Students seen as vital for relationship

Visiting LA school, China ambassador urges more engagement on campuses

China's top envoy to the United States has encouraged students there to engage with their Chinese counterparts to play a role in strengthening a critically important bilateral relationship.

"How our two people, our two countries deal with each other, depends on you. You are the future," Ambassador Qin Gang told the students during a visit to a high school in Southern California on Friday.

"So I do hope, I do encourage you, to be more engaged with China, to learn the Chinese language and to find opportunities to interact with Chinese students."

In 2012, then Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping and US vice-president Joe Biden toured the school, called the International Studies Learning Center, in South Gate, in the Los Angeles area.

They watched a dragon dance performance and chatted with students and faculty. The school has been a sister school with Qingchengshan Middle School in Sichuan province since 2021, which was also jointly visited in 2011 by the two current presidents.

On Friday, the school hosted the Chinese delegation led by Qin, who stopped by during a multiday visit in California, where he is meeting with local officials as well as business, educational and cultural organizations.

The ambassador conveyed the Chinese president's best wishes to the school, which welcomed the Chinese delegation with a dragon dance performance. After listening to a group of students from the Mandarin class recite Chinese poems, Qin sat down for a chat.

The ambassador highlighted the dynamic role of academic exchanges in fostering Sino-US relations. The Chinese and US economies and societies are so intertwined that the well-being of the bilateral relationship impacts not only the two nations but also the entire world, he said.

He urged the students to continue to build relationships and share their views with their Chinese counterparts through sister-school programs.

"This is a very, very important relationship, so we must maintain it. We must advance it in the correct direction. We should communicate with each other, work with each other, to avoid misunderstanding, misperception and misjudgment," Qin said.

School principal Michael Santiago told China Daily that the school helps students understand that US and Chinese people are similar in many ways.

"Our students are learning at an early age, the language and the culture, so that when it comes time for them to enter the job force, after having gone to colleges, they may be able to get a job in China, which gives them way more opportunities to learn more cultures," he said.

The school opened in 2003, but its relationship with China wasn't developed until 2010, the principal said.

"The presidents came here because they wanted to see the Mandarin program. It was a new program at the time, but it was strong," Santiago said.

The school, which is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD, specializes in language and cultural education. More than 100 students are now learning Chinese at the school.

LAUSD's Local District East Superintendent Jose Huerta said he visited more than 50 schools in China in 2017.

"We were really inspired, so we brought a lot of what we saw here. We also invited some of the Chinese students, many, over 2,000 students, at different times, to visit our schools," Huerta said.

Also on Friday, the ambassador held a talk with the board of directors of the US-China Business Council in Los Angeles, a meeting chaired by the organization's president, Craig Allen, and attended by some of its member companies.

Qin noted that the two countries are each other's most important economic and trade partners.

"China has always been sincere in developing win-win trade relations with the US and has taken consistent policies and solid measures to do so. We welcome US companies' growth in China and wish them well, so they can share in the dividends of China's development," he said.