BEIJING: Despite his busy daily schedule, President Xi Jinping makes time for correspondence with young people in foreign countries as a means of making China better known in the rest of the world.
Over the past years, the Chinese leader has replied to dozens of letters from young foreigners who are keenly interested in studying the Chinese language and learning about Chinese culture.
In letters replying to teenagers in countries such as the United States, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Italy and Malta, Xi has encouraged these young envoys of friendship to boost the bonds between their own nations and China.
Such exchanges of letters show the president’s personal approach to diplomacy and China’s great openness to the world for more communication and exchanges, experts said.
The latest letter was a reply last month to students at a Hungarian-Chinese bilingual school in Budapest, Hungary. Xi welcomed the students to study at Chinese universities after their graduation and said he hoped that more young people from Hungary would love and study the Chinese language.
“Young people are not only inheritors of traditional friendship, but will also play a key role in initiating more friendly cooperation in the future,” said Yu Jiang, deputy secretary-general of the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Center and vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies.
Through the letters, Xi expressed his hope for greater efforts to promote mutual understanding among people in different countries and to promote the harmonious coexistence of different civilizations, thus contributing to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, Yu said. Even when political relations between two countries suffer setbacks, ordinary people can still express their aspiration for mutual understanding and friendship through people-to-people exchanges at various levels, including correspondence.
In 2020, 50 students in the fourth grade at Cascade Elementary School in the US state of Utah wrote greeting cards to Xi in Chinese on the eve of Spring Festival, telling him about their Chinese language learning and personal hobbies. They also expressed their love for China and Chinese culture, as well as their hopes for a chance to visit China.
In his reply letter, Xi told the students that, like the US, China is a big country and that the Chinese people are as hospitable as the American people, and he said he hoped that they would become young ambassadors of friendship between the two peoples. In 2019, Xi wrote back to a group of US high school students who were studying Chinese at Niles North High School in Illinois.
–The Daily Mail-China
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