Gary Locke served as the U.S. ambassador to China from 2011 to 2014. Locke was not only the first Chinese-American ambassador to China, but also the first Chinese-American state governor and secretary of commerce. 

This week on Sinica, he joins Kaiser in a show taped in Seattle, Washington, to talk about his early visits to his ancestral village in China's Guangdong Province, the attempted defection of Chongqing police chief and erstwhile Bó Xīlái 薄熙来 underling Wáng Lìjūn 王立军 to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, and rare details about the flight of blind dissident lawyer Chén Guāngchéng 陈光诚 to the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

7:58: State-level interactions with China

17:54: Working as the secretary of commerce under President Obama

33:32: Wang Lijun’s attempted defection 

41:55: A look back at the Chen Guangcheng debacle 

1:01:09: Xi Jinping, and how he changed

Recommendations:

Gary: Knives Out, written and directed by Rian Johnson, and the movie Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho. 

Kaiser: The blog Reading the China Dream, which contains a collection of translated works of Chinese intellectuals.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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