Obama loyalist with 'aggressive' image
Born into a well-known family belonging to the Washington elite, Susan Rice was educated at Stanford and Oxford and benefited from her family's close relationship with many notable figures, especially Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state.
She worked in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2000 and decided to join Barack Obama's campaign in 2007. She is an Obama loyalist and has a close working relationship with the US president.
Compared with her "aggressive" image on the international stage, Rice is known for her good sense of humor in private. "People have called me brusque, aggressive, abrasive," she once joked during a meeting. "Of course they don't say that to my face, because they know I'd kick their butts."
Her predecessor Thomas Donilon visited China many times. Rice, on the other hand, has never been to China and is famous for her criticism of China on the Syrian crisis. "As Susan Rice has been an important member in Obama's national security group, the continuity of Obama's policy toward China will not be influenced," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
China Daily
(China Daily 06/07/2013 page10)
