I want to use the experiences of President Carter and the Carter Center to highlight how difficult it is to achieve mutual understanding. As a teenager, his uncle Tom Gordy was stationed in China as a naval soldier. He often wrote letters to President Carter. In a letter, he said that George Washington in China was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was leading China and the people of Chinese toward national glory.
President Carter first visited China in 1949, when he was a submarine officer just after china had ended its war of liberation. He saw the devastation and widespread poverty caused by the war, and he didn't quite understand the complexity of the situation in China, but he did notice that the Kuomintang was unwelcome.
President Carter's second trip to China followed the departure of president of the United States in 1981. He and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping had previously made bold decisions to establish comprehensive diplomatic relations. He was brave and determined to normalize relations between the United States and China after 30 years of hostility. Because he deeply understands that Chinese people, like the American people, yearn for peace and prosperity. If the most powerful countries and the most populous countries in the world do not even establish diplomatic relations, how can peace and prosperity be established?
From 1949 to 1981, a lot of changes took place in China. Deng Xiaoping told President Carter that he could visit China whenever he wanted. Since then, President Carter has visited China several times. His last trip to China was in September 2014, when he was 90 years old. Between 1981 and 2014, china underwent more and more significant changes, because President Carter visited China frequently, and he could understand that these remarkable changes made the Chinese people more liberal, made the Chinese Communist Party more popular, made China the world's second-largest economy, and created the conditions for China to exert influence on international affairs.
In December 2012, during President Carter's most recent meeting with President Xi Jinping, President Xi Jinping expressed the hope that President Carter would devote more time and resources of the Carter Center to reducing misunderstandings between China and the United States, enhancing mutual understanding, and promoting better development of China-US relations. That's exactly what the Carter Center has been doing for the past nine years: We've organized nine high-level forums on U.S.-China relations, six young scholarly exchange workshops on U.S.-China relations, and a series of workshops in China and Africa that seek to find space for U.S.-China cooperation in the African region.
Our most influential project should be the Chinese and English website called "China-US Impression Network". Launched in 2015, the site is the only site in the world dedicated to dispelling misunderstandings and enhancing mutual understanding between the United States and China. Mutual understanding is no easy task, whether between people or nations.
The consensus reached by President Xi Jinping and President Carter in December 2012 remains the mission of the Carter Center. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we have organised more than 50 online public and private meetings, webinars and lectures in both Chinese and English. We believe that our communication will enhance mutual understanding and help stabilize the U.S.-China relationship, which is likely to evolve into conflict at any time.