The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday easily approved Iowa Governor Terry Branstad to be the next US ambassador to China.
To be confirmed, Branstad needs to be approved by the full Senate, which hasn't yet scheduled a vote.
Branstad, 70, is the longest-serving governor in the United States. He has nurtured a close relationship with China and has visited the country multiple times.
He and President Xi Jinping first met when the Chinese leader, then an agriculture official in a county in Hebei Province, visited Iowa in 1985 during a sister-state exchange.
“Branstad is an old friend of China and [we] welcome him to play a bigger role in China-US exchanges,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang said in December last year, welcoming his visit to Beijing.
He served as the governor of Iowa in 1983-1999, and again since 2011. He was nominated by US President Donald Trump to be the next US ambassador to China in December 2016.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be US ambassador to China on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, US, May 2, 2017. /VCG Photo
During his confirmation hearing last week, Branstad said, if confirmed, he would work to "positively influence" the US-China relationship.
"As governor of Iowa, I saw first-hand the importance of a positive and healthy trade relationship between our two countries," Branstad said, adding that he hoped to work towards the goal of positively influencing the US-China relationship.
Calling the US-China relationship "multi-faceted," Branstad also noted that the two countries must work together on major security issues, including denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and cybersecurity.
(Source: Xinhua)
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