Gary Locke may be the top commerce official in America, but he's a rock star in China.

Locke was a hit with locals on a recent visit to China.

This week, the Chinese-American politician who is now U.S. Commerce Secretary, visited cities in the manufacturing heartland of China ahead of his high-level trade talks in Hangzhou.

Locke is joined by U.S. officials such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who are here meeting with top Chinese officials including Vice Premier Wang Qishan.

I managed to catch up with Locke in Guangzhou, the capital of the province of Guangdong, where his grandfather was born. You would have thought Locke was a celebrity. During his tour of a Sam's Club superstore and a local university, Locke was mobbed by fans, press, and curious on-lookers all eager to catch a glimpse of their hometown hero.

Locke's grandfather lived in a village in this part of China before leaving for the United States in the hope of a better life. Grandfather Locke emigrated to Washington state where he took a job as a servant for a local family who lived one mile away from the Governor's Mansion. I wonder if Grandfather Locke ever dreamed his grandson would be serving people as well - as governor and now commerce secretary.

Locke told me his personal story is "thoroughly American" but that his Chinese heritage comes in handy in trade negotiations here. "I bring, perhaps, a greater understanding of the culture and history of the Chinese people," he said during our exclusive interview.

These days, the U.S. and China could use a little more understanding. Because of the economic crisis, the bond between the two trading partners has been stretched.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration slapped tariffs on Chinese tires sold in the U.S. Soon after, the Chinese threatened to cut off imports of American poultry products and auto parts.

Locke played down fears of a coming trade war. "When you look at the relationship of say brothers and sisters, the relationship when you are small and young might be very simplistic. But as the families get older they get into more complicated issues," he explained. "But it is the sign of a healthy relationship."

Locke insists the trade disputes won't distract the two nations from cooperating on larger issues such as climate change or regional security. However, even before Secretary Locke has left China, Beijing has informed Washington it is launching a trade investigation that could lead to new import duties on vehicles made by Detroit's struggling Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), according to a U.S. auto industry official.

Hopefully, Locke's experience bridging two cultures will help bridge any economic split.

DALIAN, China - At one of the first conferences of the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” on Thursday, a large white elephant slowly materialized in the center of the room.

The financial crisis still looms large in the minds of participants, as evidenced by sessions like the morning conference on “Management Lessons from the Great Recession.” A word that appeared time and again at that talk: Transparency.

The CEOs on stage discussed how lack of transparency in financial markets helped lead to collapse. Maurice Levy, CEO and chairman of France’s Publicis Group, said in today’s media environment “every wrongdoing will be known,” making transparency crucial. Added Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent: “In every industry, you have to increase transparency in every aspect of business.” 

Every time “transparency” was mentioned, however, a white elephant grew from a hint of a shadow into a full-blown pachyderm in the crowded conference hall. Finally the moderator, Helmutt Schutte, gently posed a question to the panel’s sole Chinese participant: How about transparency in China?

“We have too much transparency,” said Sun Hong, chairman of the Dalian Port Company, explaining the strength of the unions and importance in shared decision-making; state-owned companies have further oversight from Communist Party secretaries. He gave a detailed response to a difficult question – and yet, to me, the elephant remained in the room.

Concerns about the transparency in China remain high, especially in light of the recent arrests of Rio Tinto employees on charges of stealing state secrets. Yet the “Summer Davos” conference itself is a testament to the importance of China on the global economic stage. As one CEO said, the recession has accelerated the rise of China.

If transparency is a key lesson from the Great Recession, and if China is key player for the world economic rebound, then what will be the outcome when these divergent forces meet? I would have asked the white elephant, but he was in a rush: Too many meetings to attend.

HONG KONG, China - Confused by the rules and regulations of China's stock markets? You are not alone.

Probably one of the most common questions I am asked as Asia Business Editor is how to invest in China, especially its stock markets. The markets are up more than 80 percent this year. With the world economy in turmoil, many investors see China as a bright spot on an otherwise dark landscape. They want in.

Market watchers debate if China's stock markets are headed into bubble territory and warn that trading is still a new phenomenon in the country. Information is scarce, spotty, and often only in Chinese. Market swings are extremely volatile.

But with that warning in mind, here is a little guide to help the intrepid better understand China's stock investing ABC's.

A-shares: Stocks of Chinese companies listed in mainland China - in Shenzhen and Shanghai. These shares are sold in Chinese yuan, largely to local investors. Foreign individual investors cannot buy A-shares directly. International institutions can, but with limits. "China has a very restrictive policy in terms of allowing foreign investing into the local stock market," explains Peter Alexander of Shanghai-based Z-Ben Advisors. "They don't actually need foreign investors because there is enormous amount of demand locally." Alexander suggests going through a bank or a mutual fund.

