From US general to working for peace

In 2012, he also set up a Friendship Fund at the US Military Academy at West Point to send cadets to China for three weeks in the summer.

"I give $10,000 each year to send West Point cadets to China. They go to communities to teach preventive medicine to elementary schools. They came back totally impressed. They said that the children are so beautiful. They love the children who say, 'You are my first American friend'. It builds an unmistakable bond," Loeffke said.

So far, about 40 West Point cadets have gone through the program. He is also working with a retired Chinese general to send West Point cadets to Shandong as volunteers.

Loeffke is also a guest lecturer at the Confucius Institute at Miami Dade College in Florida, where he engages American students to discuss why it's important for the US to build a strong relationship with China.

In the past few years, Loeffke has been working with the non-profit organization Food for the Poor to build simple houses for poor people in Latin America. So far, he built more than 30 houses in four villages.

General Loeffke said the village-building is another project of his to show how the United States and China work together to bring the needy some help. "I want to build a ring of China, a string of homes around the Caribbean Sea," he said.

A Chinese student participated in his program and raised money in Beijing to buy fishing boats equipped with GPS for people in need. He hopes that more Chinese will take part in the program.

"My dream is a simple one – spend money around the world to help others. My dream is to have China and the United States work together for the good of the world. We have to get out of this habit of just thinking of one country. We have to think of the world as a whole," Loeffke said.

The general said many people have asked him about current US-China relations. "There is no tension when it's people to people. It's the government that seems to make it bad," he said.

He firmly believes that the problems of the world are really problems of relationship.

"If we worry about the relationship one-on-one and one at a time, the world will get fixed. What we need to do is to continue the relationship," he said.