Cui speaking at a reception for the Mid-Autumn Festival held by the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., Sept. 6, 2019. [Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service]

In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon (1913–1994) visited China, and China and the United States issued the Joint Communiqué in Shanghai (also known as the Shanghai Communiqué), marking the beginning of the normalization of bilateral relations. Recently, China News Release interviewed Mr. Cui Tiankai, former Chinese ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021. Cui shared his insights into and expectations on Sino-U.S. relations with our reporter.

China News Release: In the spring of 1985, Xi Jinping, the then secretary of the CPC Zhengding County Committee in Hebei Province, visited Muscatine, a small town in Iowa State and made deep friendships with the local people, and in February 2012, when he was the vice president of China, he visited those old friends during his visit to the United States. Can you share this story with us in detail?

Cui Tiankai: In 1985, Xi Jinping, then still working in Zhengding County of Hebei Province, led an agricultural technical delegation to the U.S. State of Iowa and investigated agriculture and the livestock industry in the town of Muscatine, during which he stayed in the home of a local family. In the decades thereafter, he has always kept this friendship in mind and has continued his friendship with these old friends in the U.S. In 2012, Xi Jinping, already the vice president at the time, was going to the U.S. for an official visit, and despite a tight schedule, he made it a point to meet with those old American friends in Muscatine.

Looking back on Xi's revisit to the town, I still remember one detail. Initially, the protocol staff arranged the reunion as an official visit normally would be, with Xi and the Iowa governor sitting in the middle and the Chinese delegation members on one side and Xi's American friends on the other. Xi did not agree to this arrangement, and suggested to arrange it in the way of meeting between old friends.