President Xi Jinping, during his meeting with US President Joe Biden in San Francisco in 2023, announced that China would invite 50,000 young Americans on exchange or study programs over the next five years. Since its inception, the initiative has hosted about 14,000 Americans, according to the Chinese embassy in Washington.

David J. Firestein, inaugural president and CEO of the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, said that the initiative, which promotes exchanges on a mass scale, is both very valuable and essential, because it enables young people from the US to spend time with their peers and families in China and directly engage with the Chinese culture, language and people.

"And likewise, the United States should be doing similar things," he added. Firestein proposed that the US and China redouble their efforts to create more avenues for exchanges, because that would make a real difference in the lives of young people and in the way they view people from the other country. "The more that people go back and forth, the more we tend to humanize the other side, rather than demonize the other side," he said. "We've got to have much less demonization in this relationship and much more humanization."

During an event held on Dec 6 at the Chinese embassy to promote youth exchanges, Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng said the initiative has provided an effective platform that brings young people from both countries closer. It has opened up an important window for better understanding China and ushered in a new chapter of friendship between the people of China and the US, Xie said.

In a commencement speech on June 14, 2023 at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, which is based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to China said that people-to-people ties were the "essential ballast" in the bilateral relationship, and Washington is "working hard" to increase the number of US students studying in China, in addition to providing more visas to Chinese students.

Source: China Daily

Youth exchanges seen as vital to future of China-US relations - World - Chinadaily.com.cn