Ma Shiyun was elected as the first Asian Lieutenant Governor of California. His grandfather was a lieutenant general in the Army of the Republic of China.

midterm elections democratic partyCalifornia Finance Minister Fiona Ma was elected and became deputy governor.Asian First person. He was born in New York and his ancestral home is Yunnan, China. His grandfather Ma Hao servedRepublic of China Army lieutenant general and first mayor of Kunming.

According to California’s electoral system, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected separately by the voters, and are not required to belong to the same political party. Ma Xiyun defeated Republican opponent Gloria Romero in the November 3 election and is scheduled to take over as lieutenant governor in January next year.

Ma Shiyun, 60, was born and raised in the United States and her family is from Yunnan, China. According to his campaign website, his grandfather Ma Dan graduated from the Yunnan Army Lecture Hall, participated in the war to defend the country, and became the first mayor of Kunming in 1928. During the Anti-Japanese War, Ma Gao served in military posts in Yunnan. In 1944, he was promoted to deputy commander of the Yunnan Military Region and lieutenant general of the Army of the Republic of China.

Ma Shan’s two brothers also served in the army, and the family is known as “One Family and Three Generals”. A 1948 officer personnel file of the Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China preserved by the National History Museum of Taiwan records that Ma Hao served as deputy commander of the Yunnan Military District, lieutenant general, and other positions. Ma Chan moved to Hong Kong in 1949 and died in 1963.

In an exclusive interview with LA Style Magazine in the United States in 2021, Ma Shiyun said that she had never met her grandfather, and later learned that her grandfather served as the mayor of Kunming. In 2023, she went back to Kunming with her father and visited the Ma Family Courtyard, a historic building left by her family.

Ma Shiyun’s parents were both born in China and later immigrated to the United States. His father, Ma Ronglin, left China at the age of 13 to study in Canada, the United Kingdom and other places on scholarship, and then worked in engineering and business management in the United States. His mother worked as an art teacher at a public high school in Long Island, New York for nearly 20 years.

Ma Shiyun once remembered that her parents were busy with work. When she was a child, she lived in New York’s Chinatown on weekdays and was taken care of by her elders. She met her parents only on weekends. His father valued education and financial management and taught him accounting since his childhood, which also influenced his later choice of accounting.

Ma Shiyun received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Rochester Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in taxation from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and a master’s degree in business administration from Pepperdine University. He obtained his California accounting license in 1992 and worked at a large accounting firm before starting his own business.

She started out in local politics in San Francisco and was elected to the San Francisco City Council in 2002. She entered the California House of Representatives in 2006 and served as interim Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2010, becoming the first Asian woman to hold the position. He was elected California Treasurer in 2018 and will be re-elected in 2022.