I confess to loving a good murder mystery - anything by Scott Turow or John Grisham. Maybe it's a holdover from my days as a criminal prosecutor in Seattle.
The growth model China has relied on for the last 30 years - one predicated on low-cost exports to the rest of the world and investment in resource intensive heavy manufacturing - is unlikely to serve it well in the next 30 years.
The human rights record within China seems to rise and fall over time, but it's very clear that in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and since then, there's been a greater intolerance of dissent and the human rights record of China has been going in the wrong direction.
The U.S. tries to provide immigrants who grow up here with a world-class education and imbue them with the can-do attitude that has long defined American innovation.
All the states are required, either by constitution or by statute, to have balanced budgets - they're not able to print money. So they have to focus on establishing priorities.
China is a country, still, of great contrast. While hundreds of millions of people are part of the middle class and yearn for things made in America - American brands, movies, music - there are other hundreds of millions of people throughout China who are living on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day.
The explosive growth in places like Shanghai has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into a thriving new middle class. What China has done is nothing short of an economic transformation, and the citizens of this country have every right to be proud.
I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.
I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the microblogging that takes place in China, and the smartphones and all the people that want to take pictures of myself and my family.
If the Chinese can't buy U.S. products, they'll buy them from European countries and then develop stronger economic ties with France and Germany and perhaps side more with those countries when international issues flare up.
On top of my to-do list in preparing for Beijing is 'On China' by Henry Kissinger, who has had firsthand experience with every top Chinese leader since Mao, so his insights are valuable and his access is perhaps unrivaled.
One of the last books I read was 'Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. It gives a really good behind-the-scenes look at the campaigns. I didn't ask the president how accurate it was. I wouldn't ask him that.
We need the private sector to succeed, because if the private sector succeeds, America succeeds. Because it's not the government that produces jobs, it's the private sector.
We want to promote people-to-people exchanges so that China and the United States can really join together, not just to solve the problems of China or the United States, but some of the big problems facing the entire world. From climate change to famine to even terrorism.
China's history is marked by thousands of years of world-changing innovations: from the compass and gunpowder to acupuncture and the printing press. No one should be surprised that China has re-emerged as an economic superpower.
The constant influx of new cultures, new ideas and new ways of looking at old problems is a big part of the reason why America has been the most dynamic economy in the world for well over a century.
My dad, of course, like a lot of Asian parents, wanted me to be an engineer or doctor and never could understand why I would want to be a lawyer. And then, when I first said I wanted to run for office, he thought that was absolutely insane.
