U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was able to enter China to attend a summit with President Donald Trump, despite being under sanctions imposed by Beijing. The key was a linguistic and diplomatic adjustment: China changed the transliteration of his name in official documents for the visit.
According to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher in Beijing, China used a 'trick' when writing Rubio's surname with a different Chinese character, transcribing the first syllable of his surname as 'Lu' instead of the previous transliteration. With the new name 'Marco Lu,' Beijing could welcome the secretary without lifting sanctions that might be reimposed on another occasion.
The change in transliteration of Rubio's name was made by the Chinese government and state-run media shortly before he took office as Secretary of State in January 2025. By March, China's Foreign Ministry had signaled a readiness to ease sanctions against Rubio if he came to Beijing with President Trump.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian stated on March 16 that the sanctions targeted 'Mr. Rubio's statements and actions related to China during his tenure as a U.S. senator.'
Why was Rubio sanctioned by China?
The sanctions stem from Rubio's time as a senator from Florida, from 2019 until his nomination to the Trump administration. The Chinese government sanctioned him twice in 2020 for speaking out against Beijing's crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British colony demanding greater autonomy from Chinese control.
As a Cuban American and a strong critic of communism, Rubio also condemned allegations that China abuses the minority Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwestern China. As a senator, he was a leading advocate of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a congressional bill passed in 2021 requiring companies to prove that goods imported from Xinjiang were not produced with forced labor.
'Many companies have taken steps to clean up their supply chains,' Rubio said. 'For those who have not, they will no longer be able to continue making Americans – frankly, all of us – unwitting accomplices to atrocities, to genocide.'
