New Foreign Secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhale is scheduled to take charge on Monday, January 29. He succeeds S Jaishankar. He may have a two-year term. He was India's Ambassador to China from January 20, 2016, to October 21, 2017, before moving back to the MEA headquarters in New Delhi. Since his return from Beijing, he has been serving as the secretary (economic relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in preparation for the next big assignment - to successfully conclude India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Currently, India and the EU are negotiating the long-pending framework of the FTA. The signing of the agreement requires doubtless skills in harmonizing complex differences. In this critical job, his experience as India's ambassador in Germany between October 2013 and January 2016 may prove helpful. It may be noted that both India and Communist China are locked in a fierce competition for the EU market. As the EU is obviously keen on reducing its trade dependence on People's Republic of China (PRC), India has an excellent opportunity. Besides the EU, Gokhale knows PRC well and had played a key role in negotiations to resolve the 73-day-long Doklam standoff between Indian and Chinese armies last year. So he is eminently qualified to promote India's relationship versus China in the EU. Through his career, he worked in Indian missions in Hong Kong, Hanoi and in New York. He has held the posts of director (China and East Asia) and then joint secretary (East Asia) in the MEA.