What’s the man in sunglasses doing in the crowd?

       I am showing video clips to a seminar for Chinese government spokespeople.

       Clip 1: A mine collapsed trapping six miners in Utah. Jon Huntsman, Governor of Utah, escorted by coal mine owner Bob Murray immediately came to the mine to speak to a press conference.

       “What would you say to the journalists if you were Governor Huntsman?” I asked a spokesman.

       “I will investigate the mine owner and make him take responsibility for the accident,” the student said.

       But Governor Huntsman is smarter in the following segment. “Everything that’s can be done is being done. Thank Mr. Murray for working closely with the government and ensure that no stone be left unturned,” he says to the journalists.

       Clip 2: Ten days later, three rescue workers were killed by another collapse, leaving the six miners inside entombed. Governor Huntsman holds a press briefing.

       “What would you say to the press this time if you were Governor Huntsman?” I ask another student.

       “I am very sorry for the deaths of the miners. I apologize for the failure of rescue. Coal mine owner Murray will be arrested and be punished,” the student replies.

       But again Governor Huntsman is smarter in the following segment.

       “These men died as heroes. No better way to express their love for their fellow human beings as risk your life as we saw last night,” he tells the journalists.”

       In recent years, in my class training Chinese government spokespeople, Jon Huntsman has served as a role model in handling media events.

       But the handsome and human Huntsman was a media hero until a week ago when he was captured in a crowd of protest in downtown Beijing. The out-going U.S. ambassador is now in the heart of controversy when the video is now being circulated in internet。

       In a recent crowd of less than ten protesters surrounded by over 100 foreign journalists with thousands of curious onlookers, Huntsman in sunglasses and sporting a black leather jacket with a Stars and Stripes badge on the shoulder captured the attention of a Chinese bystander.

       “Aren’t you the American ambassador?” the Chinese said to him,. “Yes, he is the American ambassador,” the man continued, turning to address other bystanders.

       “What are you doing here?” the man asked.

       "I'm just here to look around," Huntsman responds,

       "You want to see China in chaos, don't you?" he asked.

       "No chaos yet,” he replied in Chinese.

       The Chinese man then turns around to everyone in the crowd and starts telling them that the US Ambassador is here, at which point Mr. Huntsman decided to walk away with his bodyguards.

       It is rare for an ambassador to attend an anti-government protest in a foreign country. Ambassador Huntsman’s appearance in the crowd of protest has stirred a big controversy in Chinese internet users. Is he sightseeing? Shopping? Inciting an anti-government riot? Or gathering intelligence?

       The U.S. Embassy told the press that Huntsman’s appearance was coincidental: He knew nothing of the protest appeal and happened to be walking through the area on a family outing.

       But most Chinese do not believe the U.S. ambassador carelessly came across the crowd of protest purely by coincidence while he was taking a stroll.

       “Normally, it will take three hours to take a walk from the American embassy to Wangfujing where the protesters gathered,” critic Liu Yang writes in the web. “ If the ambassador and his family was shopping and sightseeing while walking, it would take them at least five and six hours to make the trip.”

       Many Chinese posted questions on the U.S. embassy microblog about the “coincidence”. In an attempt to dispel the doubts of Chinese web users, the embassy microblog later posted a picture of Ambassador Huntsman riding a bicycle in Beijing. 

But again, the Chinese web users posted more questions: if he rode bicycle to Wangfujing , he was actually leading a big entourage of his family and his bodyguards riding bikes in a commercial street which only allows pedestrian.

       It is just hard for most Chinese to believe that the U.S. Ambassador to China would accidentally drop by the scene of protest. Many online comments say that he was there to stir up anti-government protest which was planned by his boss Hillary Clinton a few days earlier when she proclaimed US government would fund the overthrow of dictatorship regimes by a global internet freedom. Since U.S. diplomatic cables about its Beijing embassy activities were revealed by Wikileaks, many Chinese believe the State Department and its people in Beijing are the masterminds behind the political trouble in China.

       There are other interpretations about Huntsman’s appearance in the crowd. Some believe that he has built a reputation of being “pro-China,” and now he wants to win back the hearts and minds of the American voters if he runs for president next year. If you read American press, you can easily conclude that that China is not popular with most American voters. Mr. Huntsman intended make a dramatic image for a future campaign video.

       But a Utah newspaper interpreted Mr. Huntsman action as personal. The Deseret News reported that Mr. Huntsman had a history of protesting against China. Three years ago, when he was Utah's governor, he joined anti-China protests in support of Dalai Lama. In 1989, he protested outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. even though he was then a senior official in the American government.