The CPC officially modified the transliteration of the surname of the U.S. official to allow his entry into the country.
The Chinese also gave Trump two names. State media of the regime call him telangpu, but he is also often known as chuanpu, a slightly different transliteration. This is a usual practice in China for Western figures as the translation of names into Chinese is not always standardized, although this linguistic wheel often responds to other interests.
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.
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.
Rubio is a staunch opponent of communism and was the author of laws in Congress that severely sanctioned China for its genocide against the Uyghur minority, in addition to having criticized the CCP's repression against Hong Kong dissent.
The former congressman describes the Asian giant as an unprecedented adversary and the main threat to the Western world. Last year, Rubio touched on the topic of Taiwan, asserting that the Trump administration would not negotiate the future of autonomous democracy on the Island to secure a trade deal with China.
