When US President Barack Obama formally named Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as his choice as America's next ambassador to China on Wednesday, he was giving the former governor of Washington state a chance to add another first to his CV.
The first state governor of Asian descent in US history and the first Chinese-American to represent the US Department of Commerce in the cabinet looks set to become the country's first ethnic Chinese envoy to the land of his father's birth when Jon Huntsman steps down at the end of next month.
Locke may not have shown Huntsman's enthusiasm for speaking Putonghua in public, but he is married to Sun Yat-sen's great-granddaughter. His wife's grandmother was married to Sun Ke, Sun Yat-sen's only son.
However, Locke has not been picked for the colour of his skin and his marital guanxi alone. The 61-year-old has a strong background in China relations in his own right and one that few US-based politicians could hope to rival. Who else could lay claim to having the ear of the mainland's top leadership?
The Seattle-born son of immigrants - his father was born in Taishan, Guangdong, his mother came from Hong Kong - was instrumental in making his hometown the first port of call on President Hu Jintao's inaugural state visit to the US in 2006. Hu's visit had originally been planned for 2004, when Locke was still governor, but was postponed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
Locke first met Hu in San Francisco in 2002, when Hu was vice-president. They met again to talk for more than an hour on the sidelines of the Communist Party Congress while Locke was heading a trade delegation to Beijing in 2004 - defying diplomats' advice that talks with state leaders were out of the question.