B-shares: B-shares are also stocks of Chinese companies listed in Shenzhen and Shanghai. These stocks were originally meant for foreign investors and are sold in U.S. and Hong Kong dollars. The B-share market never really took off in the way the Chinese government intended. Chinese companies looking for foreign funds often choose instead to list on the Hong Kong stock market. The government has recently loosened the rules to allow more domestic investors to buy B-shares though the number of companies is pretty small.

H-shares: If anyone wants to trade in Chinese stocks directly, Alexander says Hong Kong is the place to do it. "Over the past decade, a number of Chinese companies have begun to list on the Hong Kong market," he told me. "Banks, petroleum companies, every type of industry, big companies, very liquid." These shares trade in Hong Kong dollars and are governed by international standards, so buying and selling H-shares is more transparent. Information on these listed companies, Alexander says, is easier to find.

ADRs: American Depositary Receipts. These are shares of non-U.S. – in this case Chinese - companies listed in New York. Investors can buy big Chinese names such as China Mobile or PetroChina but the selection is limited.

Investing in Chinese companies is a bit of a letters game - and, certainly, a risky one.

It seems one of the biggest challenges in covering the Stern Hu/Rio Tinto case is trying to explain how the Chinese legal system works, or doesn’t work. For a start everything is in Chinese, which may seem pretty obvious, but it makes it pretty tricky; there are translation issues, which starts to get really tough when you include legal terms, as well.

China says the Rio Tinto case will not affect the development of ties with Australia.

On Wednesday came word that the “Rio Four” - as they’ve being called by some in Australia - had been “arrested.” This was the cause for a great deal of confusion in our newsroom – hadn’t they already been arrested? Didn’t that already happen when police swooped in last month? How can someone be arrested by police without being arrested?

And this is perhaps why the Stern Hu case is causing such nervousness among so many of my highly-paid, still-employed, executive friends in Beijing. A number of lawyers who have nothing to do with the Rio case explained to me how it works. Unlike other countries such as the U.S., Britain and Australia, in China police have the power to detain those suspected of being up to no good. They can do that for 37 days. No arrest, no charges, nothing.

So you sit in a jail for 37 days, 888 hours, wondering what it is you’ve done (or if you know, wondering how they found out and what evidence they have). By day 38, police must decide to either formally arrest you or let you go. In the Rio case, they went ahead with the arrests. The police have another two months to gather evidence, can apply for an extension of a month, and then if they need to, another two months and another two months. That’s a total of seven months. All the time you are in a jail, wondering what is going on.

If there is good news here for Mr. Hu and the three others it is that they’ve been arrested on charges of illegally obtaining commercial secrets, not state secrets. Lawyers told me those are likely to be the charges they’ll face in court if it goes that far.

There’s always a slim chance that illegally obtaining state secrets could get back into the mix (legally it’s possible and politically anything is possible, as well.) But there does seem to be a sniff of maybe a deal in the works. China is backing away from the most serious allegations, the heat is coming out of the relationship a little. China’s Deputy Commerce Minister, Fu Ziying, said Wednesday he believed “this case should not, and will not, affect the stable development of the economic and trade bilateral ties between China and Australia."

And a source of mine in Canberra tells me a Chinese embassy car has been parked in front of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for most of the early afternoon.

Coincidence? Maybe, but four Rio employees sitting in a Shanghai prison will no doubt be hoping it’s not.

BEIJING, China - There's something strange these days over Beijing, something many of us here have not seen for a very long time. As I look up, there's this strange blue-looking color - at first I thought the officials may have been dying the pollution blue, or maybe I had lived here so long that I had forgotten what a sky should looked like.

I've lived in Beijing for a little less than three years, but one of our local office workers made the remark that she had never seen such beautiful, white fluffy clouds, so I knew something had changed. Don't get me wrong, this place is still polluted, but since the Beijing Olympics it seems the number of adversely polluted days is about the same as the number of really good days we had last year, in other words, not a lot.

And it might just be making the people who live here a little happier, as well. In the parks, on the streets, many Beijingers seem to be smiling a little more, perhaps a bit more relaxed.

So how did this happen? The government has been trying to clean up this city for years - building subway lines, converting buses and taxis to natural gas, and stopping cars from driving one day a week (a watered-down continuation of the tough traffic controls in place during the Olympics). Some major polluters, too, have been closed down and relocated - notably Beijing Capital Iron and Steel, the biggest single contributor to the city's air pollution problem. Now that the Olympics are over there's been a massive drop in construction, and so dust particles have been reduced. But also playing its part is the global economic slump; many of the factories which were meant to close temporarily for the Olympics have never re-opened.

