Several U.S media reported that\u00a0U.S President-elect Joe Biden is considering Pete Buttigieg as his pick for Ambassador to China didn\u2019t take long to cross the Pacific. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story, which claims that \u201cBiden is considering a high-profile ambassadorship\u201d for \u201cMayor Pete\u201d and is weighing up the possibility of \u201csending him to China,\u201d made it onto Chinese social media around half an hour after\u00a0Axios<\/em>\u00a0published, sparking some interesting reactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the report cautioned that, \u201cChina isn\u2019t the only foreign post where Buttigieg, a polyglot, could end up,\u201d a number of news outlets have translated the story and pushed it out on Chinese social media platforms. One of the first to do so on microblogging site Weibo was\u00a0Phoenix New Media<\/em>, who accompanied their post with an image of Buttigieg and husband Chasten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The post\u2019s text was quick to highlight that Buttigieg, who became the first openly gay candidate to launch a major US presidential campaign in 2019, came out publicly in 2015 and married Chasten in 2018. That unfortunately led to some homophobic comments under the story, with one of the most upvoted responses expressing \u201cconcern\u201d that if Mayor Pete were to take the post, he would push the issue of LGBTQ+ rights in China. \u201cGood,\u201d read one retort to that comment. \u201cSame-sex equality is imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While some users expressed concern that making Buttigieg Ambassador would help the cause of those who argue that LGBTQ+ rights is merely a \u201cUS-backed initiative\u201d in China, others were cautiously upbeat about what such a high-profile move could mean: \u201cHopefully this can help change the situation for gay people in China,\u201d wrote one user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In political terms, reactions were mixed, with some Chinese commenters worrying whether Buttigieg has the necessary experience to put US-China relations on a better footing than they have been in the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rapidly rising hashtag \u201cBiden is considering Buttigieg for Ambassador to China\u201d is a sign that the President-elect\u2019s choice for the post will be watched carefully. Xi Jinping\u2019s eventual congratulations to Biden on his election victory also\u00a0sparked a wave of speculation on Chinese social media<\/a>\u00a0over the future of relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wenweipo<\/em>, a Hong Kong-focused news outlet, also attracted some attention for their post of the Buttigieg story, though mostly because they used an image of Bernie Sanders instead of Mayor Pete. \u201cThis guy is only 38?\u201d wrote one user. \u201cLooks like the pressures of the job are huge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several U.S media reported that\u00a0U.S President-elect Joe Biden is considering Pete Buttigieg as his pick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[52,50,53,51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinanews.lk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}