30 years ago, whenever Americans appeared on a Chinese street, they would often be the center of attention. 30 years later, when the first group of Chinese tourists visiting the United States set foot on US soil, they received a "ministerial level" reception. In Washington, Capitol Hill gave them an exclusive tour lane, and Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez delivered a welcome speech on a yacht. In Los Angeles, the city government held a welcoming ceremony at Universal Studios in Hollywood. In New York, local media pursued the tour group as if they were celebrities, and the New York Times published an article titled "New York Sees Big Potential in a New Wave of Chinese Tourists."
In the long river of history of Sino-American relations, this may not be a significant political event, and many people may consider the scenes of this first tour group's experiences to be a minor tidbit of news. However, history tells us that breakthroughs in Sino-American relations stem from precisely these interpersonal exchanges that do not appear very remarkable, and the basis for the future development of relations also rests upon the continued deepening of interpersonal exchanges. The opening of the gate for Chinese citizens to visit America as tourists is significant because it shows that relations have already surpassed the level of politics and economics.
Economic relations often become the focus of public opinion on both sides because they entail concrete mutual benefits that can be measured by numbers. For example, regarding Chinese tourist visits to the United States, many Chinese and American media used the following figures: in 2006, Chinese tourists visiting the US spent 6,000 US dollars on average, which is more than the average spent by tourists from other countries. Besides this, according to estimates by the Los Angeles Visitors Bureau, the number of Chinese tourists who visited Los Angeles rose by 50 percent within one year after the city was opened to Chinese tourism, reaching 200,000 visitors per year. This boosted the local economy by $62.5 million. To the United States, where 1 out of every 17 job opportunities is related to tourism, Chinese tourists visiting Washington, New York, and Los Angeles are of course considered a consumer group with great potential.
More than that, however, tourism is a vital part of interpersonal exchange. According to statistics from the US Department of Commerce, 2.61 million personnel visits were made to and from both countries last year. Now that Chinese citizens can travel to the US in tourist groups, the scope of personnel visits will expand quickly, and this is bound to have a significant impact on relations between the two sides.
The recent visit to the US by a group of Chinese citizens fell right on the 30 year mark of the country's economic reforms. Over the past 30 years, Chinese have gone to the US in order to work or do business, study abroad or teach, conduct research or make investments…but now they have become the same as Europeans and Japanese, carrying a small rainbow-colored flag to tour the country. In the words of one media report, in 30 years Chinese people have gone from digging for gold to taking it out of their own pockets.
Over the past 30 years, China has been developing, and the living standards of the Chinese people have continuously improved. Sino-American relations have also undergone significant changes. Today, in an age of rapidly developing economic globalization, the economic interests of China and the United States are already mutually linked and inseparable. While Americans are the major buyers of Chinese goods, Chinese have become the major buyers of American bonds, and deeper communication and mutual understanding between the citizens of both countries are more important than ever. Within this context, tourism plays an integral role.
One of the Chinese in the first tour group was Ms. Xing, who is over 70 years of age. She discovered during the trip that American hotel breakfasts included porridge that Chinese people like, which gave her a warm feeling of home. Of course, the kind of home atmosphere that American hotels have created for guests is not meant to satisfy Chinese travelers alone, but is a type of respect and acknowledgment of different types of living habits and cultures. Through tourism, a part of interpersonal relations, average people have more opportunities to experience this kind of acknowledgement and the happiness and pleasant surprise it brings. We can thus realize that it is because of diversity and difference that the world is so rich and wonderful.
The cultural knowledge and communication of sentiments made possible by interpersonal exchange cannot be measured with numbers and statistics, but they are highly instrumental in smoothing the development of the relationship between two countries. Similar to the success of "Ping Pong Diplomacy" 30 years ago, the basis of Sino-American relations rests on extensive dialogue between peoples. The more contact there is between ordinary citizens, the fewer misgivings there will be between them.
By People's Daily Online
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