BEIJING: The word on the street, whether in Washington or Beijing, is that the United States is on the decline and China is on the ascent. But it has taken nothing more than a cup of coffee and a backpack to show that US officials can still evoke awe, respect and envy among Chinese, even if unwittingly.
A photograph taken on Friday of the new US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, buying coffee with his six-year-old daughter and carrying a black backpack at a Starbucks in Seattle Airport, has gone viral on the internet in China.
The seemingly banal scene has bewildered and disarmed Chinese because they are used to seeing their own officials indulge in privileged lives often propped up by graft, bribery and lavish expense accounts.
Locke and his family were waiting to fly to Beijing when a Chinese-American businessman took the photo and posted it on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social networking site. It has been reposted more than 40,000 times and has generated thousands of comments.
State news organisations have weighed in with favourable articles about Locke, a former governor of Washington state and US President, Barack Obama's first commerce secretary, who on Tuesday presented his credentials to China's President, Hu Jintao, to start his posting.
The first impression from the Starbucks episode has been bolstered by another photograph that shows Locke, his wife, Mona, and their three children carrying their own luggage after landing at Beijing Capital International Airport; Chinese who saw them then spread the word that the family had gotten into an anonymous minivan because a formal sedan that had been sent to pick them up was too small.
''To most Chinese people, the scene was so unusual it almost defied belief,'' Chen Weihua, an editor at China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, wrote in an article on Wednesday.
Cheng Li, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese elite politics, said in an email: ''Ambassador Locke's photo contrasts sharply with the image of the Chinese officials who often live in a secret, insulated, very privileged fashion. This may explain why some Chinese leaders tend to be out of touch with the real life of the ordinary Chinese people - members of the urban middle class, not to mention the farmers and migrant workers.''
Chinese fed up with self-indulgent behaviour by officials often post photographs on the internet of bureaucrats being chauffeured around in black Audis, buying Louis Vuitton handbags for wives or mistresses and playing golf or strolling on beaches.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digi ... z1VQcTjSm1
The coffee revelation
The coffee revelation
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: The coffee revelation
Maybe he was buying tea and not coffee, maybe some Zen or China Green Trip. Silly reporters forget the important facts!