Gov. Gary Locke’s blandness used to challenge profile writers for Washington newspapers, who were confronted with a politician who used the word “great” a lot and was known to grab plumbing tools and fix faucets when visiting friends’ homes.
Locke
But being a regular guy has helped transform Locke into a “star” in his new gig as U.S. Ambassador to China, The Washington Post reports in an on-scene profile.
The “low key two term Washington State governor” and former Commerce Secretary “has become something of a media and Internet star,” reports the Post. And Locke’s popularity “has as much to do with his unassuming nature — his ordinariness — as his Chinese looks and background.”
When elected in 1996, Locke became the first Asian American governor on the American mainland. He is now the first Chinese-American to hold the ambassadorial portfolio in Beijing. Locke took the place of Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who returned to the U.S. to seek the Republican presidential nomination.
Ordinary behavior has won friends for Locke in a country whose privileged big shots — Beijing’s polluted air is even filtered before they breathe it — rarely circulate with the masses.
He has flown economy class, reports the Post, and been seen buying his daughter ice cream in a Beijing neighborhood. He was witnessed “waiting in line with his family alongside tourists for a seat in a cable car descending from the Great Wall.”
“The reason for the fascination, many here posit, is that when Chinese look at this backpack-toting envoy with a Chinese face, they see everything their own leaders are not — leaving authorities struggling for how best to respond to his increasingly evident popularity,” the newspaper reports.
The official organs of Chinese Communism have begun to sound grumpy.
“Be Vigilant to Neo-Colonialism of America Brought by Gary Locke,” headlined a recent commentary in the Guangming Daily, a Communist Party newspaper in Beijing.
“Who knows that this just exposes the evil purpose of the U.S. to use a Chinese to play off against Chinese and to instigate a political turbulence in China?” reads the paper’s turgid prose.
And, complained the Global Times, “A U.S. ambassador becoming a political star in China cannot be interpreted as U.S. respect for China.”
Locke, on a visit to his ancestral village of Taishan — he also went there while governor — is quoted by the Post as being surprised at his popularity.
“It was completely unexpected and not by design,” he told reporters. “I’m somewhat overwhelmed by the micro-blogging that takes place in China, and the smartphones and all the people that want to take pictures of myself and my family.”
The surprise extends to this side of the Pacific. Who would have thought that a guy seen mowing his lawn on Queen Anne Hill, and pushing a cart at Safeway, would be profiled in the Washington Post’s “Lifestyle” section?
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