Guest Opinion: Forging new bridges of understanding between U.S., China

The proposal by Chinese President Xi Jinping to host 50,000 American students over 5 years is truly an exciting gesture.

Of course, many details about international travel, living costs, host organizations, and the mechanisms by which U.S. students can apply must be worked out. As they say, the devil is in the details.

Clearly, President Xi’s suggestion reflects a growing recognition inside the Chinese government, business and academic circles that our two countries need to work more closely together to ensure that the younger generations develop a deeper and more profound understanding of each other’s cultures, history, society, etc.

The capacity of our two countries to work together to address the global challenges facing the world depends quite heavily on our ability to collaborate in an effective, efficient manner.

While the number of Chinese students in the United States is estimated to be around 290,000, the number of U.S. students in China is said to be somewhere between 400 and 700.

Educational exchanges are one of the key elements of people-to-people diplomacy. Accordingly, we must find ways to fix this imbalance, which will require innovative ideas about how to re-energize U.S. students’ interest in going to China — either on a short-term or longer-term basis.

China has around 3,000 universities located all over the country. These universities represent a variety of different host locations that can appeal to diverse types of students. Plainly, it is hoped that President Xi’s proposal will be translated into a series of proactive steps at the provincial and municipal levels that will open up many doors for potential study-abroad opportunities for U.S. students. Ideally, these various host universities and related organizations will be able to cover the local living, food and travel costs for U.S. students as part of President Xi’s generous proposal.

Even more importantly, there is a need to recognize that the goal of hosting 50,000 U.S. students can only be met if we seek out a new collection of students, not only those who traditionally have been interested in studying the Chinese language or Chinese history and culture.

There is an entirely new cohort of students that has emerged — undergraduate and graduate — interested in global affairs and the role China is playing at the international level. They want to know more about Chinese policies and strategies dealing with global climate change and the environment, public health, food security, water management, and other issues that are closely tied to China’s potential international impact. We need to identify these students to help fortify the ranks of those who might want to participate in this uniquely important initiative.

Based on my experience as the former executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in Jiangsu, a China-U.S. joint venture university, it is vital to get young U.S. and Chinese students in the same learning environment to exchange ideas and perspectives so that one day, if and when they enter their professional careers and possibly encounter one another, they will have a greater ability to cooperate, negotiate, and compromise without the kinds of difficulties we are seeing today in many aspects of China-U.S. relations.

In addition, to make this program a success, we must be able to establish a broad spectrum of “twinning” arrangements involving a Chinese host working with an American coordinator or organizer. These twinning possibilities can include university partnerships as well as partnerships developed out of relationships between sister cities and sister states, NGOs, and even businesses.

The programs can be like a traditional study abroad, but also can and should involve novel arrangements such as internships and field research projects. Not everyone needs to sit in a classroom to secure the cross-cultural benefits of collaborating with their peers from China or the United States.

The key point is that President Xi’s proposal is an important call for action. It sets the tone and the stage for both countries to mobilize the appropriate levels of financial resources, organizational support, and people to make something tangible and meaningful happen.

Back during the administration of former President Obama, there existed the “100,000 Strong” initiative that was designed to beef up the number of U.S. students studying in China. Unfortunately, while well-intentioned, that effort did not yield anywhere near the results hoped for. The reason is simple: both sides never formulated appropriate organizational mechanisms to facilitate the full implementation of the core idea.

This time, I believe we have learned from the past and both countries can and will do better. I strongly believe that President Xi’s announcement represents a strategic opportunity for people-to-people diplomacy to play a strategic role in forging better relations between the United States and China; ideally, it will set in place a new level of momentum for improving mutual understanding in the post-Covid era.

It is essential that both countries do not waste this unique opportunity in time. We must act and we must act with great alacrity, putting our best innovative ideas to work to attract a new generation of students on both sides of the Pacific to learn more about one another and to build bridges of understanding that can withstand whatever challenges they may confront in the future.

This commentary was originally released by Xinhua on January 12, 2024.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Xinhua News Agency.