When Chinese-American physicist Steven Chu was picked by US President Barack Obama as his energy secretary last December, the appointment of the Nobel Prize winner was widely hailed, not least in China, the country his parents left in the 1940s to settle down in St Louis, where he was born.
Similarly, two months later, when Mr Obama picked former Washington State governor Gary Locke, another Chinese-American, as commerce secretary, the choice was welcomed in both the US and China. Again, he was seen as someone who could improve relations between the two countries.
Mr Locke, whose grandfather left China a century ago, built close trade relations with Beijing as governor and later as a lawyer. In 2006, he helped organise President Hu Jintao's visit to Seattle and, last August, he was selected as one of those to carry the Olympic torch in Sichuan province before it reached Beijing.
The appointments of Dr Chu and Mr Locke reflect both a dramatic rise in Asian American political participation and the desire of the Obama administration to reach out to China, using the two men as a bridge.
Last week, both men were in China seeking to strengthen Sino-US ties, especially in the areas of climate change and energy.
'We are both cabinet officials in President Obama's administration and we are both Chinese Americans as well,' Xinhua, the official press agency, quoted Dr Chu as saying in an interview. 'Our roots are in China.'
The two officials were warmly welcomed everywhere they went, with the media pointing out that they were both ethnic Chinese. The two had a 50-minute meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao - an honour not usually accorded to ministerial-level visitors. Their visit followed that of other senior American officials to China, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.