Ethnic Chinese tipped as US energy chief

Source: China Daily | 12-12-2008 13:56

Special Report:   U.S.Presidential Election 2008

Steven Chu

Secretary of Labor Elaine Lan Chao will go out with the Bush administration next month - but there is likely to be another ethnic Chinese in the US Cabinet.

US president-elect Barack Obama is widely expected to name Physics Nobel winner Steven Chu his energy secretary. If nominated, he would become the second Chinese American in a US administration.

Chu is now the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a government research institute in California. During his tenure, the lab has focused research on alternative energy, energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Chu and other officials to be chosen in the energy and environment sectors will form the backbone of a team that will carry out Obama's ambitious environmental agenda. And the Democrat's plan is likely to see major investments in alternative energy development.

Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics, is the son of Chinese scholars who migrated to the US in the early 1940s from Taicang in Jiangsu province.

Chu, better known in China as Zhu Diwen, has visited China several times to deliver lectures in universities. He has also visited his forefathers' hometown, where a primary school is named after him.

The choice of Chu as energy secretary shows Obama's commitment to faster development of renewable energy, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and strengthening Sino-US energy cooperation, officials and experts both in China and the US said Thursday.