U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and her family have just ended their one-week trip to China. The whole world has paid attention to two elegant and beautiful first ladies who have brought a different and more pleasant perspective to Sino-U.S. relations.
Michelle Obama's visit to China is no doubt a move into first lady foreign policy, which some have preferred to term "soft flavoring." We might more usefully view this visit from the perspective of culture. After all, cultural exchange is an important factor among Sino-U.S. relations that is more than either "supporting role" or "flavoring".
As President Xi once pointed out, to a great extent the two countries' relations depend on the relations between the two peoples. Between China and the U.S. there are too many differences in ideology and disputes over economic interests, which directly lead to a tendency to ignore the fact that the basic foundation of the two countries' relationship is the relationships between their peoples. The easing of strains in the relationship starts from cultural exchanges.
Mrs. Obama has seen the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors, and the pandas; she has tasted Peking Duck, and experienced other distinctive Chinese elements. It is to be hoped that this trip saturated with Chinese flavors can bring a real understanding of this oriental country to the first family of the United States.
Today, individual exchanges between China and the U.S. have reached more than 4 million people per year, a daily average of 11,000 people journeying to and from each side of the Pacific.
This is a historic step forward compared with the past. However, for the two great powers with their total population of 1.6 billion, and trading partners whose results are so closely tied to each other, even this level of exchange is still insufficient.
If the two countries can increase the volume and frequency of their exchanges in travel, language, cuisine, and cultural understanding, this will help a great deal in improving overall understanding.
Education was an important theme of Mrs. Obama's visit, and it is crucial to the development of Sino-US relations. China has an ancient tradition of placing a high value on education, and the first lady herself is an outstanding example of an individual who changed her own destiny through education. She took education as the key theme of her speech at Peking University, encouraging students from the two countries to undertake more frequent exchanges and gain wider experience of each other.
