Progress widely apparent

Movie fans will remember this from the film Forrest Gump (1994): During an interview with rock star John Lennon, Forrest says, "In the land of China, people hardly got nothing at all." Lennon, lighting a cigarette, responds, "No possessions?"

Fast-forward 20 years. The ark in the movie Farewell Atlantis was built in the Tibet autonomous region because it "would be impossible for another country to finish it in time". The lost female astronaut in the movie Gravity used a rescue capsule to reach a Chinese space station, Tiangong, and then got back to Earth on a Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft.

In the 36 years since China and the US established formal diplomatic ties, the progress of relations from suspicion and testing to mutual trust and win-win cooperation is not only visible in movies but also in culture, education, politics and the economy.