Yu Yong, Deputy Director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), was elected chairman of the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee, which kicked off its 51st session in Guangzhou, capital city of south China's Guangdong Province, on February 26.

The Typhoon Committee is an intergovernmental body established in 1968 under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the World Meteorological Organization, in order to promote and coordinate the planning and implementation of measures required for minimizing the loss of life and material damage caused by typhoons in the Asia-Pacific region.

Yu, 57, holds a bachelor's degree from the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology and a master's degree in climatology from Nanjing University.

He served as head of the Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Bureau from 2004 until 2011, after which he began to work for the CMA and became deputy director of the administration in 2017.