Emily de La Bruyère & Nathan Picarsic
Introduction
In 2015, former U.S. ambassador to Iceland and senior aide to President George H.W. Bush, Sig Rogich founded the US-China Transpacific Foundation (UCTPF). A Nevada-based 501(c)(3) non-profit, UCTPF describes its mission as one to “promote the mutual interests of both the United States and China through political, cultural and educational exchanges.”2 Rogich is an influential political leader with experience at both the local and national levels in the United States.3 He worked in a senior capacity for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and John McCain, as well as the congressional, gubernatorial, and state political races of Senators Harry Reid and Dean Heller, Congressmen Joe Heck and Jon Porter, and Governors Paul Laxalt, Kenny Guinn, and Jim Gibbons. He served as the national finance chair for the Republican Governor’s Association. He is alternately described as a “kingmaker” of Nevada politics, “Republican czar,” and Las Vegas’s “most powerful political operative.”4
UCTPF has organized “track two” dialogues between key U.S. and Chinese players.5 UCTPF has also been involved in the organization of delegations of U.S. national and subnational government leaders to China, as well as exchanges between them and Chinese government entities in the United States.6 Rogich has a track record of commenting publicly on U.S.-China relations, including in local news outlets. In a 2019 interview with the Nevada Newsmakers political talk show, he suggested that the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong were sparked by paid “thugs” and that elements of the narrative about China’s detention camps in Xinjiang potentially misinterpret Beijing’s response to a terrorist threat.7
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