How will Rubio enter China despite being under sanctions?
Chinese sanctions imposed on U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have raised questions about how he entered China as part of the delegation accompanying U.S. President Donald Trump, who is visiting Beijing later on Wednesday.
Chinese sources indicated that Minister Rubio will be part of the visiting US delegation to the country, but revealed an unprecedented linguistic ploy to bypass the Chinese "wall of sanctions" imposed on him, which relied on changing the way the minister's name is written in Chinese characters.
The new "Lobio": changing the letter to unlock
According to Chinese sources, the government and state media have resorted to an innovative diplomatic solution to avoid embarrassment in the implementation of the sanctions imposed on Rubio since 2020. The sources explained that the Chinese first letter of his surname has been replaced from the symbol (卢 - Lú) to the symbol (鲁 - Lǔ).
Diplomats noted that this slight change in "voice translation" allowed Rubio to enter the country legally, as authorities considered that the sanctions were aimed at the person with the "old spelling" of his name when he was a senator.
Chinese justification for 'diplomatic flavor'
Liu Pingyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, confirmed that Beijing would not prevent Rubio from accompanying Trump, explaining that the sanctions were aimed at Rubio's previous "words and deeds" as a senator, while the matter differed from his current capacity as secretary of state and national security adviser.
According to Chinese sources, the solution only required a "rebranding" to open Beijing's doors to him. This linguistic circumference is a familiar Chinese way of dealing with foreign names that do not have a uniform phonetic conversion system in the Chinese language.
From "Discount" to "Guest"
Marco Rubio is known as one of the most fierce opponents of the Chinese Communist Party, having previously spearheaded legislation that imposed sanctions on Beijing over the Uyghur file and what he described as the "suppression of freedoms" in Hong Kong.
Although he recently described China as an "unprecedented adversary," he is accompanying Trump today on a mission aimed at strengthening trade relations, while taking a tough stance on the Taiwan file, stressing that the US administration will not compromise on the island's security in exchange for economic agreements.
American tech moguls accompanied by Trump
The US president is accompanied by a high-level delegation that includes tech moguls, led by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang and Tim Cook.
The upcoming summit between Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping aims to discuss thorny issues including trade, artificial intelligence, and opening Chinese markets to American companies, as Trump tweeted before his arrival calling on Beijing to "open its doors" to American creativity to take the two countries to a higher level.