Tour of discovery reveals real China

Cultural exchange programs for young people from across the world to visit China have enabled them to experience the country's unique culture firsthand, and compare what they've learned of the country via Western sources with the reality as they see it on the ground.

The ongoing 2025 Discover China Program, organized by Beijing Foreign Studies University for the second year running, has promoted cultural exchanges and enhanced understanding of China for many of the young participants.

This year's tour was split into two parts, with the first part attended by 13 university students from the United States, and the second part attended by 37 students from European countries such as Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden.

In 2023, President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative of inviting 50,000 young people from the US to study or take part in exchanges in China in the following five years.

In May last year, President Xi pledged to increase the number of French students studying in China to over 10,000 and double the scale of exchanges with young people from Europe within the following three years.

Liu Limin, president of the China Education Association for International Exchange, was quoted as saying by the Center for China and Globalization that people-to-people exchanges are a crucial way for young people in China and the US to clear up misconceptions and deepen mutual understanding.

This will lay a solid public foundation for the future development of China-US relations, he said.