The world watched with bemusement when Gary Locke, the new United States Ambassador to China, unwittingly took China by storm before he even had a chance to say or do anything important. By carrying his own backpack and buying his own coffee, he provided a pointed contrast to the behavior of Chinese officials. The Chinese public took notice because it craves honest officials who will work for the welfare of the people rather than just enriching themselves.
Locke, a two-term governor of Washington State, and most recently the Secretary of Commerce, is the first Chinese-American Ambassador to China. Without much fanfare, the 61-year-old ambassador, along with his wife and three children, arrived in Beijing on Aug. 12, causing an unexpected stir since, by current Chinese standards, their travels from Seattle to Beijing were shockingly humble.
Many Chinese media outlets, including Beijing News, People’s Daily, and Guangzhou Daily, remarked that this ministry level official and his family came “without accompanying personnel or body guard. Each member of the family had a backpack and a handbag; nobody was idle.”
The Legal Evening News said in an Aug. 13 report that several passengers on the same 12-hour flight with the Locke family did not even realize they were on board.
“It’s surprising that Gary Locke would use a commercial airliner to travel to his new post, no different from a regular family outing,” the report said.
After they arrived at Beijing International Airport, the Lockes got into a Ford minivan and headed directly to the Ambassador’s residence, where two days later the entire family met the press.
Heated discussions among Chinese netizens followed the media reports. One article on the Legal Evening News website received 17,843 comments in five days.
“Xueqicheng517” from Ningbo City in Zhejiang Province said: “Whenever a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official goes abroad, a solemn-faced CCTV news announcer reads from a script that so-and-so (dozens of names) went to the airport to welcome him, so-and-so (more dozens of names) accompanied him, so-and-so accepted flowers from representatives of overseas students, followed by thundering applause.”
“Hello” from Guangzhou said, “The message by Ambassador Locke is this: Why do Chinese in China want to go to the United States? What is so good about the United States? Even a high-ranking American official like myself cannot compare to a mere county head in China. Who is having fun here?”
Many of the over 100,000 comments to an ifeng.com article compared Locke to Chinese officials.
“Almost liberated” from Hubei Province said: “Mr. Locke can only be an official in America. People like him would not survive in CCP officials’ circles because he is too different.”
“Won big prize” from Yunnan Province said: “The image of a U.S. Ambassador carrying a backpack is very good. Even the head of a small Chinese township would have several accompanying personnel holding his briefcase.”
Hong Kong’s Eastern Daily said CCP officials’ pursuit of fame, money, and power has become a breeding ground for corruption.
Long Yongtu, chief negotiator for China’s membership in the World Trade Organization, was quoted by Eastern Daily as saying, he had once seen a Chinese county-level Party Secretary in an airport about to leave on a trip abroad, and close to 40 personnel were seeing him off.
Yahoo China published an article titled “Gary Locke gave Party officials a lesson.” The article also had a readers’ poll.
One of the questions was, “In your imagination, how would Gary Locke travel?”
Fifty-two percent answered something to the effect that they thought Locke would have his own plane and his own personnel, and that he would be sent off by police escort and welcomed by the general public.
Another question on the poll was, “What struck you the most?”
Seventy-eight percent said they found his simple and low-key style of travel “shocking.”
Read the original Chinese article.
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