Iowa’s governor, Terry Branstad, hopes to be America’s next ambassador to China, and if he is confirmed as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s envoy in Beijing, his new home there may be just three hours’ drive from a transplanted patch of his home state. Plans are afoot to build a “model farm” in northern China inspired by one in Iowa that Xi Jinping visited in early 2012, before he became China’s president. The idea has highlighted Mr. Xi’s peculiarly long relationship with the Midwestern state and with Mr. Branstad, who was Iowa’s governor from 1983 to 1999 and then returned to office in 2011. Read more
