That the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, travels to Beijing alongside President Donald Trump despite being under Chinese sanctions has been made possible thanks to a "change" of name.
Rubio, who is visiting China for the first time, was sanctioned by the communist regime that governs the Asian country for defending human rights on two different occasions. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) found a diplomatic solution after Trump appointed the former Florida senator as his Secretary of State for his second term.
Before Rubio took office in January 2025, the Chinese government and official media began using a different Chinese character to represent the syllable "Lu" of his surname in Mandarin. In this way, the old spelling of the head of U.S. diplomacy's name remains banned from entry, but not the new transliteration.
A usual Chinese practice
When asked about the linguistic change last year, the spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Mao Ning, said that she "had not noticed it but would look into it" and that Rubio's name in English was more important.
