Unit in Jeddah.
A Michigan native, Ms. Lan has a BA from Duke University and an MPP from Princeton University. She is fluent in Mandarin and has studied Arabic, French, and Korean.