An old joke was never check the stock market or government statistics to know the state of China's economy, just look to the sky. When those gray skies are blue, the economists would say, start to worry. Well, the sky has been blue a lot this year, but in a bizarre coincidence, as economic growth here started to head toward 8 percent, we seem to be getting more polluted days. I'll let you know what happens of the GDP numbers hit double digits.

To get by in China, it’s all about relationships. In business there may be rules and regulations, but long-time China hands will tell you it can be a complicated and often frustrating experience. So to get anything done, you need to find the right person – either in government or the private sector – and you need that person to like you.

So, a little wining and dining, spending some time getting to know each other, doesn’t seem unreasonable.  How about entertaining a senior member of the Chinese team which negotiates the price of iron at a luxury box during the Olympics, as BHP did last year? It’s not illegal, but a grey area of the law, says Xianfang Ren, a senior analyst with Global Insight.

“The line between entertainment, public relations, and government relations and bribery, commercial bribery it’s kind of blurred here in China,” he said. “Especially in a country that good government relationships are important in getting deals and contracts.”

But China is accusing the mining giant Rio Tinto, and its Chinese born Australian national executive Stern Hu, of paying bribes for crucial information. At the time, Rio Tinto was involved in tense and often acrimonious negotiations over the annual price of iron ore. They are accused of stealing state secrets.

“What’s happened here, the stakes have gotten so high that they’ve trotted out their heavy artillery: ‘You’ve taken state secrets’. It’s a very vague charge and it can mean anything the party wants,” says Derek Scissors, a research fellow for Asia Economic Policy at The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.

Many within China’s iron and steel industry will say privately it is fraught with corruption. Hu is the only foreigner being detained, the rest – a small but unconfirmed number – are Chinese. The investigation may be an indication that Beijing is moving to clean up the industry, analysts say.

But with one foreign national behind bars, the Australian Prime Minister warned the world is watching. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke told CNN: “We need assurances and confidences that people working for multinational companies, international companies, American companies will be treated fairly.”

Derek Scissors from Heritage warns the situation can suddenly change, especially during some high-level iron ore negotiations where billions of dollars are at stake.

“The international message they’re sending is, if things get ugly enough and important enough we’re going to break the rules. We’ll follow our rules not international rules; we’re not going to respect the rights of multinational executives’,” Scissors says.

Where does this all leave the expatriate businessman or woman living in China? Many Western companies spend big on commercial research for strategic planning and marketing in China. And every business person on the ground here knows the cultural importance of guanxi – or “developing good long-term relationships” – with government officials and local Chinese business partners. Has the line of acceptable behavior in China been redrawn?

Perhaps the best advice for foreign workers in China comes from Xianfang Ren from Global Insight, “I think it is always safe for them to stick to the higher standards, the stricter standards because some multinational companies, I understand they have much stricter standards overseas.”

In other words, don’t do in China what you wouldn’t do back home – even if it seems everyone else is doing it.

HONG KONG, China - It appears Lisa Johnson Mandell has struck a chord.

The number of reader responses to my original post has nearly matched the 100 paid participants to her recent workshop in Hong Kong on “How to Snare a Millionaire.”

The overwhelming response online – which makes for fascinating reading - has been akin to this from “Dee”: "I’d hate to be desperate enough to chain myself to a millionaire through marriage, in a hope of finding security other than one I could just as easily provide for myself."

But a few of the writers – and some of my male colleagues – have wondered about the reverse. "The recession has caused more men to lose their jobs than women," Mandell told me.  "I anticipate a lot more men looking for sugar mamas."

So, in the interest of fair play, here is her advice for finding a female white knight.  Men, she says, need to follow similar rules:

Be eye candy.  "Cougar is a popular term," she explains.  "Sometimes you know they have had their starter husband and they're tired of the guy on the same footing who wants the younger hotter woman.  They want somebody who is young and hot themselves." 

Be a good listener.  Apparently, women like to air their grievances.  "It's called 'baggage dumping'," she says.

Be her caretaker.  "He needs to be the one who can do things for her that she can't do herself," Lisa says.  "Those things are different for men and women."

Don't talk about money or children.  Don't discuss problems, period, she says.  Not until the sixth date - or the sixth month if you can wait.

Don't talk about ex-lovers.  "SUCH a no no," Lisa says.  Otherwise, she explains, you might be inadvertently sending the message that you are not yet over your previous (possibly plebian) honey.

Trying to snare a millionaire is a practical tactic to survive the recession, Lisa told me, for both men and women.  In addition, she believes the financial strategy could just save your marriage.  "Fifty percent of all marriages break up because of financial issues," she reasons.  "I see nothing wrong with starting a marriage without that particular hurdle.  I mean, you are starting out with better odds."

