Chinese president Xi Jinping is keeping up with his promises he made back in 2023 in San Francisco of inviting 50,000 American students to visit China in five years. Several groups of American high school and college students from various U.S. states, including Washington, have been in China in recent months.
As I wrote about this topic back in February, such trips were often funded by the Chinese government. The group from Muscatine High School of Iowa, for instance, was fully funded by China. The initial group of students to visit China for free was in fact from Lincoln High School of Tacoma following Xi’s visit of the school in 2015.
According to Global Times, among the recent groups of young Americans visiting China were 90 students and faculty from American universities, including Duke, Columbia, Brigham Young, and the University of Michigan. They traveled to Jiangsu Province in August to attend the “Collegiate Immersion Bootcamp for US-Based Institutions.” The bootcamp was organized by the Foreign Affairs Office of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Government and Duke Kunshan University. It was not clear if any college of Washington state was represented.
There was also a group of 48 students and teachers from Niles Township High School District 219 of Illinois in China in July on a youth cultural exchange tour. According to Chicago Tribune, the Chinese government agencies, including the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and the Chinese Tourism Group, paid the entire cost of their trip.
A more prominent group was named the Shared Journey of Friendship US Youth Exchange Delegation. It consisted of around 190 teachers and students from 14 schools of seven U.S. states, and Lincoln High School was among them. The group was in China in July, visiting Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, and interacting with local Chinese students.
The highlight of these American student tours seemed to have arrived on Sept 25 in Beijing, as China Daily reported, when China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan attended a Sino-American friendship event. She interacted with the youth delegation from the state of Washington and expressed the hope that the young Washingtonians could convey the friendly sentiments of the Chinese people and contribute to friendship between the two peoples.
China Daily mentioned that over 100 teachers and students from more than 10 high schools in Washington state had been invited as part of President Xi Jinping’s initiative of having 50,000 American students visit China. Lincoln High’s assistant principal Logic Seven Allah-Amen was even quoted as fondly recalling the hosting Xi’s visit in 2015 expressing his willingness to actively contribute to the promotion of mutual understanding between China and the U.S.
So, another year, another summer, another wave of American students visiting China invited by Xi Jinping and often paid for by the Chinese government. As the Chicago Tribune mentioned in its story on Illinois students visiting China that a Department of State official had said that it had no role in these American students’ trips to China and that the Department’s travel advisory for Mainland China remained at Level 3: Reconsider travel due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, etc. The warning obviously didn’t apply to American students in China as invited guests.
What is worth considering by Americans, and Washingtonians in particular, is that with Xi Jinping’s initiative, the Chinese government is actively working to win, and winning, hearts and minds of young Americans. As a Foreign Affairs piece rightly indicated in its title, “China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy Is Working,” and in the article that America has failed to rise to the challenge.
Really? Student exchanges were common, even in the old Soviet Union dates. In olden times they were sponsored and paid for by theUS government and in reverse by the foreign government. hese were diplomatic initiatives and part of foreign policy. Ascribe whatever motivations you want but student exchanges whether sponsored by government, school systems, NGOs have proven their worth for 3/4 of a century. Ms Liu is unclear to me in the point/s she is trying to make.
Cultural exchanges are diplomatic initiatives that have a storied history including Louis Armstrong’s trips tomGhana and the Congo that gave the US a significant leg up in the battle for hearts and minds with the Soviet Union when we were competing to ally newly independent African nations.
My late former Father-in-law Robert Shaw took his 16 voice professional chorale to the Soviet Union in the 50s on a State Department tour with an unusual program for a Communist State that went by the Marxist principle that religion was, as Marx wrote: the opiod for the people (often translated as “masses”). The Shaw Chorale had multiple performances of the Bach B Minor Mass in numerous cities in the Soviet Union.
Thank you for your comments, Mr. Herford. But I am sorry if you didn’t see the point, which was so obvious. As you mentioned yourself, the word is “exchanges” or lack of. These visits to China by American students were one-way, invited by Xi Jinping and often funded by the Chinese government. Where are Chinese students visiting the U.S. invited by say Joe Biden and funded by the American government, or the State Department? If you know, show us.
Thank. you for the clarification. I have been the beneficiary of a variety of State Department funded USAID teaching trips in many parts of the world working with local journalists who suffer the kind of restrictions you know well from your China experience. Those US funded programs have all evaporated with the cuts imposed by mostly Republican Congresses as you may also know. Bilateral and multilateral aid comprises more than 95% of “Foreign Aid”. What is left over is under 2% and yet even that shrinks. The real answer to your plea is that pay-as-you-go via ngos and private sources, including students who pay for themselves, is all that is left in this richest country in the world.