That is, unless the couple starts to bicker over how to spend those millions. As “Kennedy” writes: “Okay, well after the marriage, what are the do’s and don’t’s for keeping and/or maintaining the millionaire?”

That’s the million-dollar question for all couples.

HONG KONG, China – My colleague Ali Velshi likes to say that there are three ways to secure your financial future – by winning the lottery, marrying a millionaire, or managing your finances.  Managing your finances would appear to be most practical – unless, of course, you are a student of Ms. Lisa Johnson Mandell.

Lisa is an American dating guru.  She recently held a class in Hong Kong giving tips based on her book "How To Snare A Millionaire."  Snagging a sugar daddy is one of the best investment decisions you can make, she assured me.  She should know, she said, because she is married to one. She has had 50 marriage proposals – at least a dozen of the men came with seven-figure salaries, she told the room of aspiring spouses.

So how do you snare a millionaire?

This is the advice she gave to the 98 women and two men in attendance.  (Well, more like one man – the other fled the meeting during the first break. The poor guy didn’t know what he had signed up for.)

Do’s

Be the prize.  Lisa suggests women wear bright-colored dresses and walk around in “power” (read: stiletto) heels.  Men were programmed to hunt, she says.

Be approachable.  While walking, make eye contact and smile.  When interested in someone sitting across a room, think (but don't say aloud), “Oh, baby, oh, baby, you are the hottest thing I have ever seen, and we need each other bad.”  If you can do that (without snorting your drink with laughter), supposedly like a tractor beam, your target will wander over and ask, “Excuse me, did we just have a moment?”

Be at the right place, at the right time.  To Lisa, that means hang out where the rich boys are - cigar bars, full-service apartments, bar areas at expensive steak restaurants, posh hotel lobbies.

Don’t's

Don't talk too much.  On the first date, no mention of children, former lovers, emotional hang-ups, the state of your finances or his.  Don’t prattle on about the finer details of your overqualified resume – he might be inclined to hire you, rather than date you.

Don't be nervous.  Exude confidence.  If you don't know what to talk about - don't.  Ask him more questions about himself, Lisa says.  He'll think you understand him even more.

Don't jump in the sack.  She says most women would want to sleep with a millionaire right away.  So you need to play hard to get.

Lisa cannot quantify how successful her advice is and admits that it could sound mercenary.  However, she blames the stigma on society's double standards.

Men and women were wired, she believes, to behave this way.  “From the cave man days way back when, we had to mate with the men who were the most successful.”  Those would be the best hunters, she explained to me.  “These days that kind of success often equates to wealth.”  She says men, in turn, are engineered to pursue beautiful women because beauty indicates good health.

“Nobody looks askance at men because they want a beautiful wife,” she points out.  “But if you say, 'Go out and find a rich husband', it sounds awful.”

What she preaches, she says, is different from gold-digging.

Gold-diggers are women who “want to separate the man from his money,” Lisa explains.  “Someone who wants to marry a successful man is just normal.”

True, perhaps, though not all women define success in terms of dollars.

BEIJING, China — Not long ago, the U.S. government was talking tough with accusations of currency manipulation by China. But U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner struck a very different tone on his visit to Beijing this week.

At his speech at Peking University and with government officials, Geithner sought to reassure Beijing that the value of the dollar was safe – as are the $768 billion in U.S. treasuries Beijing owns.

The tough talk has evaporated with the spiraling credit crisis and the ballooning U.S. budget deficit of $2 trillion – nearly 13 percent of GDP. Geithner assured the Chinese that the U.S. would work to cut that deficit down to 3 percent of GDP once the economy stabilized and was on the path to recovery.

Geithner says the U.S. aims to rebalance the world economy with China exporting less and importing more – preferably from the U.S., to help reduce the massive trade surplus.

How these twin economic powers can escape this embrace, however, is another matter.

Chinese bloggers, economists and editorial writers are complaining that their government is financing U.S. hegemony and urges Beijing to stop bankrolling U.S. debt. But for the Chinese economy, there are few credible options for what to do with its massive foreign currency reserves.

Should it move that cash back to China it could trigger an appreciation of the value of the yuan. Chinese asset-buying across the globe would raise thorny political concerns. The U.S. credit market is still the best place to park its cash reserves.

For the U.S., the dance is difficult because if Chinese exports decline, so too does the cash China has to buy U.S. debt.

The bond between the two has been likened to two drunks trying to carry each other down the street, or that of a crack dealer and buyer. Regardless of metaphor, it’s a very complicated relationship – one in which the fate of the world economy hangs in the balance.